Please help me feel better about my disastrous presentation today!

[DisasterPresenter]

I keep replaying it in my mind.

It wasn't even that important I just feel like a twat.

In part of a workshop I was presenting a 45 min session on the latest on a project I'd been working in along with others in the room.

I hadn't prepared well enough. At one point I was talking and it was like I dissociated from what I was saying and told myself "this really really awful". I went really red. It was also in front of one of my direct reports who I could also see looking at me at one point clearly thinking WTF.

Workshop facilitator kept bigging up my section as one of the most important parts of the day which I think is what also screwed me over as it got inside my head.

Ugh the flashbacks. Please share with me when you messed up a presentation and it wasn't the end of the world, to make me feel better?!?!

Chalk it up to experience!

A colleague of mine once said that when things go wrong, we learn more. Sounds so trite but it's true!

So next time, prepare better, pause for sips of water when you feel flustered.

I had this today. Joined a 15 minute slot in a massive meeting and the person running the meeting said "oh good February Sunset, over to you" then flicked up some rubbish slides that I'd done a few weeks ago and had forgotten about.

It was so awful. I presented terribly. Could hear myself rambling on and stammering until someone eventually put me out of my misery. I was so pissed off because no one had warned me what was expected and it was in front of a new client who will now think I'm either stupid or a twat who doesn't prepare for meetings.

A religous education teacher once put us into random groups and had us create and perform raps in front of the whole class. We were 14 and the school was rough. It was brutal.

Thank you, this is making me feel better!!

Coffeetree you're right, I won't underprepare again. I'm so annoyed at myself.

@februarysunset solidarity!

I'd had to prepare an acquisition search for a client when I worked in investment banking. Despite pretending to be industry experts, we knew f* all about (in this case) the construction sector other than some fairly cursory desktop research.

We were halfway through the presentation to the board when the CEO said thank goodness you haven't put company X in the list of acquisition targets as everyone knows they're complete crooks. Except our next slide was on exactly that company raving about how well-respected they were. Ahem.

One of many occasions where our bullshit caught us out.