Guest post by Rick Enrico, CEO and Founder of SlideGenius, Inc.

Do you feel nervous when you’re presenting?

Don’t worry. Even the world’s finest professional boxers experience pre-fight jitters.

It’s normal to feel tense when faced with potentially life-changing opportunities. This could be because you’re afraid of making mistakes, receiving negative feedback, or encountering rejection.

You may feel the need to throw in the towel, but did you know that feeling nervous can be one of your greatest assets?

Feeling nervous is a good thing.

Anxiety is usually perceived as a negative feeling, but it’s something that could sway the momentum your way. Preparation, raw emotions, and self-belief can give you an extra psychological advantage even when you’re afraid. Embracing a feisty, fighting attitude in the face of fear is an important part of a winning performance.

Boxers have had this figured out for hundreds of years. What can they teach us about the importance of training before a fight, using emotional appeal to win a crowd over, and psychologically priming for victory?

• Researching your topic and scouting out your audience is similar to how boxers train hard and watch tapes of their opponents to look for weaknesses and opportunities.
• Appealing to your listeners’ emotions is comparable to how fighters take advantage of their passion to get out of rough situations, or pack extra power into their punches.
• Lastly, having the self-confidence to overcome that nervous feeling provides extra motivation, and can be the deciding factor between failure and success.

If boxers can fearlessly put their bodies and careers on the line, then you can overcome your own presentation anxieties.

Here’s an infographic that takes inspiration from Sweet Science, to give you more tips on overcoming presentation nerves (click image to enlarge):

Now get out there and fight, nervous or not!

About the author

Rick Enrico is the CEO and Founder of SlideGenius, Inc., a global presentation design agency. He regularly publishes expert presentation tips on the SlideGenius blog. He currently oversees an experienced team of designers, software developers, and marketing professionals that specialize in creating custom corporate presentations and cloud publishing applications. Connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter.