What’s Worse: My Skydive or Going on Stage?

Today I’m jumping out of a plane.

By choice. I even paid for it. Some people book a massage to relax. Apparently, I book an appointment with gravity.

When I actually think about that exact moment, my heart speeds up. My stomach gets weird. I feel excited and not happy at the same time.

And that is exactly what I hear as a communication coach from clients when they describe the feeling before they step onto a stage: racing heart, dry mouth, and a remarkably creative urge to escape. Meanwhile, the inner dialogue takes over as host without waiting for an invitation. Directing the thoughts like an orchestrator.

I’m sacrificing myself for science. Well...for a highly personal field experiment with one test subject.

Me.

My question is: Is skydiving worse than standing in front of cameras and a LIVE audience?

The honest answer comes after the jump. Today is about the before: nerves, stage fright, thoughts going round in circles. And what actually helps when your body is already ringing the alarm. Even the performance hasn’t even started yet.

What do skydiving and stage fright have in common?

More than my stomach would like.

At the thought of a skydive, my body reacts to an extraordinary situation it expects is coming. Something dangerous, but there is an expert on my side, who guides me through it. I know (somehow) it IS a matter of life and death. But do my brain and body know the difference?

Or is my body also in survival mode, when I go on stage? Stage fright is in my opinion special. Because even when I jump out of a plane - 4000 kilometers (2485,485 miles) above the ground - there is just one expectation: Do not die. When it comes to stage fright there is a layer more: attention.

People are about to watch. People will judge.

So do I know my story, my words, my arguments?

Is my research good enugh?

Will they get my humor?

Is my zipper closed?

I could lose my thread, turn red, or say something wrong. Even the situations are different - the physical activation can feel remarkably similar:

• Your heart beats faster.

• Your breathing becomes more frantic.

• Your hands become clammy or cold.

• Your stomach offers an unsolicited opinion.

• Your attention narrows.

• Your inner dialogue produces broadcast-quality disasters.

In a small study of seven male first-time parachutists shows a higher heart rate and cortisol level immediately after the jump. The study is far too small to turn into a universal truth. But it does make one thing clear: a first skydive is not only “a little bit exciting.” The body really is working at full speed.

Public speaking has a different trigger, but here too, the body can treat a performance situation as a threat. That is not a character flaw. It is a protection programme on steroids. But here at zflys, at the Olympus of Communication, we want to figure out which tricks can help us.

Nervousness isn’t the problem. The interpretation often is.

Before going on stage, many entrepreneurs, executives, or speakers want one thing above all:

to calm down.

Understandable.

But perhaps “I have to calm down right now” is not the best instruction for a body that is quite clearly not calm.

Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks studied what happens when people interpret their activation as excitement rather than anxiety. In her studies, people performed better when they told themselves “I’m excited” instead of desperately trying to become calm.

That doesn’t mean you should simply declare the fear gone. Please, no hihi haha positive thinking with a permanent smile glued on.

I mean: The physical energy does not automatically have to work against you.

A pounding heart can mean: “Danger!”

It can also mean: “This matters. My body is providing energy.”

The pulse is the same. The story is different

Ah, there it is again: it always comes down to the story. If you want to read our best stories:

The inner dialogue before the jump. And before the stage.

My head is currently running several programmes at once:

“This will be brilliant.” “This is completely mad.” “Other people do this every day.” “Why did you agree to this?” “Alessa, you’ve done other wild things. Those were rough and windy too!”

An inner dialogue isn’t automatically clever just because it comes from your own head. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it is an internal meeting with no chair, where fear, ambition, and imagination all present at once.

The point isn’t to stop every negative thought. What matters more is recognising and checking them:

1. What exactly am I telling myself right now? Not “I’m nervous,” but the exact sentence. Write it down.

2. Is that a fact or a prediction? “I’m going to embarrass myself” is not a fact. It is a film in your head with a very confident trailer. Make a check.

3. What wording is realistic and helpful? Not: “I’m not afraid at all.” Instead: “I’m nervous, and I can still take the next step.” Cluster the alternatives.

For anyone who wants to go deeper, the zflys article “What science knows about your inner dialogue” looks at how self-talk affects emotions and communication.

Overcoming stage fright: five tips that didn’t come from a motivational calendar

1. Give the activation a new name

Don’t automatically say: “I’m afraid, so I’m not ready.”

Try this instead:

• “I’m excited because this matters to me.”

• “My body is getting ready to perform.”

• “Alessa, you don’t have to be calm. You just have to take the next step.”

That last sentence also creates a little distance. And yes, addressing yourself by name feels a bit like a council meeting at first. But it can help you avoid becoming completely fused with the thought. We also reallllly like to hear our own name.

2. Breathe without short-changing the exhale

Under stress, many people breathe quickly and high in the chest. Before a presentation, this helps me: breathe in comfortably and breathe out a little longer, without straining and without turning it into an Olympic breath-holding event.

If you feel dizzy, stop and breathe normally. And for the tandem skydive, obviously, I’ll follow the trained professionals’ instructions. My active listening will be turned up very high indeed.

3. Prepare the opening, not every single word

In front of a large audience, I don’t need to control every syllable. That wouldn’t be a talk, it would be supervised reading.

What I do prepare:

• the first sentence,

• the first minute,

• the core message,

• the final sentence.

Once the first step is solid, the rest is allowed to come alive again. I also adopted these sentences for the jump: the first on-boarding, the first step, the first seconds of the free fall, the final landing.

4. Don’t wait until you’re free of fear

The biggest con nervousness pulls is: “You can start as soon as you feel confident.”

Unfortunately, confidence often only comes from doing. From rehearsals. From small appearances. From bigger ones. From the next appearance, when the nerves return but you already know: I can work with this feeling.

Courage is not the absence of nerves. Courage is nerves with an appointment in the calendar.

My field experiment for communication

To stop the second blog post from ending with “It was somehow intense,” I’m documenting the experiment as precisely as possible.

Afterwards, I’ll compare my notes with my memories and existing records of appearances in front of 16 cameras and 800 people.

This is not scientific in the strict sense. One test subject, no control group, no blinding. And the test subject has a suspiciously good idea of where the next blog post is going. But as an honest self-experiment can reveal something polished success stories often leave out:

The actual inner dialogue before, during, and after a courageous act.

So, is skydiving worse than speaking in public?

I don’t know yet.

My guess: the moment at the open aircraft door will be more physically intense. But an appearance in front of hundreds of people lasts longer, leaves more room for thoughts to spiral, and touches a different fear: not fear of heights, but fear of judgement.

Perhaps that is the point.

Fear doesn’t just have a volume. It has a meaning.

When skydiving, I ask myself: “Am I safe?” In front of an audience, I might ask myself (!): “Am I good enough?”

And despite a stage being objectively harmless, that second question can cut damn deep.

Today I jump. Then I write part two. I’ll record what my body did, what my head screamed or whispered, and which sentence actually helped.

Until then, the same applies to the jump and the stage:

I don’t have to be free of fear to do it.

If your next appearance requires you to step out of your comfort zone, if not out of an aeroplane: talk to zflys about clear, effective communication. If skydiving is not strictly necessary for that, I probably won’t be THAT upset after this weekend :)

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