It’s every public speaker’s worst nightmare: What do you do when your mind goes blank?
It’s SUPER scary to freeze up in front of a group of people who are all looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to speak.
And no matter how much you’ve prepared, sometimes you still blank out.
But don’t worry. In this article, you’ll learn three ways to respond when your mind goes blank (and how to keep yourself from blanking out in the first place).
It’s every public speaker’s worst nightmare: What do you do when your mind goes blank?
1. Practice out loud.
Clients often tell me that they prepare for presentations by thinking through what they want to say or reading over their notes. This is as effective as thinking about going to the gym: it doesn’t make you any stronger.
Instead, if you want to avoid blanking out, you have to do your reps and strengthen your “mind to mouth” muscles by practicing your presentation out loud.
Look for small pockets of time to practice. If you’re giving a 30-minute talk but can’t carve out that much practice time, take 4 minutes before your next meeting to work on your introduction.
Spend 5 minutes on your first point while you’re waiting in the pickup line at your kids’ school. Steal 2 minutes at a red light to refine your conclusion.
You get the idea. If you want to reduce the chance that you’ll freeze up during your talk, practicing out loud is one of the most effective strategies I know.
2. Ditch your script.
If you fear public speaking, maybe you’ve fallen into the trap of thinking you’ll feel more confident if you memorize a script. I get it. I’ve made this mistake myself.
There are two big problems with scripts. When you’ve memorized your talk, your delivery tends to sound robotic and rehearsed rather than relaxed and natural.
Plus you’re more likely to blank out because you’re constantly trying to find the one right word out of hundreds or thousands in your memory.
Want a better way? Replace your script with a bullet-point outline of key words and short phrases. When you practice out loud from an outline, it forces you to speak conversationally.
Your presentation will come out slightly differently each time you try it. This is good.
Instead of being locked into one way of delivering your ideas, you’ll discover there are many different ways to tell your story. You’ll be less likely to blank out looking for the perfect word.
With this method, you’ll hit the sweet spot for public speaking: sounding conversational and natural while secretly being well prepared.
3. Stick the landing.
But what if you practice out loud with bullet points and you still blank out? I want you to be prepared for this, because most speakers I know—even the most accomplished ones—occasionally lose their place.
The good news is you can get better at recovering from your mind going blank. Like any other part of public speaking, this is a learnable skill.
How do you do it? You’re going to work on sticking the landing. I’m stealing this image from gymnastics, since I was obsessed with Olympic women’s gymnastics as a kid.
Whether gymnasts are competing on floor, bars, beam, or vault, they fight like crazy to stick the landing. So can you.
First, do a few rounds of oral drafting to work out the general flow of your talk. Like the first drafts of a written report, these early oral drafts can be rough. You’ll start and stop a lot as you figure out what you want to say.
But after a few drafts, you’ll start to understand the story you want to tell and how your presentation will flow. Once you reach this point, start treating your practice like it’s real.
This means no apologizing and starting over when you mess up or blank out. Instead: Stop. Breathe. Check your notes and find your place. Make eye contact with the audience and keep going. Fight to stick that landing.
Why? Your audience takes their cues from you. If you start apologizing and making a huge deal out of losing your place, they’ll pay a lot of attention to your mistake.
If you stay calm and act like it’s no big deal, that’s how they’ll feel too.
So if you’re worried about your mind going blank, know that it’s probably going to happen at some point.
It happens to everyone, regardless of how much they fear public speaking.
But if you’ve practiced out loud, you’ve ditched your script, and you know how to stick the landing, you have the tools you need to handle this moment with ease and confidence.
What else helps you recover when your mind goes blank? Let me know in the comments below!
