Your memory will always be of great help to you. It will be necessary to remember ideas, the order in which they are presented, and the right words to help you convey your thoughts and put them in the right form; to reproduce metaphors, images, drawn from life, and invaluable for your presentation; and to remember numbers, dates, statistics, and mathematical data that confirm or clarify what you have said.
Although the importance of memory is not discussed, you cannot rely entirely on it. Sometimes, when we are in front of an audience, in the midst of a speech, we have a problem with memory failure, and if we do not prepare psychologically for such accidents, we may be bitterly disappointed.
To prevent such situations, we need to prepare for them and feel protected from such memory errors, which are called stupor. Imagine such a scene. You tell something to a group of people, and suddenly memory changes you: you completely forget the information that you wanted to tell.
At first, you are surprised and do not understand what has happened. You take this as a "dictionary failure" and start looking for another word. After a few seconds, which always seem like hours, you find that it's not about one word, but about a vast layer of information that is important for the logic of the narrative.
The surprise is replaced by despair. The more effort you put into it, the more you lose your memory. You start to feel dizzy, your heart is beating rapidly, your knees bend, your face is pouring the paint of shame, your hands are shaking nervously, and when you raise your eyes on the audience, you think that you are sitting in front of a monster with hundreds of eyes, ready to eat you.
Anyone who has been in such a shameful situation knows what I'm talking about. This is also known by those who rightly believe that no one is immune from such incidents.
Here are a few tips to help you protect yourself from this real ghost hunting both novice speakers and veterans.
Prepare yourself well and repeat the report many times
Don't take any chances. Never think that repeating a report once or twice will make you calm. This is not the case. Prepare as much as you can. If you have a week to prepare, use the whole week; if a month, use the whole month. After all, the more you prepare, the less likely you are to be stuporous.
Try to repeat the report in different ways, change the order of words, fragments, read the report with or without visual aids. In this way, you will develop the ability to adapt to the various surprises that arise during the report.
If you limit yourself to one type of training and forget something important during your report, you will have little room for maneuver to solve the problem.
You can't imagine how many times I have seen executives injured by what I found on them during an important presentation. Some even thought that this would damage their professional image.
So, don't leave the slightest chance for tetanus - prepare, prepare and prepare again.
Write a summary of your report
If you feel uncomfortable on the eve of a report because you are afraid of getting stuck, take a short summary of your message with you as support.
Write down phrases that will help you remember the order of the material, especially the numbers, dates, and numbers to remember. Such instructions have an incredible psychological effect. Simply knowing that if you forget something, and you will always have the opportunity to look into the cheat sheet and remember everything you need to say, brings great relief.
What to do when there is a memory failure
First of all, and this is the most important thing: do not fall into despair and do not panic if your memory has really failed you. Despair is deadly during the speeches, because if you just give in to it, you will feel it more and more, and it will be harder and harder to find a way out. I understand that this is not easy, but it is extremely important to remain calm at all costs.
Do not persist. If you realize that you have a memory failure, just try to remember the information again. If you can't remember from the first attempt, repeat the last sentence you said as if you were trying to emphasize this part of your report. Most likely, when you reach the point where the logical thread has been lost, the information will naturally pop up in your memory.