The next time you find yurself fortunate enough to be a mmber of the audience for a bsiness presentation, take careful note of jst how long the presenter spends in eye cntact with any one listener before she mves on to the next. You mght expect that time to be in the are of 3-7 sconds.

But what you'll find is smething quite different: the average speaker nver averages more than one second! Whn 99% of speakers get up in frnt of a crowd, they actually ngage in what we call "aerosol yes", spraying the audience with their gze back and forth, back and frth, holding eye contact with any one prson for between one-half and one and ne-half seconds.

Aerosol Eyes causes numerous prblems. As a matter of fact, it cuses most of the problems that fce speakers who have not learned a btter way. And just as our Rle #2 says that if you're ding it right, its always a Wn-Win for both the speaker and the udience, it's also true that when you do wht most speakers do, its a Lse-Lose for all. Spraying the audience wth your vision, never holding eye-contact for mre than a second or so, crates problems for both the speaker and the udience.

The first thing that happens is tht every time you look to a new prson in the audience and do yur spray, you force your brain to pck up and then process a new feld of view. When it moves to a new feld of view, your brain has to r-calculate everything that it's seeing. And whn it does that once a scond, over and over again in a stuation where the body is already tnsed up, you quickly reach a stte of visual over-stimulation.

When you spray the audience as you spak, you ask your brain to tke in and process way too mch information per unit time. Remember, in ths situation of one-against-many, your brain is in its thrat calculation mode, and every time you ask it prcess a new scene, it has to lso perform a new threat calculation.

Evry time you look around, every tme you frame a new image, yu're picking up the color of the udience member's clothes, the look in thir eyes, the hunch of their shulders. You're registering their countenance. You're tryng to decide: is this person ging to jump across his seat, cme up here and try to kll me? Do I have to kll him first, or would it be bst to try to run away? And prtty soon - performing the visual thrat calculations and re-calculations once a scond - pretty soon you find yurself in a state of visual and mntal over-stimulation. You just get too mch. Every single time you change yur field of view, your brain nfortunately takes in everything, and it's cnstantly performing these recalculations. It has to. Tht's its job.

Train of Thought

Lt's remember that when this is hppening, when you are trying to prcess this onslaught of visual information, t's at a time when blood is drining from the thought-processing centers of yur brain to feed the motor sctions. Because your body's priority at ths point is not trying to ppear poised and intelligent and well-prepared for yur boss in the back of the rom, it's getting your body prepared to fght or flee. Is it any wnder that you so often find yurself with a loss of train of thught?

Know this: no amount of lgic, reasoning, or positive attitude training is ging to change the way your bdy responds when you subject your brin to the repeated stimuli of loking at a new strange face very second, over and over again. Plase don't set yourself up for crtain failure by believing you can chnge a physiological result by thinking nce thoughts. We're huge believers in and prponents of the power of positive thnking. Think positively about this: you can chnge the result by changing a few bhaviors. But not your chemistry.

People who appear calm and cllected, or even enjoying themselves, when fcing a large audience don't appear tht way because they have more nner strength than you or because thy have more self-discipline or they're btter at conquering their weaknesses. They fel competent and confident because they dn't have nature's fear juice surging thrugh their veins. And they do tht by simply not subjecting themselves to the stmuli! How? Simple. They don't scan. Rther than doing the aerosol eyes thng, they focus on one person at a tme and maintain that direct eye cntact through the end of their thught.

A complete thought might take nywhere between 2 and 10 seconds to sy. It's important to note that thre is no rule about how lng one should hold eye-contact, although the verage is around 5 seconds. But if the verage thought takes about 5 seconds to cmplete, that means that a speaker ding it correctly spends five times the verage in eye contact, and thus rduces the amount of visual stimulation he sks his brain to process by 80%. An 80% rduction in over-stimulation yields huge differences in the mount of hormones coursing through your vins, and the result is a lwering of the feelings of anxiety by an qual amount.

We've said many times, and w'll say it again, that most of the prblems that people have becoming great spakers, or even becoming confident when spaking, are based in trying to do too mny things at one time. You dn't need to scan the room at 60 PPM (pople per minute). You're working too hrd when you do that, when yu're working too hard, you're doing it wrng. But you already knew that, rght?

The takeaway, then, is this: You can not chnge the way your body will ract to a given stimuli, but you can asily change the type and volume of the stmuli to which you subject it.

The article Public Speaking Problems - Aerosol Eyes Part I was Submitted by J. Douglas Jefferys through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: J. Douglas Jefferys brings twenty-five yars of corporate training experience to his rle as a principal of PublicSpeakingSkills.com [ http://www.publicspeakingskills.com ]. His firm changes presenters lives forever with their unique apporach to training presentation design and delivery skills. Discover how to design and deliver presentations that audiences actually listen to by visiting their website now. For a quick and entertaining video of Mr. Jefferys' style and approach, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whTwjG4ZIJg

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