Do you experience stage fright when you speak in public? As a cure, has anyone ever told you to picture the audience in their underwear?

Doing that won't help your speech anxiety, of course (though it may stimulate your imagination). Along with all the bad advice out there on overcoming fear of public speaking, fixes that ask you to imagine irrelevant details are among the worst. (For a way to relax even if you only have five minutes to spare, download my free cheat sheet, "How to Calm Your Nerves Before Speaking.")

The truth is, overcoming fear of public speaking requires coming to grips with an essential equation: you standing in front of an audience, talking about something of mutual interest. It's easy to overlook the second part of that equation—that your audience is genuinely interested in what you have to say on a topic.

You Reveal Who You Are Whenever You Speak

More of a problem is that business of the "in the spotlight" nature of public speaking performance. There's absolutely no doubt that in a speech or presentation, all eyes are on you as the speaker. And that creates a feeling of maximum exposure.

The quote by actress Rosalind Russell at the top of this article states the situation accurately: when you speak, you're figurately naked—enough so that you feel you're turning around slowly to give everyone a good look.

That's because there really isn't any way to hide who you are when you speak publicly, not only regarding your physical presence but in terms of your personality as well. It's the nature of performance: one person offering something of value to a group will be scrutinized closely in all the aspects of that performance.  So one of the paths to overcoming stage fright is to accept that this will occur and not try to make it otherwise. You see, it's often the desire to change the situation in a way that it can't be changed that makes fear of public speaking so intractable.

Allow Your Vulnerability to Show

The other way we sometimes try unsuccessfully to alter the speaking situation is to become defensive in the face of the threat, i.e., the audience. Your listeners aren't your enemy at all, of course. They genuinely want to gain something of value from your talk. (To go beyond information delivery and to truly engage your listeners, download "5 Ways to Captivate an Audience.")

By trying to protect yourself, however, you become someone that your audience really can't relate to—a speaker wearing a mask or invisible armor. The truth is, your listeners will relate to you more positively because of your vulnerability, not more negatively. Everyone sympathizes with the nerves and self-consciousness that comes with public speaking. Your audience will appreciate the fact that you're speaking even if you're nervous, rather than thinking less of you personally or in terms of your credibiity.

So that's the solution to stage fright that you may not have believed at first: accept the fact that you'll feel naked, and allow your vulnerability to show. You'll come across as the real person you are, whom audiences feel they can really respond to.

Key takeaways from this blog:

• To overcome stage fright, focus on the situation at hand.
• Audiences almost always genuinely want to hear what you have to say.
• There's no way around it: public speaking can make one feel "naked."
• Accept that your personality will be revealed, and allow that to happen.
• Instead of becoming defensive, let your vulnerability show