What's best to focus on if you have speech anxiety? Here's how you can learn from Abraham Lincoln how to overcome fear of public speaking.

The headline was startling: “Unpublished 1860 letter by Abraham Lincoln Shows ‘Nervous’ Side.” If that doesn’t surprise you, maybe this will: Lincoln reveals in the letter that public speaking is the cause of his nervousness.

Really? Our nation’s greatest orator suffered from stage fright? Well, well. That sounds like potentially good news for the rest of us! 

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Speech Anxiety:  A Mix of Visibility and Vulnerability

Lincoln wrote the letter on March 6, 1860, after he had delivered a high-profile speech at Cooper Union, the science and art college in New York City. His speech, on the need to control the spread of slavery to the territories, had an  “electrifying” effect on his audience.¹ 

In fact, the speech vaulted Lincoln onto the national stage—even more so than the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of two years earlier when he ran for the U.S. Senate. And that, we learn, is how stage fright entered the picture.

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Following the Cooper Union talk, Lincoln was invited by a Republican political committee to speak in New Jersey. In his response, Lincoln declines that request, calling himself “nervous and unfit” to fill a speaking engagement already made in Connecticut.² Lincoln, in other words, is experiencing a classic symptom of speech anxiety: the combination of visibility and vulnerability.

Here's the full note from Lincoln:

Yours of the 2nd was received late last evening. I cannot speak in New Jersey this time. I have over staid my time—have heard something about sickness in my family—and really am nervous and unfit to fill my engagement already made here in Connecticut. Will you please excuse me?

Yours Respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Lincoln’s Example of How to Deal with Stage Fright

You or I probably aren’t going to be speaking about America’s identity to a national audience. But we can learn something important from our greatest speaker concerning how to deal with stage fright. It's part of knowing how to achieve genuine impact when you speak.

The clue is in the Cooper Union speech itself. Read the talk today and you’ll see a dry recitation of Congressional votes on the question of slavery in the territories. Lincoln was a lawyer, after all. But it’s in exactly that effort to set the record straight that Lincoln gives us a hint of how to deal with speech anxiety.

To Overcome Speaking Fear, Look to Your Message

We all know that Lincoln was a great speechwriter; but in this speech, he aims to be plain and straightforward. There are no rhetorical flourishes (with this exception: “groping for some middle ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man”).

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Lincoln is simply trying to get his message across, in language that is simple and impossible to deny. In other words, he’s not trying to deliver a rousing speech or a great presentation. His audience and the points he is making constitute his entire focus. There’s no room left for buying into all that “visibility and vulnerability.”

Armed with the correct focus on his audience and message, Abraham Lincoln needn’t have worried that he was unfit as a speaker. The same unwavering focus will serve you well if you have stage fright, however modest or momentous your own message. Here are my 10 Ways To Stay Fully Focused When Speaking.

So, whenever you're questioning your own ability to achieve excellence, remember this: when you're speaking in public, you don't matter. It's the audience that's important, and your task is to get your message to resonate with them. And incidentally, you don't have to be excellent to do that, just willing to attend to the matter at hand. 

Gary Genard is an actor, author, and expert in public speaking and overcoming speaking fear. His company, The Genard Method offers live 1:1 Zoom executive coaching and corporate group training worldwide. He is the author of the Amazon Best-Seller How to Give a Speech. His second book, Fearless Speaking, was named in 2019 as “One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time.” For nine consecutive years, he was ranked by Global Gurus as one of The World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals, and he has been named as one of America's Top 5 Speech Coaches. His handbook for presenting in videoconferences, Speaking Virtually offers techniques for developing virtual presence. He is also the author of Speak for Leadership: An Executive Speech Coach's Secrets for Developing Leadership Presence. His latest book is The Confidence Book: 75 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety, Let Go of Your Fears, Change Your Negative Thinking, and Perform At Your Professional Best. He is also the creator of The Dr. William Scarlet supernatural thrillers. Contact Gary here.