Speaking and Communicating Podcast

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Just accept those nervous thoughts, return your concentration to your speaking. This is actually one of the best approaches you can use for all sorts of problems, from anxiety to overeating to smoking to PTSD and return your concentration to what you

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Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I'm your host, Roberta Ndlela. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development. And by the end of this episode, please log on to Apple and Spotify and leave us a rating and a review. Now let's get

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We communicating with our guest today joining us from North Carolina. Dr. David Leigh Fish is a performance anxiety expert who helps performers, speakers and professionals with speaking anxiety using a very special method that he'll talk to us about today. And before I go any further, please welcome him to the show. Hi David.

01:18
Thank you, Roberta. That was such a wonderful introduction. Now I have to live up to that. No pressure. None whatsoever. I don't have any anxiety. don't have any... Exactly. Welcome. Thank you for being here. I'm excited for our conversation. A lot of our listeners and sometimes even guests as well. That's the one of the main things they've had as a challenge, speaking anxiety.

01:47
Why? sure. Well, you know, it can strike for a number of reasons. Performance anxiety. And by that, that includes speech fright that people, when you speak in front of others, stage fright if you're a performer, or even competition anxiety if you're an athlete or another type of competitor. There are three factors at play that when it strikes. You do your thing in front of others.

02:13
Speaking of doesn't have to be a formal presentation in front of a seated audience. It can be a job interview, for example, in front of one person. It could be a Zoom meeting, right? So that's first thing. You do your thing in front of others. Second thing is they are judging you on it, or at least you feel like they're judging you on. You know, that can be very formal. You know, it's a job interview. You don't get the job.

02:40
Other times it can just have to do with your feeling of, know, are they going to respect what you say? Are they going to respect you while you're saying it or after you're saying it? And then the third thing is that whatever other factors are at play, that judgment would constitute a threat if it's negative. So again, if you're in a job interview, you don't get the job. That's the threat.

03:07
You know, there are many factors about why it strikes, but those are the three commonalities. Speaking of judgment, we've had so many discussions where we say, oh, nobody's here to judge you when you're speaking because they're not going to waste time with somebody that they think is going to suck. So nobody's judging you. Are we correct when we say that David? No, my experience is no.

03:36
And in fact, more important than what I think about that, there's a little, well, it's actually a pair of little walnut shaped chelate in the brain. It's called the amygdala. And it's there to sense danger. Anytime it senses some sort of danger or threat, it alerts this internal bodyguard. And the thing is, that's part of our autonomic nervous system.

04:04
That is beyond our conscious thinking. So you can tell yourself, you know, nobody's here to judge you. Everybody's a friend. It's all good. But your amygdala knows that's not true. There's a threat here. You know, if you're a founder and you're doing a pitch to potential investors, the threat is you're not going to get that funding. So, you know, that's the threat. Your amygdala knows that. So, I mean, we can throw a lot of BS at ourselves with stuff.

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But deep down we know when it's a threat or there's a danger involved. So how do we then convince you past the lack of belief by the Amidila that you're gonna be okay and even if they judge you, you'll still do great or they'll still realize that, wow, this was really important for us to listen to.

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Do you get nervous ever when you speak in front of others? still do, yes. Okay, all right. So, you know, many of us, it's about 75%, Roberta, right? About 75 % of us do, right? We tend to think, oh, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken for getting nervous. Well, no, again, then Mingala is just sensing a threat and alerting the internal bodyguard to protect you from it.

05:28
There's not a lot we can do consciously with the amygdala. The amygdala and its system has been around in mammals for millions of years. It's been around in human beings for half a million years. It was developed for physical threats. So if there's a man-eating tiger in front of you, you're not going to convince it that there's not a man-eating tiger in front of you. not. And that's the worst time to be debating it.

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You know, he actually looks friendly. That internal bodyguard is going to do its thing. And it's meant to protect you. And we have very little conscious control of it, especially in the moment when it strikes. We can work on it later on to think through some things. Well, I actually did OK in that situation.

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and that can feed into your next experience. But when it strikes in the moment, you don't want to be spending your concentration on this internal bodyguard and it doesn't respond to you trying to directly affect it, What you do? affirmations and say, oh, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm okay. No, it doesn't play along. Good luck. Good luck doing that in the moment. Good luck.

06:52
Do you want to spend your concentration on doing affirmations while you're giving a pitch or giving a speech or in a job interview? Obviously you don't want to spend your time on affirmation. That's not the time to do it, Okay. So what can you do? Well, for a long time, people thought there isn't anything I can do. You know, to this day, if you look online for what can I do about speech fright or performance anxiety?

07:20
There's very, very little good information. You know, things beyond be sure to drink a lot of water, prepare completely, you know. But in the 1980s, a therapist named John Cabot Zinn brought from his experience studying Zen with a Korean Zen master, Sung Son, this idea of only go straight

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Don't know. This was Song Son's pat phrase. He used this so much. All of us who studied with Song Son, to this day, if you ask, what Song Son used to say, only go straight, don't know, right? Or keep, don't know mind. In Zen, another way they say that is when you walk, only walk. When you eat, only eat. Just pour your concentration into speaking.

08:18
The only go or the don't know only keep don't mind part of it was, are they here to judge me? Are they judging me positively? Aren't they? How am I doing? Did I mess up that last line? Don't make judgments about it. That's coming from that internal body guard. You can't do anything about it other than accept him and return your concentration to what you're doing. Right. The only go straight.

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Now that is such a simple formula. Just accept those nervous thoughts, those feelings, sensations, return your concentration to only go straight to your speaking. Well, what Kabat-Zinn and others in this mindfulness movement discovered was that this is actually one of the best approaches you can use for all sorts of problems.

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from anxiety to overeating to smoking to PTSD. Don't worry about why it's happening. Don't try to debate it. Just accept it. At some point it's trying to help you. Maybe it's maybe very misguided and return your concentration to what you're doing. So that's what you do. That's how you get out of that pickle. Roberta. Being in the

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present moment so much so that you don't think about anything other than what's in front of you, which is the speaking. Almost. That's that's so close. It's that it's naturally that nervousness, that internal body. It's just naturally going to tear away your concentration each time it does. Just return it to what you're Right. Okay. Accept it.

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and return to what you're doing. That's kind of the key operative here is just return your concentration over and over again, over and over again. you're really nervous. it or debating it or trying to sing it a lullaby with an affirmation and things like that, you just accept and say, I have something to do right now. This is my Exactly. Okay. It like I'm learning. Oh yeah.

10:43
We can debate this later at Meghala. Right? We can decompress. We can debrief about this later. And I'm not saying that's not important, but in the moment, the best thing you can do is just accept it. know, anything else, you're fusing with it. You're giving it energy and attention. Accept it, return your concentration to speaking or performing or competing.

11:10
Right? The free throw. If you're staying at the free throw line as a basketball player or a free kick in soccer, just concentrate on that. So when a professional comes to you and says, David, I've been asked to go and make a presentation. I have performance anxiety. I'm scared to stand in front of people, but my job depends on it, which is very much the case. Yes. With most professionals.

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How do you start this journey of helping them? Yeah, you know, the first thing I do is, you know, point out you're not broken by being nervous. You're not broken. In fact, you're perfect. You're perfectly human. Of course, if your job's on the line, your career is on the line. Of course you're going to be nervous. That's just your amygdala sensing a threat here. OK.

12:01
with all the professionals that I've worked with down through the years, including, you know, like CEOs and, you know, and founders with speech fright, even a politician or two, as well as performers, even professional performers, plus competitors, professional athletes too. They don't lack confidence in what they do professionally.

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So where I start is I get them to talk about what they do professionally. And most of them have plenty of confidence. You know, let's say vice president who has to give that presentation to the board of board directors who's nervous about that. He knows that finance is inside it out. That's not the problem. The problem is that the threat response

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makes him doubt he or she makes them doubt their expertise. And that undermines their confidence. The amygdala threat detection system, it makes them temporarily forget how good they are. No, it doesn't make them forget. It makes them doubt how good they are. That undermines their confidence.

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And they need that confidence going into the presentation, right? mean, all the times they need confidence, this is the moment they need confidence and what they do in understanding the finances of the organization and that they've got a handle on it. They need that confidence, but that, must not know what I'm doing because I'm getting nervous about this. What's wrong? I know this stuff inside out. So it makes them

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question when you start talking to them, they really, they think I'm excelling at this, I'm really good at this. Then they start to have the anxiety, which then goes back to questioning what they were saying they excel at. That's exactly it. That's what happens. Can't remember his name off the top of my head, but there was an Olympics figure skater from just last winter, right? I know his nickname, the quad God, right? And he was famous for doing these quadruple.

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thing, but jigs, you know, he was renowned for this. He was slated to, you know, win gold medals left and right. But for some reason he sensed a threat in the Olympics. Here I am the greatest in the world. And if I can't muster my ability in that moment, I'm going to fall and I'm not going to win the gold. So, so the threat was very real.

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very real and very genuine and son of a gun he fell right and he didn't win gold medals so that's a perfect example of someone who should have from our perspective should have had no reason to be nervous but yet somewhere inside of him it's a big galah and that system saw a threat and it actually

15:15
It is a threat when you think through it from that perspective. Oh yeah, of course he would have been nervous. He's tested, but he's never got won a gold medal at the Olympics. This is when, when it gets proved whether he's truly the best in the world. So the bigger the opportunity, the bigger the event, the bigger the moment, the more intense that threat can be.

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So, and therefore the nervousness. And speaking of the moment and it being big, you know when you have the motivational speakers and life coaches when they say be in charge, don't let your nerves take over, tell your body you're the boss, tell your mind you're the boss. Yeah, almost, almost, but the problem is trying to actively control that nerves.

16:13
Right? Two problems with it. One, it's drawing your attention away from what you need to be doing, which is giving your presentation. also, your amygdala doesn't work like that. Again, let's go back to that man eating tiger. Don't worry about that man eating tiger. You're wrong. It doesn't respond to us doing that. But kind of the way you presented that, it is right, you know,

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concentrate on what you mean to be doing. It's just don't fight the anxiety, accept it as having some wisdom here that it's trying to protect you. Right? It's kind of like my dog. When it hears something, you know, in the middle of the night, it'll start barking. Don't bark. Everything's fine. But this amygdala, it knows, right? And probably my dog knows too. That might be a threat.

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outside the house. Yeah. So if I come to you and I have performance anxiety, but I really want not only to be, I'm already good at my job, as you said, but I really want them to also see that. Cause one of the things we've said on this show is no matter how brilliant you are, if you cannot communicate your brilliance, nobody knows that you're brilliant. So I want

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to overcome this performance anxiety, David, I need your help. How would you help me so that they can see how brilliant I am? Yeah, you know, I boiled all of this down to what I call, and we all of us who are consultants like this, we have our method and it's typically an acronym. And I have one too, it's called READ, R-E-A-D. Now the EAD you already understand.

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You engage with what you're doing as wholeheartedly as you can. The A, accept any nervous thoughts, feelings, sensations. And then the D is that brings you detachment from that anxiety. It doesn't go away, but you stop being fused with it as much. And that makes the situation more workable. Then the...

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only other part of that, which we haven't spoken about yet, is R, which is R for remember. And that's to ground what you're doing in the core values you bring to this moment. Example I like to give is a father giving a speech at his daughter's wedding. Well, so what are the core values he brings to that moment? Love for his daughter, love for his family.

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belief in community, you know, those sorts of core values can give him the courage and commitment to face up to the anxiety that probably most fathers of brides experience in that situation. That remember part of it is particularly helpful before the situation, before the event. The reason is,

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that performance anxiety, it's uncomfortable. So what we want to do is ignore it. I won't think about the presentation. I'll do anything else, I'll binge watch TV or get involved in something else. Well, you want to remember the core values you're bringing to this event, to this moment, to remind you why you're going to stand up and do this no matter what in terms of your anxiety.

20:02
So that becomes your motivator. Yes, absolutely. And have you found that once you've helped someone through this, does it continue to be a situation of they never have anxiety again or do they keep coming back for more sessions? Let's go back to a couple of things. I see it early. About 75 % of us, if there is a threat involved,

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in what we're doing, we're gonna experience that anxiety. I remember Kamala Harris was presidential candidate a year or two ago. And I actually saw her in Durham, North Carolina, because there's this something here called historic Black Wall Street. And she gave a little campaign speech there. And she was on top of her game, seemed as comfortable as she could possibly be.

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But then like just two weeks later, she had her first debate with Donald Trump and you could tell she was nervous. So what was the difference in Durham, North Carolina? She didn't feel any threat. So it can go away that maybe the first time she did that sort of like presentation in, you know, like she did here, she was nervous.

21:28
But after she realized, well, there's no real threat here for me, or I'm up to this threat. And then, no, she didn't get nervous anymore. If the conditions are right, yeah. You know, if you're like 75 % of us, you're going to get nervous. Would you say then the way we also interpret the threat as well feeds into how much anxiety we might have if our amygdala interpret the threat to be

21:58
as big or not as significant. Does that count? What I'm talking about in terms of performance anxiety, it's not a phobia. It becomes a phobia when that amygdala steps in and there's really no true threat there. I remember, boy, my parents were so shy that they didn't like to go to restaurants and interact with waitress.

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because they were worried, I don't know, but they said some type of threat in doing that. So we'd go to cafeterias where we didn't have to do that, right? So that's a phobia. But for most of us, most of the time, no, the threat is legitimate and our response to it is legitimate, I found in working with professionals. Okay. Now please go through us again, the read steps.

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the read method. Before an event. And you can also like put it, you know, in on a post it. You can also make a post it for remember the core values you're bringing to this event. Now that's different than goals. You can just Google core values to look at what those and what are typical core values. If you can't identify them, help students with that as well.

23:25
That's before the event for the most part. Remember. During the event, engage with what you're doing. Only go straight. That's the song song. Only go straight. Accept is the A. Accept any nervous thoughts, feelings, sensations you have. Just accept them. Don't demand them. Don't worry about them. That guy is looking at me cross-eyed in the third floor. He's not buying any of this. Accept.

23:52
That thought, no, no, no, it's not. it's fine. Oh yeah. I must've said something wrong. I need to re-figure what I'm doing. And just accept it. Just accept it. And then return your concentration to what you're doing. Just for let's say 15 seconds. Okay. I'd like you to sit with no thoughts running through your head. Go. Should I close my eyes? Doesn't matter. Okay. Okay.

24:22
That's good. Did you have any random thoughts run through your head? I really tried to focus and have no thoughts, but the thing is, so we have air conditioning here for running and it makes this really annoying noise. So I kept thinking, why can't you keep quiet? Exactly. That was my first thought. was trying to do this. That was exactly it. Right. That was my first thought as well. So I had to return my concentration to just being still. Right. And then

24:52
one, you know, then I thought, oh, well, I wonder if others can hear that sound. So that's called brain chaos. Have you seen those type of like carnival games is called whack a mole where these little moles? Yeah. They keep popping up everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With that brain chaos, you wind up playing fought whack a mole, right? You knock that one down. You're back. That one's back up again, right? Just accept it. Let them pop up. Just concentrate on what you're doing. So that's the accept.

25:21
part of this, right? Then the detached part of it is those moles are going to do what most do. They're going to pop up. That's just the nature that, you know, that's being human. That's the human condition. They're going to pop up, let them pop, concentrate on your speaking. There was a study done that found for most of us, the longest stretch, typical stretch of concentration that we can muster.

25:49
without brain chaos is about nine seconds. So don't. I know, but that's a human condition. Forget that mole. Just return your concentration. It's a simple solution, but you know, when you're trying to do something important and you've got performance anxiety, undermining you, need something simple to get you through the moment. And it probably takes practice. I'm sure if you do it more often, you can train your brain.

26:20
to ignore the quack of rules. Absolutely, right? And that's one of the things that in mindfulness becoming popular, and it's sometimes called mic mindfulness, what's happened to it. I was speaking to a host just last week, week before, said, oh yes, I do these mindfulness meditations. And they said, when you have a thought, ask yourself, who is having this thought? He's like, no! This is, taking this back to,

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what John Kabat-Zinn and I learned from Song Son, it's not about that. It's not who is asking that question. It's returning your concentration to what you're doing, right? It's a skill. It's definitely, and here's my prop for this. This is real easy. That's simple. I said easy. It's not easy. It's simple, but it takes practice to gain the skill of doing it.

27:18
Mindfulness is the same way. And the time to do it is before you're speaking in front of others or before you're performing in front of others or before you're in a championship game. So absolutely. Mindfulness is a skill that you can practice and I give students lots of exercises for doing that as well. Absolutely. Any last words of wisdom, David? Anything I haven't asked you were hoping to share today.

27:48
Yeah, you know, there's a wonderful line from Mike Tyson, the boxer who says, everybody has a plan until they get smacked in the mouth. And he would know. You've mentioned other sort of guests who come on and they talk about authenticity and in all sorts of important things in the skill of public speaking, right? Speaking in front of others.

28:15
All of that's great. I definitely believe that folks should master those things, develop those things, but it doesn't matter if you get smacked in the face by performance anxiety until you have a way to not let it undermine you. You I love those reality shows where they bring this car into a shop.

28:38
And this team of expert mechanics fixes it all up and makes it great and shiny and new and better than it ever was. Except there's typically one or two parts of the operation. They always seem to outsource. If the car has Chrome, they'll send the Chrome out to be done by a Chrome expert. If the upholstery needs redot, they send that out to an upholstery expert. I'm kind of like the upholstery expert for public speaking, right?

29:06
I do this one thing, I help people find detachment from the performance anxiety, and then I leave the rest of it to my other fine, knowledgeable, skilled compatriots. Right. What was the show, Pimp My Right, if I'm not mistaken? That's right. That's right. MTV. That's right. That's right. Coaches, other coaches, do all of the other aspects of that.

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I just do the car seats. The upholstery. Thank you so much, Dr. David Lee Fish, the performance anxiety experts who helps performers, speakers, and professionals with the counterintuitive method called READ. We appreciate you sharing all of this with us today. Thank you for being here. Thank you, Roberta. And if folks are interested, they can find me through your website.

30:03
And if they do and they sign up and I also offer, I have an offer, a speak with confidence course. If they do sign up through you, they'll receive a special offer. I have a new book, a second version of this book coming up. They will get a pre-release version of this book. Yes. Is there a code or something we will just give us the website and we'll put it on the show notes? Yes, that's it. Absolutely. Okay. Yep.

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All right. you so much, David, for being here. Oh, Roberta, you know, I'm impressed with how quickly you caught on to these concepts. You got it. You got it. Thank you. I'm learning slowly, but surely. Only go straight, Roberta. Let's keep going straight indeed. Don't forget to subscribe, liberating and a review on Apple and Spotify. Stay tuned for more episodes to come.