My Accent Used to Sabotage Every Presentation.

Now It’s Why People Remember Me.

Do you get nervous when you speak in public?

Do you feel your hands sweating and your heart beating like it’s going to explode in your chest?

I hear you.

Speaking in public is terrifying for most, but it’s also transformational for your personal and professional growth.

I only started speaking in public at 41 and it was a game-changer because it gave my writing an amplifier to reach more people, grow faster and create new (and more profitable) income streams.

So many talented writers, authors and creators are feeling invisible behind their screens and it doesn’t have to be that way.

Your words deserve to be seen.

Your voice deserves to be heard.

Your story can make a difference on someone else’s life.

But you have to put yourself out there.

That’s why the topic of October is public speaking, and that’s also why I launched my digital course, Speak To Scale.

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About courage

It all starts with courage and a deep breath, and today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to my Founding Member and friend, Magdalena Ponurska, to tell us how she went from deep fear to owning the stage with courage, authenticity and a genuine smile.

He story is a powerful reminder that fear is not your enemy and that imperfection can still land, even with an accent.

For stories about courage and creativity, check out her publication, Courage To Create.

And if you’d like to write a Guest Post and reach 10K+ readers at The Lemon Tree Mindset, you can become a Founding Member and book your 1:1 strategy session today.

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Meet Magdalena

I stood backstage, gripping my notes so tightly the paper crumpled at the edges. My pulse beat so hard I could see my shirt moving. My palms were so slick with sweat I worried the ink would smear beyond recognition. But worse than all of that was what happened to my thoughts: they scattered like startled birds every time I could only manage these short, desperate gasps of air.

“You’ll be great,” someone whispered as they nudged me toward the stage.

Maybe. But every time a microphone found me, English felt like a shirt two sizes too small. My accent thickened. My mind fogged. The words I’d rehearsed twenty times in the mirror came out tangled. I’d finish, paste on a polite smile, and carry the hollow home.

So after another quarterly presentation where I watched eyes glaze over in the third row, I cornered one of the “naturals.” She was a woman who’d just delivered a flawless product pitch in the break room without even breaking stride to sip her coffee.

“How do you do it?” I asked.

She smiled like she was about to share classified intel. “Easy,” she said. “Just imagine them naked.”

The Bombing

I tried it at the next all-hands meeting.

Big mistake.

Halfway through explaining our Q3 targets, I made eye contact with our CFO and my brain immediately supplied an image I absolutely did not need. I lost my place. Stuttered. My face went hot. I looked down at my notes but the words might as well have been in Mandarin for all the sense they made. Someone coughed. I tried to restart the sentence. “So, the key metric we’re... what we’re really looking at here is...” The silence in that room grew teeth.

I finished somehow. Sat down. And spent the rest of the meeting wishing I could dissolve into the carpet.

Now I was anxious and deeply uncomfortable. The only thing that visualization did was make me blush mid-sentence. Turns out, picturing your audience in their underwear is a terrible idea when you’re already fighting for oxygen.

That was the day I stopped asking for shortcuts.

The Study

Instead, I became a student of fear.

I started watching how speakers moved their hands, how they paused, where they planted their feet. I binge-watched TED talks like my life depended on it. Not for tips, but for permission. I watched Amy Cuddy straighten her spine before she spoke. Brené Brown let her voice crack on the word “vulnerability” and the audience leaned in closer, not away. Simon Sinek’s hands carved circles in the air like he was sculpting the idea itself in real time.

I wasn’t looking for perfection anymore. I was hunting for proof that imperfection could still land.

Then, in a talk I almost skipped, a speaker said something that stopped me mid-scroll:

“Don’t run from fear. Acknowledge it. Thank it. Then ask it to step aside.”

Simple. Maybe too simple. But I had tried everything else: visualization, mantras, deep breathing exercises in bathroom stalls, caffeine, even yoga poses between parked cars in the parking garage. None of it worked.

So I decided to try gratitude.

The Thirty-Second Thank-You

Before my next presentation, a client proposal meeting I’d been dreading for two weeks, I locked myself in a supply closet backstage. Closed my eyes. Felt my pulse hammering behind my ribs, the familiar tightness in my chest, the way my accent was already thickening in my throat even though I hadn’t said a word yet.

And then, silently, I spoke to it:

“Thank you for being here, fear. I know you’re trying to protect me. But right now, I’ve got this.”

I took one breath. Then another.

Something shifted.

The fear didn’t vanish. It never does. But it loosened its grip. Like a fist unclenching. My breath deepened. The static in my head cleared just enough for me to remember: I wasn’t here to perform perfection; I was here to connect with three human beings who needed to understand why our solution mattered.

That presentation still wasn’t flawless. My accent stayed. My voice trembled when I explained the pricing structure. But for the first time, I felt the audience with me instead of against me. The woman across the table nodded when I described the problem. A man in the corner smiled when I stumbled over “implementation” and said, “You know what I mean,” and kept going.

Tiny bridges formed between us. We won the contract.

From Fog to Focus

For five years now, I’ve practiced that ritual before every talk. Thirty seconds of acknowledgment before stepping into the light.

Small staff meetings where I’m the only accent in the room. A 3,000-seat conference in Austin where the stage lights were so bright I couldn’t see faces. An international education summit in Prague where I spoke about building inclusive learning environments and finally understood that my voice was the example.

Each time, the fear shows up right on schedule. Each time, I thank it and ask it to step aside.

Somewhere along the way, my accent stopped feeling like a liability. It became part of my signature. A rhythm that reminds people I think in two languages, feel in two cultures, and speak from the edge of both. The very thing that made me want to hide became the thing that makes people remember.

The Real Lesson

The worst advice I ever got, “imagine them naked,” taught me the best lesson: you can’t trick fear into silence. You can’t visualize it away or breathe it into submission.

You have to make peace with it.

Last month, before a keynote in Seattle, I felt that familiar grip. The fog starting to close in, my hands already trembling as I clipped on the microphone. Backstage, I closed my eyes. Thirty seconds.

Thank you, fear. I’ve got this.

I walked on. I shook. I sweated.

But when I finished, a woman approached me. “Romanian,” she said, ten years in the States, working in tech. I always try to hide my accent,” she whispered, eyes shining. “I practice my R’s at night. I say ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’ so I sound more American. But hearing yours tonight...” She paused. “Maybe I don’t have to.”

That’s when I knew: the fear that tried to silence me is now the very thing that gives me something worth saying.

Your Turn

Before your next presentation, or any moment that terrifies you, try this: Take thirty seconds. Feel the fear exactly where it lives in your body. The shallow breath, the racing heart, the fog. Don’t fight it.

Thank it.

Then ask it to step aside.

You’ll still shake. You’ll still sweat. Your voice might still tremble.

But you’ll finally remember: courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s not even calm in the face of it.

Courage is the thirty-second conversation you have with terror before you walk on anyway.

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Lemons & Lemonade 🍋

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