Landing on the moon required two modes: auto-pilot, and manual. Believe it or not, your presence has these two modes as well. You’re most normal in auto-pilot mode, and when presenting pressure kicks in, it can be really hard to act like yourself. Dean looks at the Apollo 11 moon landing as a metaphor for how to be yourself under the pressure of presenting.
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A lot of people struggle with presenting because the moment pressure hits, they get nervous and suddenly feel like they have to “act like themselves”—and they don’t know how. Call me crazy, but I think we can learn a lot about this from the first moon landing. Not the famous first words—I’m talking about the landing itself.
On the way down, the lunar module was supposed to descend on autopilot to a safe landing zone. But then alarms started blaring. The computer glitched. They had to reboot mid-descent. And once things came back online, Neil Armstrong saw the autopilot was guiding them toward a boulder field—a landing site they’d never be able to take off from. It became life or death for him to switch off autopilot and land manually.
When it comes to presenting, we have to do the same thing. We spend most of our lives operating on autopilot—just being ourselves without thinking about it. But the moment we’re under pressure, the warning lights show up: sweating, flushing, jittering, butterflies, rising temperature. Those are your internal alarms telling you your autopilot can’t handle the situation.
That’s when you need to go to manual.
You can prepare for this by checking in on yourself in low-pressure moments. Notice what you’re like at dinner, in a meeting, talking with friends, on the phone. Watch how your natural presence shows up without trying to control it. Over time, this awareness helps bring your autopilot into your conscious mind just enough that you can access it on command.
Then, when you’re presenting and the alarms kick in, you can do what Neil Armstrong did: grab the controls. Even if you only have “30 seconds of fuel,” you can manually steer your presence. You can land the moment. Armstrong touched down with just 15 seconds of fuel left because he understood how to disengage autopilot and fly consciously.
That same skill—conscious presence—will help you survive the landing and become a stronger presenter.
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