Perfection does not exit. It is an impossible situation. What may be considered perfect by one, may not be agreed upon by another. Therefore, whatever your own standards of perfection may be, you will not be able to win over everyone. Therefore, waiting until your speech is so-called perfect before making your presentation is a waste of time and energy. It keeps you stuck in a fantasy; it keeps you apart from a social group; not to mention keeping you away from potential rewards.
The way out of perfection is not to let it all hang out, but to do your best, and then venture out. Bravely. Boldly. Confidently.
There surely are qualities that fare better than others when making presentations: Poise is one. What is poise? It is the ability to be unflappable in the face of stress. This is not easy to accomplish. Stress is, after all, stressful. What that means is that stress triggers an instinctive response, fight or flight, that old throwback reptilian urge to protect ourselves. Poise requires us to override our instinct for survival by introducing cognition into the fray. It is our intellect that argues back with our instincts and tells them whether they are correct at any given moment. That is poise - the ability to stay calm under stress.
I remember in my single years being told not to look desperate (to meet a potential mate). At the time, I would argue, how is it possible to not look hungry when you are starving? Now I know the answer: by allowing my intellect, the part of the brain that has evolved through eons of evolution to override the reptilian brain, the locus of instinct, that kernel of nerve fibers whose only design was survival.
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