How to Speak With Confidence: 2026 Ultimate Edition

You’ve practised and rehearsed everything to the tee, you know your material inside out but when you step into the room you can still feel your heart rate climb when you stand in front of the audience. What changes the experience is the state you are in: how your body feels, how your mind is working, and whether the two are pulling in the same direction.

That is the starting point for anyone who wants to speak with confidence. The sentences come later. First comes the physical and psychological groundwork that lets you stand in a room comfortably without your body deciding your system under threat.

Why Confidence Is a Feeling Before It Is a Sentence

Most people prepare for a presentation, an interview or a difficult conversation by working on content. They write the opening, rehearse the middle and memorise the end. Then they walk into the room and discover that the preparation has somewhat little effect on the trembling hands or the brain fog.

The reason is simple. If your body chooses the environment is a threat and you are under attack, then your brain will be in survival mode. The eyes see the amount of people in the room, the brain registers that there are a danger, you internalise that people are looking at you, that they are judging you. Therefore if you choose to speak, it has to be carefully crafted to precision before you speak, as the people in front of you will eat you alive, if you don’t.

And often when you choose this narrative, your confidence isn’t giving main character energy, you’re hesitating, you’re overthinking so your body and mind are always in inner conflict with each other. Your nervous system thinks its in danger, your mind is considering if it’s the right thing to say or if you should say it at all. So when you go into any environment that involves speaking, this is feeling you are attached to.

This is why the work starts with two connected areas: body and mind alignment. When the body is calm and the mind is focused outward, the voice follows. When either is unsettled, the most polished content in the world will sound uncertain.

Always Start With the Body: Your Nervous System

If you do not calm your nervous system down, you stay in fight or flight mode. I know this all too well with my complex PTSD. When your body is in fight or flight mode, your brain can only think in survival mode and in survival mode you do not think clearly.

Your brain can only think of one think, so any words you have preplanned goes out the window. Your attention fluctuates fighting to be present, your working memory holding on to what you wanted to say next and a part of you is thinking why can’t I just say what I want to say. That is why people go blank, they have that brain fog, they lose the thread or they hear themselves as a third person in the distance.

So the first task before speaking is not to memorise more. It is to bring the body out of threat and into a state where clear thinking is physically possible.

Breathe Low and Slow

If you put one hand on your chest and one hand on your belly and just see which hand moves more. If the hand on your chest, you are breathing incorrectly. Shallow breathing when you are breathing from the chest signals an alarm to the body to keep in high alert. Breathing lower, into the belly, with a slightly longer exhale than inhale, gives the body a different message. In my Youtube video, I help you practise this before you enter the room, you need to practice every day, then apply it to you going into a room with people when you’re in the corridor or in your car, you can change the state your body and how your nervous system associates with people.

Release Tension Before You Stand Up

Tension collects in predictable places: the jaw, the shoulders, the hands, the stomach. A jaw that will not open keeps the vibrations inside of the mouth and no-one can hear your wonderful story that needs to be told. Shoulders that inch towards the ears make the whole body look stiff so before you stand, unclench your jaw, drop your shoulders, shake out your hands and feel your feet on the floor. Grounding through the feet is simple and it works, because it gives your body a physical sense of support exactly when it feels exposed.

Arrive Early and Own the Space

Walk into the room before it fills up. Stand where you will speak. Look at the seats, the screen, the windows all the tiny details in the room. The unfamiliar becomes familiar and familiarity reduces the threat. You are not being dramatic by doing this. You are giving your nervous system evidence that any room or environment you walk into is safe and that you have nothing to worry about.

Then the Mind: The Fear of Being Judged

The psychological side of speaking is often described as fear of public speaking, but a more accurate description is fear of judgement. People are not usually frightened of their own voice, yes they might not like their voice, but they are frightened of what the faces in front of them will say about them.

Name What You Are Actually Afraid Of

Vague dread is harder to manage than a specific worry. Ask yourself what you think will happen. That you will forget your point, that someone will look bored, that a colleague will criticise you. Naming it takes some of the power out of it and it helps you prepare yourself to tackle the fear rather than simply enduring the feeling.

Move Your Attention Outward

Anxiety turns attention inward, onto your racing heart and your own performance, what you say, how you say it. But turn your energy outwards towards the people in front of you. Like looking at the room with detail, notice what are the people wearing, who has blue eyes, who wears black trousers. Once you create a narrative about them, there is no judgement from them about you. You can then make that shift is to ask questions and listen properly and the exchange becomes a conversation or a discussion rather than them an examining you like a teacher.

Reframe Nervousness as Being Excited

Nervousness and excitement are close relatives. The physical sensations overlap: a faster pulse, sharper awareness, a lift of energy. Rather than trying to get rid of those feelings or pretending they don’t exist, channel that energy as the fuel for what you say.

Bringing Body and Mind Together in the Room

When the body is settled and the mind is thinking about the other people in the room, several things change at once. You feel more confident because you are now in control of yourself, your voice drops into a more comfortable register, your pace slows down enough to be understood. You begin to hear yourself think, which means you can respond to the room rather than recite the words that were already in your head. You are now able to articulate what it is you want to say.

Build Confidence in Mini Steps

Building confidence to speak in front of people is a process. It requires patience, persistence and a willingness to embrace discomfort. It took me a year just to learn how to breathe correctly. Nobody moves from absolute fear to 100% confidence in a single event. What works are stepping stones: small, repeated exposures that stretch you slightly further each time.

The public speaking confidence stepping stones start where you actually are. If that is "terrified to speak in meetings", the first step might be observe the room so you feel comfortable being there. The next might be saying one idea, one sentence. Later steps include standing up to speak, then presenting to a small group, then a larger one, then a room of strangers. Each step teaches your nervous system that you can speak in front of people and what you feared was all pyschological.

Remove Filler Words

Filler words such as "uh", "umm" and "like" usually appear when people are buying time. They are a symptom, not the root problem. Once you are calmer and breathing better, you can replace the filler with a pause. Silence sounds confident. A pause also gives your listener time to absorb the point, they can process what it is that you are saying.

Prepare for the Questions You Fear

Few things unsettle a speaker faster than a question they cannot answer. Decide in advance how you will handle it. It’s okay to not know an answer, as human we do not know everything, so don’t make up something and waffle it out. You can say something straightforward such as "I haven't come across that before but let me follow it up with X because what you mentioned is a really important point". It keeps your credibility intact and it keeps your body out of panic. You can add on to what you want to say about something else relating to that topic or you carry on with someone else’s question or let someone else talk.

Where Coaching Helps

Some of this work can be done alone. There are so many more videos out there regarding breath, posture and public speaking preparation. But what is harder to do alone is see yourself accurately. Most people have a distorted picture of how they come across and that picture usually makes the fear worse.

Speaking Voices is a London-based voice and communication coaching practice in Canary Wharf, founded by Emily Lee. She offers 1:1 coaching, online and in person, specifically for people who need to overcome their fears of speaking. She knows how to transfer a person’s confidence to speak as she has gone through the process herself. Sessions work on the physical and psychological sides together, using the practice's SPEAK framework, so that the calm you build in the body is carried into the way you stand, breathe and speak in the room.

Frequently Asked Questions

These are the questions that come up most often when people begin working on confidence and speaking.

Can you learn to speak with confidence or is it natural?

Confidence is a learnable set of habits rather than a fixed personality trait. Some people find it easier, but the underlying skills, such as regulating your breathing, managing your attention and building exposure step by step, can be practised. The process takes patience and persistence, and it usually rewards those who are willing to embrace discomfort in small doses.

How do I stop my voice shaking when I speak?

A shaking voice is often a sign that your breath is high in the chest and your body is braced. Slow, low breathing before you start helps, as does releasing tension in the jaw and shoulders. Slowing your pace and using pauses also steadies the voice, because it gives your system time to settle rather than rushing to keep up.

What should I do if I go blank in front of people?

Going blank is usually the result of a nervous system in survival mode, where clear thinking becomes harder. Pause, breathe out slowly and return to your next single point rather than trying to recall the whole talk. Having brief notes nearby reduces the pressure and the silence almost always feels longer to you than it does to the room.

Is it better to script a speech or speak from notes?

It depends on you and the occasion, but a full script can increase the fear of forgetting a line. Notes with key points and a clear opening often work better because they leave room for natural delivery. Whatever you choose, rehearse out loud so your body becomes familiar with the pace and the pauses.

How long does it take to feel more confident at speaking?

There is no fixed timeline. Progress depends on how often you practise, how gradually you increase the challenge and how much support you have. Treating it as a ladder with small, repeatable steps tends to produce steadier results than waiting for a single big moment to transform your confidence.