SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Nine to Five Wellness Podcast. Today’s episode is such a special one because it’s about communication. And we are going to unpack the frustrating paradox of high professional confidence paired with sudden anxiety if you’re standing in front of your team giving a presentation, or maybe just you’ve been asked to speak at an event for your organization. So we are going to break down why corporate leaders, experts, and creatives lose their words in high-stakes meetings and presentations. You will learn the psychological triggers behind this disconnect and get some actionable tools that you can actually start applying tonight to sync your inner expertise with your spoken delivery. And if you’re wondering that I’m going to be delivering all of that, that no, I have a very special guest with me who is an expert in corporate communication and linking confidence to communication. Our guest today, who is joining us today, is Dr. David Lee Fish, who works with professionals who are excellent at their jobs, but fall short of their potential when they speak in front of others, whether in formal presentations, team meetings, online sessions, or job interviews. And if I’m not wrong, that’s all of us, right? We mostly are doing that day in, day out. And then we keep on second-guessing ourselves. Like, did I say that right? Should I do this? Should I do that, right? So his approach to performance anxiety has an unusual origin. He holds a PhD and has spent decades applying this method with performers, speakers, and professionals. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. Fish.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Thank you, Isha. What a wonderful introduction. Now I feel like I have to live up to that and it makes me a little nervous.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Oh, you are nervous? I can’t believe that. So while I was reading your introduction, actually, which is beautifully crafted, something stood out, and I want to just dive right into that. That your approach to performance anxiety has an unusual origin. Can we start there?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Yeah, absolutely. It might help if I just take uh start one step before that. Absolutely. I’ll get to it quickly. So I was a young hotshot saxophone player, uh, you know, and I did wonderfully in performances and rehearsals, uh, but then when I got to the actual performance itself, um, my confidence would run away. Right. Then the same thing happened when I became a young professor, you know, and I’d have to get in front of a large class and lecture on something that I knew, but I wasn’t adept at, you know, uh professing about it, uh, or I had to step up in a faculty meeting and represent my department. There was this disjunction between what I felt was my expertise, which I should have confidence. I mean, as the musician, I’m playing the same music that I did in rehearsal and practice. Why now, when I’m in front of an audience, uh is my confidence uh deserted me? Okay. So, with that as a preface, okay. Along the way there, when I was fresh out of college, I had the opportunity to study with a wonderful Korean Zen master, uh Sung-san. Uh, this was at the Empty Gate uh Zen Center in Berkeley, California. And uh Song-sun was renowned for taking Zen, which can be really opaque and difficult to understand and mysterious and head scratching. And and what’s the sound of one hand clapping, for example, right? Uh and he would, and those are called koons, so those kind of sort of nonsensical questions that are meant to fry your thinking. And he would use those, Songsong would use those, but he also had this one precept, Asia. He used to say, only go straight, keep don’t know mind. Right. And everything that I’d developed in helping myself originally with performance anxiety, and helping others with kind of the three flavors of it: speech fright, stage fright, and competition anxiety, the you know, like athletes experience, all comes from that precept I learned studying with songs on.

SPEAKER_01 5:17

That’s a wonderful way to learn it, and then you know, now you’re teaching it and applying it. So let’s back up a little bit, which you mentioned for yourself, and then I believe that it happens to probably 99% of the people that competent leaders just freeze due to high-stakes presentations, or maybe I’m not sure what’s going inside. I’m sure there are like multiple players there, but things that are playing on, but a fear of judgment or the pressure to maintain an expert image, paradoxically, trigger like physical panic. Yeah. What, in your opinion, is causing people to freeze.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah, and and this is one of the things I’ve had lots of years to work on, you know, scratching my head and figuring this out. Um, and you were circling all around what I, you know, figured out is the answer here. Uh performance anxiety, you know, that’s that’s speech fright stage, right? Competition anxiety, is liable to happen when three factors are at play. One, you do your thing in front of others, an audience, right? So it could be speaking, performing, competing. But we need to understand that audience could just be a single person, like at a job interview, for example, right? Then the second factor is that that audience is judging you, or at least you feel like they’re judging you, right? Um, so that really is a distinction without a difference. If you feel like they’re judging you, they’re judging you, right? And then the third thing, and this is kind of the deciding factor in performance anxiety, if the judgment is negative, it would represent a threat, some sort of threat to you, right? To your status, maybe your position, going back to if it’s a job interview, whether you’re going to get the job or not, right? So if those three factors are at play, Asia, um, 75% of us, study after study has shown is we’re liable to get nervous. Uh, and it makes perfect sense. It’s a natural human phenomenon who, you know, I’m I’m being threatened. Uh why wouldn’t I be nervous, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:00

So, David, I like how you just explained it. Like it seems like it’s a threat because either we’re not gonna get the job, if it’s a job interview, you go up on the stage and you’re presenting on behalf of your organization to a group of people. And if they don’t like it, maybe we won’t lend the business deal or whatever that encompasses. So that probably then means, because I’m a physiologist and I’m thinking more like in terms of biology and what’s going on inside our biological systems, that means we are then in survival mode, or what I like to call the fight or flight mode at that point. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 8:46

You know, you can take the professor out of the classroom, you can’t take the classroom out of the professor. Well familiar with this little almond-shaped guy. Actually, there are a pair of them in this, you know, the kind of the base of the brain, the amygdala. The amygdala, yes, yes, and the the amygdala and its team of partners in the brain, they got one job to be always looking for threats, dangers. And you hit it right on the head. This was uh developed in mammals millions of years ago, humans, it’s been going on half a million years, something like it’s got one play. I call this the internal bodyguard. When it senses danger, its only move is to pump adrenaline through your system, and that’s to prepare you to flee, fight, or freeze, right? And of course, that’s not a very productive reaction to being threatened when you’re giving a pitch. If you’re a founder and you’re giving a pitch and you’re and you’re worried that your the pitch isn’t being ineffective and you’re you’re not going to get the funding that you need for your startup, fleeing or fighting, uh it’s not the a helpful uh response in that moment. So, but yeah, you’re you’re absolutely right. It it is uh the amygdala and it’s uh and its team.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

So now my follow-up question is very simple for you. What can someone who’s listening to us now understands what’s happening, why they end up freezing up there when they can they can deliver the same presentation to their friends endless number of times and not feel threatened at all. So, what can they do to overcome this? Like, give us one tip. What can they do? Accept it.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

I know that sounds yeah. Accept it. Here’s the thing. And I fly the flag of mindfulness because I developed a system that’s parallel to mindfulness because it just turns out that I studied with the same master as John Cabot Sin, who developed mindfulness, right? And we both came away from studying with Sung San. Only go straight, keep don’t know mind. Right now, I adhere more closely to just that than doing the body scans. And I’m not saying those aren’t important and helpful. I just in the moment. I work with folks in the moment when they’re experiencing the performance anxiety during a speech or a performance. Okay, so only go straight is uh just keep concentrating on the speech, keep concentrating on the performance, keep you know, keep concentrating on the three free throw that you’re trying to make. The keep don’t know mind part is this the amygdala, first of all, doesn’t respond very well to logic, right? Okay, um, and you you know, it does have some connection with the higher functions of the brain, and it could say, oh well, you know, but it it knows when it’s a threat, when it’s a legitimate threat, usually. Usually it’s right, there is some sort of threat involved here, right? And besides, when you’re speaking, that’s not the time to be debating it about ah, don’t worry, there’s no threat going on. You don’t want to be concentrating on speaking, right? So, what mindfulness has discovered, and what you know, my approach as well, just accept that noise. Accept those fearful thoughts and feelings and sensations. That’s the best you can do in the moment, is accept them rather than trying to debate them, rather than trying to fight them, rather than trying to wallpaper over them with positive thinking, accept them, return your concentration to speaking. And what that does is it brings you detachment from those fearsful thoughts. They all magically disappear, but you gain some space from them, so you uh enjoy a more workable situation.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah, absolutely. I like the idea of acceptance in those terms. Now, we often view confidence as like a universal trait to be had, like something that we all should have, and rightfully so. But someone who can be entirely like secure in their work has probably even climbed up the ladder, which is most of the leaders we are talking about here, andor founders. That was a great example, David, over there. They are really good at their work, but then they feel like they are completely paralyzed by a microphone. And a lot of professionals, especially when it comes to men, when I talk to male clients, this comes up more often. They feel like they can’t separate their self-worth from those physiological symptoms that we just touched upon, like, you know, uh adrenaline is boosted and they feel like they’re being threatened, which we call in simple terms, stage fright. Or sometimes um people tell me that their hands get sweaty, they get like a little jittery. So those are all like different symptoms. Everybody experiences different symptoms. So, how can this separate self-worth from those symptoms of stage fright and feel like, oh, we are probably less than or we don’t feel good about ourselves right now.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

That what you said about having confidence in yourself as a professional, well, when we’re talking speech fright, is true for 95% of the fresh professionals I work with. One of the first things I’d like to do is get them talking about what they do professionally. They’ve got expertise, you know, enough to continue on the next three people often. Yeah. It’s just getting in front of people and then explaining it or applying it in front of others because it goes back to the threat and and what you have. So there’s a wonderful Mike Tyson line. You probably know it, it’s a famous, right? Everybody has a plan until they get smacked in the mouth, right? Yes. With performance anxiety, is that being surprised often that we’re nervous, right? And so what happens is that people just naturally think, well, I must not be as good at this as I think I am, or why am I down on myself now? I know this stuff, right? So, and the thing is, this happens in the moment, so it’s not like you can practice disassociating with that those sorts of feelings when you’re not feeling the threat, right? So the only way at time you’re going to experience it is when the threat is present, and that’s the time that you really can’t work on yourself not to feel bad threat, right? Now, there are some things. I I do talk about, I I stole a Chinese saying, embrace tiger, return to mountain. What we’re talking about here is the embracing the tiger moment. What do you do when you’re in the thick of it, right? There is the other part, the you know, return to mountain. When you go back, when you decompress, when you debrief, when you’re having your morning coffee, then you can think through those sorts of things logically. Um, but you also said it. As you climb the ladder, the threats get more pronounced. They do. They do, right? Because now you’re supposed to be in front of more people. Yeah. You’re expected to be. Yeah, again, now you’re representing your entire corporation or something like that. You know, my favorite example of that was that I live in Durham, North Carolina. And what would have that been last summer, summer before? Uh, Kamala Harris came through town and she did a stump speech just a couple of blocks from here, out on what was called Black Wall Street, right? A very historic uh spot in Durham. She was composed, relaxed, you know. In the moment, it was wonderful. Then, like two weeks later, she was in her first debate with Donald Trump. Right? So, what was the difference? In Durham here, she didn’t feel any threat. But now, in the debate with Donald Trump, her whole candidacy to be president of the United States and all the people that are depending on her and all of that, you know, certainly uh was a legitimate threat that she was facing. Right. I wish I could have helped her.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, it’s just um it’s situational. So what you’re touching upon is situational, how big of a stage it is, like what’s at stake, right? So all of those things, our brain is weighing those. Okay. So now my listeners and viewers who are listening to this podcast, they’re wondering how they can eliminate stage fright. Okay, they have accepted it. Let’s say they have accepted it. You know, the first step was acceptance, right? So can they eliminate stage fright, or should the goal be to manage the adrenaline?

SPEAKER_00 19:24

The here, the uh that’s in therapy, I’m not therapist, but in therapy they call that a dead man’s goal. That’s like saying, I’m never gonna be angry again in my life. I’m never gonna be sad again in my life. I’m never gonna get nervous when I’m in speaking in front of others. If those three factors are at play, if you’re like 75% of us, there’s a good likelihood that until you’ve seen it all, done it all, you know, surpassed it all, you know, that that nothing is a threat anymore, you’re going to get nervous. It’s a natural human phenomenon. You’re not broken. I tell folks you’re not broken. You’re exactly perfect, you’re perfectly human, right? So eliminating it, forget about it. It’s a dead man’s goal.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

So then how can we effectively shift that fear, that anxiety into useful energy?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, it does uh bring a type of energy. It can bring a type of energy. Tell me more. Yeah, you may be familiar with a study done a hundred years ago, Yerkes Dodson, I think it was called, and it found that a certain amount of excitement will make your performance better. Whatever you’re doing, actually. And this has been, you know, uh proven over and over and over again, right? In sports, music. Yeah, if I go on stage and play saxophone, if I don’t have some adrenaline going, Aisha, it’s gonna be better than Dorknop. Even out, right? I’m sure I’ve got some adrenaline going. I don’t feel it till we’re when it’s over, and then I’m you know, uh I’m trying to come down from uh the performance, if you will. But then too much excitement in terms of too much adrenaline running through your system is is unhelpful, right? So not enough. It’s you know, can be, like I said, better than doornail. Too much, the the nails are coming off the hinges, right? So that finding that middle ground can be difficult to do. People do it naturally, I think, if they’re not nervous, right? For example, yeah, I’m not nervous now, uh I’ve done enough of these podcasts. I know you’re a wonderful host. There’s no threat for me today, right? Yeah. So, but, and so therefore, I’m kind of just naturally regulating the amount of adrenaline that’s in my system. I don’t know how, but you know, I know I need a certain amount of it, and yeah, that’s uh but you know, if if there was a threat, what would happen is the the internal bodyguard, the amygdala, would say, no, you need more adrenaline, pal. We need to get out of here, right? That’s that’s the rub in all of this. That’s one of the things that makes it difficult when when you’re speaking and get nervous.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I want to highlight something you just said that that practice also reduces that anxiety, what I got out of what you were suggesting. Like you’ve been on a lot of podcast interviews, and you’re on the podcast interview right now. So, of course, there’s a little bit of anxiety. I get it. Like this is probably recording number 200. Okay. But I have been a guest on many podcasts when I wrote my book and I was trying to promote my book uh prior to being a podcast host. And um I speak on stages, but even then when I go on a stage, there’s always like this little anxiety or fear, like, what if something goes wrong?

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Yeah, yeah, it it’s a threat. It’s a threat. Now, I’ll also say that performers, quite a few performers, will say, Oh, I need a little stage fright to perform well. Well, I think they’re, I think often what they’re doing, and these are performers have been doing this for decades, right? Um uh that I think what they do is they sometimes mix up uh uh adrenaline excitement and fear excitement. They’re basically the same thing. When you speak on stage, you know you want to be up, right? You need to be up. So you’re gonna need some adrenaline, right? Going coursing through your system. I think that folks sometimes mistake, oh, I must be nervous, right? My heart’s starting to race, right? I’m starting to, yeah, right. Breathe, uh, my breathing’s a little bit later. I think sometimes people confuse their excitement, natural excitement, they’re trying to bring to the moment with anxiety. And then they, uh oh, I must be nervous. Uh-oh, yeah, well, what’s going on here? So that’s where I’m saying when you do, when you’ve been in the ring enough times, you figure that out, right? I think most of us do. Ah, I’ve been here before. I know exactly what’s happening. You know, my body’s gearing me up to do well, right? So I think.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Absolutely. So, what are your go-to methods of converting that or some psychological shifts that can turn performance anxiety into useful energy or and or to dissipate the symptoms? What are your some of the the practical tips that you apply?

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, I I boil all of what I do into a acronym. Read R-E-A-D. Now, you and the folks watching this, listening to this already understand the engage part, which is the only go straight. Engage with what you’re doing 100%, wholeheartedly. Accept any nervous thoughts. It can be extraneous thoughts. It can be, you know, uh, there’s some sort of noise that happened. Or you notice that there the temperature of the room is it’s not to your liking, something like that. So whatever those extraneous thoughts are that are, you know, pulling you away from your concentration, just accept. Right. Yeah. Uh doing anything more than accepting them, you wind up playing thought lackamole, right? You knock down that one thought, oh my, my, my, my hands are are are are shaking. Knock that down. Oh, that guy in the third row is looking at me, you know, cross-eyed. Uh yeah. So just accept them. So that’s the E A and then the D is that brings the detachment. That brings detachment from those. Uh, they fade into the background, right? Those sorts of now. You need to do that over and over again. You know, um, a study found that for most of us, even in ideal circumstances, our attention spans are nine seconds. Yeah. Right. So you’re trying to give a speech, you got all these nervous thoughts in your head, near the nervous feelings. Plan on bringing your it’s like a car. I’d be like a car that going down the road, and it doesn’t just fly straight, right? So plan on bringing back your attention to the speech over and over and over again. Right. Now, the R part of it, just quickly, is remember. That’s a little bit different. It’s remember the core values that you bring to what you’re doing. Right. The example that I’d like to give is of a father at his daughter’s wedding, and he needs to get up and speak.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

And give the toast, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:39

So the core values he’s bringing to this, love of his daughter, right? Uh, belief in community, you know, all sorts of core values that give him courage and commitment to do what he’s doing despite his nervousness, right? Um, in fact, I uh recommend that folks, you know, put on a put it on a notepad, right? Yeah, where you can see it next to your lectern or wherever. Uh pay the rent. That’s not a core value. But provide for provide for my family is a core value. Provide for my professionalism. Well, whatever those core values are that you bring to that moment, remember them. And those help before as well, when you’re trying to be an ostrich and just ignore the this big presentation that’s good that’s coming up and and so forth. But so that’s read. So that’s I keep it simple because in the moment that’s what you need.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

Yeah. So okay, let’s start from the top. R is remember if you can just repeat all uh the acronym again.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

R, remember the core values that you’re bringing to what you’re doing, speaking, performing, or uh competing. Right. E engage in the task at hand, the speaking, the performing, the competing. Right. Accept any extraneous thoughts, feelings, or sensations. You don’t have to like them, you don’t have to agree with them, just accept them. That’s that’s that’s all you can do. Right. Because you don’t have the time or energy. Bring your concentration, and it’s perfectly normal to have those. That’s that amygdala trying to protect you, right? Um bring your attention back to the engaging in what you’re doing, and then what you’ll find, Aisha, is that that will just naturally you bring you detachment from those worried thoughts and and feelings and sensations.

SPEAKER_01 29:59

So okay, so the last one is detachment, and which comes naturally if you apply the first three. So that’s that’s wonderful. Okay, so now this has happened to me. I want to say once I feel like that I bounced back properly. However, when I’m talking to a lot of professionals, they feel like that this is something. I think this is what brings fear of public speaking onto them. Okay, so what they’re talking about is that they’re what if their mind would go completely like blank on the stage and they forgot what they were supposed to say because they were just overthinking it or just because of the anxiety. So if someone is sitting across from you and saying that, oh, I don’t know, David, what if like I just completely go blank on the stage? How can they gracefully recover their train of thought without losing their authority and composure?

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Yeah, and and this may sound a little, this is definitely counterintuitive. Okay. Accept that. Accept that thought. Accept that thought and return your concentration to what you’re doing. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna happen, right? And that’s going to be the return to mountain part to have a strategy for what you do if that happens, right? Um, whether it’s you have notes that, you know, an outline for yourself, whether it’s you have a you know PowerPoint or keynote presentation that’s keeping you, you know, uh on point. Um that’s not in the moment. What I work with more with folks is okay, so you just got smacked with, you forgot your line. So now you’re all worried, oh, they’re losing respect for me. Oh, I’m gonna forget the next line. We’re not gonna get the funding that we need. Just accept that. In the moment, Aisha, that’s the best thing you can do. That’s the strongest, as simple as it sounds, I know. But you know, who you don’t need a, you know, like a seven-point plan about what to do in that moment. Oh, I return my concentration to speaking, right? Um and and yeah, I know that I just forgot another line. Okay, bring back your attention to what you’re doing. In the moment, that’s the best you can do, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:48

Yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes sense. Another thing that my mentor, I’m a distinguished toastmaster, and I’ve done public speaking for Toastmasters for two years before I got that designation. That means that I had to do, I think, 400 or 500 speeches or Toastmasters. There’s a curriculum that you follow. It’s been a while since I’ve done done that, so I can’t remember exact numbers. But that being said, my mentor told me something that stuck with me forever. And that was like, I used to get really worked up on like, if I’m quoting a research study, I’ll get the numbers wrong. And my mentor said that if that is something that bothers you, or even if you forgot one of the key concepts of the topic and you skipped it, his name was Mike. And he said to me, Who will know that? Because has your audience ever heard your speech before? I’m like, no. He said, then who will know that you miss that part? And I’m like, me.

unknown 33:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

And he’s like, so what’s the problem?

unknown 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

If you were to just deliver the speech with three concepts out of the four, so what? They still got those three concepts out of you. And I’m sure the audience is like more than happy with that.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

Yeah, yeah. I I I that sounds like a wonderful technique. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, again, that I think that’s more of the you know, uh return to mountain sort of thing that you talk through with a mentor. And the next time, and and I you know, you remember me saying earlier that the amygdala communicate with higher brain functions. So, you know, those higher brain functions can’t get through to the amygdala sometimes. Oh, that’s not a genuine threat if you forgot something. You’re seeing it as a threat, right? Uh, I guess that somebody’s gonna figure out I’m a fake, or somebody that I don’t know what I’m doing, or I’m gonna let myself down. Now that’s different, right? Now that, you know, that’s a different sort of threat. That’s an internal threat. But but and I think most of us, most of the times, the the threat is some sort of external threat, right? As far as the external threat, yeah, you know, the the mentor can get through to you and back down amygdala, right? That but the thing is that that wouldn’t be happening at a conscious level, probably, in a when you’re giving a presentation. You would have absorbed that, and the higher brain functions would be communicating with the amygdala behind your back, if you speak, uh so to speak, as you’re speaking, and and you wouldn’t experience that as a threat anymore. So definitely there are ways to um, you know, make things so they’re not a threat sometimes, you know. But at the end of the day, there are some threats. You know, uh, I won’t get a promotion, I won’t get this job, uh, the company won’t get this funding, that I think are legitimate threats that still stand, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Sure thing. Absolutely, absolutely. So they these tips were so useful, and I love your read framework, which is very simple and also apply to our public speaking. So that being said, uh, David, where can our listeners and viewers find more of your work if they want to connect with you? How can they do that?

unknown 36:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

Well, if if you’re watching the video part of this, you probably see that there’s riseup8.com uh that’s been showing here. That’s riseup8 spelled out a e-i-g-h-t.com. Uh and there you will find links to speak with confidence, perform with confidence, and compete with confidence. And viewers can find what I do there uh in terms of coaching and online classes, as he’s there, free introductory lesson for for the online classes, and that’s the best way to reach out to me, I think. Also LinkedIn, David Leafish at LinkedIn for for professionals as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

Wonderful, wonderful. So I’ll uh add your LinkedIn accounts uh link in the show notes, and you said riseup8.com, which is your website, and that’s how people can explore more of the options to work with you and reach out to you. So I’ll include that in the show notes as well. So I believe David lost his connection, but thank you so much, everyone, for joining us and for listening to this podcast episode. It will go out in an audio and video podcast format. Thank you. Bye.