Preparation doesn’t remove fear. It gives fear less to work with.

Rehearsal does not make nerves disappear, and expecting that is why people decide they must have prepared wrong. What preparing actually does is remove material: fewer unknowns for fear to build a story out of, fewer sentences you have to invent on the spot. The feeling stays about the same size, and it has much less to say.

Prepare the specific parts that worry you rather than running the whole thing again. The first thirty seconds, the hardest question, the name you might blank on. Then stop, because the rest gets handled in the room.