Lauren Bonvini on Building Confidence Through a More Practical Approach to Stage Fright

How to understand pressure, reduce self-doubt, and move through performance anxiety with more steadiness

Lauren Bonvini is a Seattle-based stage fright coach who helps performers, speakers, and creatives work through performance anxiety and build confidence, presence, and self-trust. For readers who want a visual companion to these ideas, Lauren Bonvini’s Stage Fright and Confidence guide on SlideShare offers another practical way to explore this topic.

Stage fright can affect people in ways that are both obvious and subtle. For some, it shows up before a presentation or performance as a rush of nerves, tension, and racing thoughts. For others, it appears more quietly as avoidance, self-doubt, overthinking, or the habit of holding back in moments where they want to speak clearly and confidently. In either case, the experience can be frustrating because it often affects people who are capable, prepared, and deeply invested in what they want to say.

One of the most difficult parts of stage fright is that it can make simple moments feel much bigger than they really are. A meeting, a creative performance, a talk, or even a conversation can start to feel loaded with pressure the moment a person becomes aware that they are being seen and heard. Suddenly, the focus shifts away from communication and toward self-protection. Instead of thinking clearly about the message, the mind becomes preoccupied with fear.

That is why a practical approach matters. Overcoming stage fright is not about becoming a completely fearless person. It is about learning how to understand what is happening, reduce the intensity of self-judgment, and build the kind of confidence that holds up under pressure.

Why Stage Fright Feels So Powerful

Stage fright is not only about speaking or performing. It is often about visibility. When people are in a situation where others are watching, listening, or evaluating, the moment can start to feel risky. The body responds quickly to that sense of pressure, even when there is no real danger.
That response can include:

• faster breathing
• increased heart rate
• tension in the shoulders or chest
• shakiness
• difficulty focusing
• a sense of mental blankness

At the same time, anxious thoughts often become louder:

• What if I mess up?
• What if I forget what I want to say?
• What if people notice I am nervous?
• What if I embarrass myself?

This combination of physical activation and fear-based thinking is what makes stage fright feel so overwhelming. A person may still have the same skills, experience, and ideas they had before the pressure started, but anxiety interferes with access to them.

This is important because it means stage fright does not define ability. It affects performance, but it is not proof that someone is incapable.

The Trap of Waiting to Feel Ready

A common mistake is believing that confidence should come first. Many people assume they need to feel completely calm before they can trust themselves. If they still feel anxious, they take that as a sign that they are not ready.

Unfortunately, that mindset keeps people stuck.

Confidence is rarely something that appears before experience. More often, it is built through experience. It grows when someone steps into a moment, feels the discomfort, survives it, and begins to realize that nerves do not automatically ruin performance.

Waiting to feel perfect usually increases pressure. The more someone believes they must feel confident first, the more alarming anxiety becomes when it appears. This creates a second layer of fear, where the person is no longer only responding to the speaking or performance moment. They are responding to the fact that they are anxious.

A more helpful goal is not perfect calm. It is steadiness. It is the ability to remain connected enough to yourself and your message that you can keep going, even if the moment feels uncomfortable.

A More Practical Way to Build Confidence

Confidence is often misunderstood as a personality trait. In reality, it is something that can be developed through repetition, reflection, and self-trust. A practical approach focuses on what helps people do that in real situations.

Prepare for clarity, not control
Preparation helps, but it works best when it creates familiarity rather than rigidity. Focus on the key message, the structure of what you want to say, and the points that matter most. Know where you are going, but do not make yourself dependent on saying everything perfectly.

Trying to control every word often increases anxiety. It creates the feeling that even a small shift will ruin everything. Clear preparation creates flexibility, and flexibility creates more confidence.

Shift attention outward
When stage fright rises, attention often turns inward. People start monitoring their voice, their body, their facial expressions, and every sign that they may not be doing well enough. This kind of self-monitoring adds pressure and makes it harder to stay present.

A better focus is outward:

• What do I want to communicate?
• What matters most right now?
• How can I connect with the people in front of me? This shift helps reduce self-consciousness and brings the moment back to communication instead of self-protection.

Support the body
Because stage fright is physical, it helps to use simple physical tools. Slowing the breath, dropping the shoulders, softening the jaw, and feeling both feet on the ground can all help reduce the intensity of the body’s stress response.

These are small actions, but they are effective because they signal stability to the nervous system. They do not have to erase anxiety in order to help. They only need to make the moment a little more manageable.

Reframe what anxiety means
A lot of the suffering around stage fright comes from interpretation. People feel nervous and immediately decide that something is wrong. That interpretation adds more fear to an already stressful moment.

A more supportive view is this: anxiety often means the moment matters. It means there is visibility, vulnerability, or pressure attached to what is happening. That does not make the feeling enjoyable, but it does make it understandable.

Once anxiety is seen as activation rather than failure, it becomes much easier to work with.

Letting Go of Perfectionism

Perfectionism is one of the biggest reasons stage fright feels harder than it needs to. When someone believes they need to appear flawless in order to be effective, every moment of visibility becomes high stakes.

Perfectionism makes small mistakes feel enormous. It causes people to over-monitor themselves and disconnect from their natural voice. It also keeps them focused on what could go wrong instead of what they actually want to communicate.

In reality, people usually connect more with presence than perfection. They respond to sincerity, clarity, honesty, and conviction. A person does not need to be flawless to be compelling. They need to be present enough to communicate something real.

Letting go of perfectionism does not mean lowering standards. It means shifting toward healthier standards, ones based on connection, clarity, and recovery rather than flawless performance.

Confidence Grows Through Repetition

Most lasting confidence is built gradually. People grow stronger not because one moment suddenly changes everything, but because they keep practicing visibility in ways that stretch them without overwhelming them.

That may include:

• speaking up more often in meetings
• practicing in front of one trusted person
• recording themselves and watching with less judgment
• taking small opportunities to be seen and heard
• allowing growth to happen through repetition Each of these moments creates evidence. They teach the mind and body that pressure is survivable. They show that discomfort does not mean failure. Over time, they help build self-trust.

And self-trust is the foundation of real confidence.

Final Thoughts

Stage fright does not mean you are not capable. It means pressure is affecting how the moment feels. Once that becomes clear, it becomes much easier to respond in a more constructive way. Instead of fighting yourself, you can support yourself. Instead of waiting to feel perfect, you can build confidence by practicing steadiness, improving your relationship with pressure, and learning to trust yourself more over time.

Lauren Bonvini helps performers, speakers, and creatives build that kind of confidence through a practical approach to stage fright, performance anxiety, and self-trust. For a visual resource that expands on these ideas, explore Lauren Bonvini’s Stage Fright and Confidence guide on SlideShare.