How to Overcome Performance Anxiety and Speak with Confidence in Any High-Stakes Situation

Tim Newman [00:00:07]:
Have you ever been completely prepared? And then the moment you stood up to speak, walk into an interview, or stepped onto a stage, your brain decided to completely abandon you? Today we're talking about what happens in those moments, and more importantly, what you can actually do about it. Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence, the podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results— communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I'm Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I'm thrilled to guide you on a journey to becoming a powerful communicator. Today's guest is Dr. David Fish. Dr. Fish holds a PhD in ethnomusicology from the University of Michigan, He's performed alongside Ella Fitzgerald and Little Richard. And he's also frozen on stage backing up Sonny and Cher, an experience that launched a decades-long inquiry into performance anxiety.

Tim Newman [00:01:08]:
David is a performance anxiety and Zen-trained mindfulness authority and the creator of Speak with Confidence, an online course helping professionals tame speech fright, and a growing curriculum extending his method to performers and competitors. David, welcome to Speaking with Confidence, bud.

David Fish [00:01:26]:
Tim, thank you. From another recovering professor.

Tim Newman [00:01:33]:
Yes. And for some of the same reasons. When I say that to people, they say, well, why? I said, you don't have enough time.

David Fish [00:01:41]:
Yeah. And one of my favorite quotes quotes about, you know, being a professor is, why are— why is politics so deadly on college campuses? And the answer is because it's— the stakes are so low.

Tim Newman [00:01:57]:
So low. Exactly, exactly, exactly.

David Fish [00:02:00]:
So, so we're, we're both veterans of those wars, right?

Tim Newman [00:02:04]:
Yes. Yeah, with lots of scars. Uh, and, you know, so when we first talked and I went back and I started doing some research, The one thing that I kept coming back to was the old Radio Shack commercial. I've got questions and I hope you have answers.

David Fish [00:02:21]:
Yes.

Tim Newman [00:02:22]:
So let's start with what is ethnomusicology?

David Fish [00:02:25]:
Yeah, that's a good one. It's got 2 meanings, right? One is it's the study of musics of other cultures, right? In my case, it's traditional Japanese music and lion dance. Um, and I did that, uh, for a number of years in, in Tokyo, in Japan. Then the other definition for ethnomusicology is the study of the cultural aspects of music, you know, um, from Elvis to Beethoven to— you know, it's just screaming culture at us.

Tim Newman [00:03:01]:
Mm-hmm.

David Fish [00:03:02]:
And, and, you know, I mean, and all of that really lands, but we don't think about it or talk about it so much. You know, here Elvis with, you know, uh, you know, what was that, Elvis the Pelvis?

Tim Newman [00:03:14]:
Oh yeah.

David Fish [00:03:14]:
Um, yeah, and, and the big brouhaha about that in the day, that was all the cultural aspects of music more, more than anything. So anyway, ethnomusicology is either the study of other musics, of musics of other cultures, and/or the study of the cult— Cultural aspects of this.

Tim Newman [00:03:35]:
That's interesting because again, like you said, we don't, we don't ever really think about it or talk about it. And then if you look at where we are compared to, let's just say Elvis, to where we are now, everything is about, you know, the pelvis and the moving and the, and the sexual identity of, of the performers. But I really want to get into a little bit. I mean, you performed with some of the all-time greats. Ella Fitzgerald, Little Richard. What was, what was that experience like?

David Fish [00:04:05]:
Yeah, you know, I, Tim, I fancy myself the Forrest Gump of music. Okay. All right. I've had all of these sort of brushes. Yeah, there's the Forrest Gump part of the movie where they're showing him, you know, the photos with all the famous people and, and so forth. I've kind of, you know, been famous adjacent frequently in my career. You know, you get to see glimpses of, of those artists backstage that, you know, the normal audience fans don't, and that's very interesting. You know, you mentioned Sonny and Cher.

David Fish [00:04:42]:
For anybody who remembers, you know, beyond Cher, that she was married to Sonny and they had an act and one of the most popular television shows, and I got a chance to perform with them one evening. And Sonny was just prince among men. He was just such a wonderful person, right? Cher, not so much as I remember.

Tim Newman [00:05:08]:
Well, we won't talk about that too much, but that's one of the commonalities that you and I have. You from the music piece and me from the sports piece. and I don't talk about it a whole lot, is some of the circles that I ran in and the places I've been and the people that I've seen, people would be shocked to know some of those things. But for us, it's just part of our profession. We're just there. It's just part of who we are, part of what we did. Yeah. And you always hear about the stories of rock stars, they want to be athletes and athletes want to be rock stars.

David Fish [00:05:49]:
Yeah, that's true.

Tim Newman [00:05:50]:
You know, but it's, it's, you know, being in those, in those situations and, um, being a professional is so much different than being in those situations and being a fan.

David Fish [00:06:03]:
Yeah, absolutely. And, and if you go into, as I'm sure you know, if you go into that sort of gig with a fan mentality, you're going to get kicked out.

Tim Newman [00:06:14]:
Yeah, right.

David Fish [00:06:14]:
I mean, you have to be, well, this is a job, this is a gig, and this is, you know, these other professionals, these other folks here are professionals. I'm a professional, right? Probably my quickly— my most entertaining story of, you know, sort of bumping into artists was literally bumping into Stevie Wonder. I backed into him.

Tim Newman [00:06:38]:
Oh, wow.

David Fish [00:06:40]:
And as I was turning around, I started to say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you. And I realized it was Stevie Wonder. And it was so wonderful, Tim. He said, that's okay, I didn't see you either.

Tim Newman [00:06:55]:
That's awesome.

David Fish [00:07:00]:
I was just gobsmacked. You can imagine.

Tim Newman [00:07:05]:
But that's, that's also part of it too, though. I mean, if if you can't joke about yourself, I mean, if you can't take— don't take yourself so seriously, right? And yeah, that's right. And that's also part of it. But let's talk about something that is serious and why we're here today, because you make a big distinction between confidence and performance anxiety. And you froze when you were performing with Sonny and Cher. Talk about that experience. And why do so many people mistake one for the other?

David Fish [00:07:36]:
Yeah. So yeah, they're going back to Sonny and Cher quickly. This was as they're coming on stage and the rhythm section has already started, um, dum dum dum dum dum dum, right? Their, their theme song. And the— we got the cue for the horns. I was the only horn that didn't play. I was just sort of staring. And the only thing that got me out of it was the director, their director they brought with them, saying, play, damn it, right? So, um, so I was, I was like 16 at that point. Okay.

Tim Newman [00:08:11]:
Okay.

David Fish [00:08:11]:
So, but performance anxiety, stage fright, you know, so performance anxiety is speech fright, stage fright, and competition anxiety. And it's all pretty much the same thing. And we can get into the weeds of that as, as time allows here. But, you know, So that stage fright, I mean, that was sort of the big moment where, uh-oh. But, you know, through college, you know, I got a big fancy scholarship to study saxophone in college, and stage fright bedeviled me.

Tim Newman [00:08:44]:
Yeah.

David Fish [00:08:45]:
I would do fine in rehearsals. I would do, you know, in practice. But when I would get on stage, especially if the stakes were high, then my confidence would desert me. And I just thought, well, something's got to be wrong with me here.

Tim Newman [00:09:06]:
Mm-hmm.

David Fish [00:09:06]:
Uh, you know, I'm a— here I'm a hotshot young saxophone player, you know, and, and when it comes to stepping up to the plate, you know, I'm, I'm not striking out necessarily, but I'm not hitting home runs either because I'm nervous, So, right. Um, so, you know, the, the thing was, and I don't know if, if from sports the same thing, nobody talked about it. Nobody talked about stage fright really, right?

Tim Newman [00:09:33]:
Right.

David Fish [00:09:34]:
Um, and so it was just sort of this silent struggle. I found out that, you know, 75% of us, studies show, shoulder, but I didn't know that back then.

Tim Newman [00:09:47]:
Right.

David Fish [00:09:48]:
So, but I do remember I was fascinated about this enough that when I was really, really young, just out of school, I got a chance to teach at a summer music camp. And they asked, well, what do you want to teach? I said, oh, how about something about stage fright? I didn't know what I was going to teach. But, you know, it does show that I was kind of sensitized to the issue early on.

Tim Newman [00:10:12]:
Right, right. You know, it's— you bring up, it really is kind of the same thing in sports, you know. And we, I think we always get the same kind of advice, just calm down or think positive, you've got this. You know, or you get labeled, oh, he's just a slow starter. You know what, once he gets into the game or once he gets into the rhythm, he'll be fine.

David Fish [00:10:34]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:10:35]:
But why doesn't— why don't those things like think positive and you got this, just calm down, Why don't those things actually work when you're standing in front of the room or you're about ready to actually participate in the activity? Again, whatever activity it is, whether it's on stage, whether it's at an interview, whether it's in a sporting event, like you said.

David Fish [00:10:56]:
Well, I've had a lot of years to do a lot of thinking about performance anxiety. And I've worked with lots of people on it as well. And I came up with this. formula, Tim, that it strikes when 3 factors are at play. You do something in front of others in a performative sort of way, right? It could be speak, making music, acting, or competing, right? Second factor is that your audience— now, that audience could be just one person, right? Like if it's a job interview or something like that. It could be a single person. They're judging you, or at least you feel that they're judging you.

Tim Newman [00:11:45]:
Right.

David Fish [00:11:45]:
Yeah, it doesn't matter. They could be the friendliest, most supportive audience in the world. But if you feel like they're judging you, it's the same difference.

Tim Newman [00:11:55]:
Okay.

David Fish [00:11:55]:
So then the third factor is where the performance anxiety really kicks in. If that judgment were a threat, or if that judgment was negative, it would constitute a threat, some type of threat to you, right? You know, and, and, you know, sometimes that threat is, is pretty obvious. Let's go back to the job interview example. You don't get the job.

Tim Newman [00:12:24]:
Right.

David Fish [00:12:25]:
Let's say you're a young musician auditioning for Juilliard. You only get one chance at that.

Tim Newman [00:12:31]:
Yeah.

David Fish [00:12:31]:
You don't get into Juilliard. You know, other times, well, you know, you lose the game, you know, and the fans aren't behind you as much as they were before if you do that enough. You know, my favorite example of this was Shohei Ohtani, who went back to Tokyo for the beginning of the 2025 season after, you know, he won the World Series with Dodgers. And he said he was nervous playing in front of his hometown fans. Right? So somewhere in all of that, Tim, he felt that there was a chance that they were going to judge him and that the judgment could be negative. And if it was, it was going to be some sort of threat to his— him in the eyes of his fans or his self-esteem or something.

Tim Newman [00:13:27]:
Right.

David Fish [00:13:28]:
So, it's both those 3 basic things that are at play. And so, that's why it doesn't— I think going back to your question here, it doesn't help to try to talk yourself out of it or whatever.

Tim Newman [00:13:41]:
Right.

David Fish [00:13:41]:
Your amygdala, your sympathetic nervous system has detected a threat, right? And this is your internal bodyguard. And it's pretty, yeah, it is, you know, pretty well tuned in to what threats are out there, right, that you're facing. So you trying to argue, well, there's 2 problems while you're speaking. Well, let's say you're speaking and you're trying to say, yeah, no, there's no problem here. First of all, you're not paying attention to your speaking. And then, the second thing is you may lose the argument with your internal. No, there is a problem here, you idiot.

Tim Newman [00:14:29]:
Exactly. I can picture somebody on stage starting to have that conversation out loud with themselves.

David Fish [00:14:37]:
It would be interesting to see, wouldn't it?

Tim Newman [00:14:41]:
Yeah, it would.

David Fish [00:14:42]:
The internal dialogue. of the musician. Shut up, I'm trying to play here.

Tim Newman [00:14:50]:
And, you know, you know, thinking about that, you got, you got to think that, you know, let's just say athletes from Philadelphia or New York, they, they've got— I wouldn't— yeah, let's just call it thick skin, that even when they do things right, they're going to get heckled and, and tell you know, told how horrible they are because they don't do things right, right enough.

David Fish [00:15:18]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:15:18]:
Enough times, right?

David Fish [00:15:20]:
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No. So, so yeah, absolutely. And, and they, you know, are very vociferous, the fans, in expressing their disappointment or dismay with, with players, right? Well, maybe they should be. They're getting millions of dollars, right? Right. If you can't the heat, get out of the kitchen, maybe, or something like that.

Tim Newman [00:15:41]:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I don't feel too sorry for him, you know. Anyhow, but let's look at it from, again, and make it relatable because everybody has job interviews. Everybody has difficult conversations, right? Everybody's going to go through this Performance anxiety at some point, right? So how do we take them from the anxiety piece to getting through this and being successful on the other side? Because again, it really only takes 5 to 10 minutes to get through it. And if you're prepared, you get through those 5 or 10 minutes and then you're— Then you're rolling.

David Fish [00:16:36]:
Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, if that part of it is often— has to do with adrenaline flooding, adrenaline flooding your system and then being absorbed back into it, right? Which, which does often settle a person down, right? But, you know, those first 10 minutes while that's happening can just be, you know, a nightmare for folks or extremely uncomfortable if nothing Okay, well, here we go. So, you know, a couple of things I preached him are: you're not broken if you experience performance anxiety. Study after study has shown that 75% of us, if those three factors at our play, we're prone to experience. You know, and it makes sense. It's our sympathetic nervous system just. Protecting us from a threat. And the only way it knows how, with adrenaline, right? Which is counterproductive.

David Fish [00:17:37]:
Now, maybe with athletes, it's more productive, right? And with performers, it can be productive, you know, having some adrenaline going. It certainly can ramp up your performance. A speaker is maybe not so much because you want to be, you know, in control and not be bouncing off the walls, I guess. But all right, so first thing is you're not broken unless the, you know, the rest of the 75% of us who experience this are broken too. Well, it's not. It— I, I think I just showed it, you know, it's a perfectly human response.

Tim Newman [00:18:15]:
Right.

David Fish [00:18:15]:
Um, so, so then the other thing is, well, there's no cure for it, right? Um, there is never— if you're prone like that, You know, it's always anytime your sympathetic nervous system senses a threat, it's going to, you know, step in to protect you.

Tim Newman [00:18:36]:
All right.

David Fish [00:18:36]:
Mm-hmm. So, and so thinking I can cure my stage fright or cure my competition anxiety, I'm going to conquer it. I'm going to— all right. That's in therapy, and I'm not a therapist, but in therapy, they call that a dead man's goal, right? The type of goal that only a dead person can achieve, right?

Tim Newman [00:19:01]:
Right.

David Fish [00:19:02]:
So, the first thing is for folks who experience performance anxiety, whether it's speaking, performing, or competing in public, to know that you're not broken and learn to accept it because it's not going away.

Tim Newman [00:19:16]:
Right.

David Fish [00:19:16]:
Right. So, but then you need to— you need a solution to it, right?

Tim Newman [00:19:21]:
Of course. So, yes, I look at some of those things. Right. And to me, it's control the things that you can control. You can control your preparation. You can control to a certain extent your— to a certain extent, your environment. So, for example, When I was teaching, I'm a routine person. So if I, if I had to change rooms a lot, I was very, I was very nervous and anxious.

Tim Newman [00:19:55]:
But if I was going to be in the same room, I would set things up the exact same way, right?

David Fish [00:19:59]:
Sure.

Tim Newman [00:20:00]:
I'd have, you know, I'd have things the way I like them, you know, maybe a table over here, maybe put my water on this table over here, and then So, if you make things as routine as possible, you can control those things. And as you feel that anxiety, move to where you feel not necessarily safe, but move to where you feel comfortable. And that helps it as well.

David Fish [00:20:26]:
Sure, sure, sure. Absolutely. What I would say though is Mike Tyson's quip, all of us have plans till you get smacked in the mouth.

Tim Newman [00:20:37]:
In the face.

David Fish [00:20:38]:
Right?

Tim Newman [00:20:39]:
Right.

David Fish [00:20:40]:
Until somebody's moved your water or whatever, or they moved, they changed the room, or that person down in the 3rd row you're convinced is looking at you cross-eyed, right? Isn't buying what you're selling. It may not be true at all. Maybe he's just naturally cross-eyed, right? But if that, you know, internal bodyguard has looked out and they said, uh-oh, that's a threat. You know, you're going to be back. Well, you're likely to at least experience some times where you're not going to be able to control all of the circumstances.

Tim Newman [00:21:21]:
Right.

David Fish [00:21:22]:
And even if you do, I mean, well, let's go back to what I was saying about being a musician. I was okay in rehearsal and performance, but when the stakes were high, that's the only real difference.

Tim Newman [00:21:32]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:21:33]:
You know, you know, that's with Ohtani, man. He's like the GOAT, right? You know, both a pitching and a hitting phenom goes back to Tokyo and the guy is nervous, right? So, you know, when the stakes are high in whatever— are higher, you know, in whatever that means for you personally, then I think you're still going to be prone to nervousness.

Tim Newman [00:22:00]:
Yes. Yeah. And again, it's okay to accept that and to embrace it. And like I said, I think once we start fighting that, that's where the consequences really start to mount and you get the domino effect.

David Fish [00:22:20]:
Absolutely. Again, because you're, instead of concentrating on speaking or competing, you're worrying about the nervousness, right?

Tim Newman [00:22:30]:
Right.

David Fish [00:22:31]:
Either talking it down or debating it or trying to, you know, squash it instead of paying attention to what I call the task at hand, right? You hit upon the solution, right? Well, I never talk cure or anything like that with performance anxiety. The solution is acceptance. And if we have a little bit of time, let me tell you how I got to that.

Tim Newman [00:22:58]:
Let's do it.

David Fish [00:23:00]:
Okay, so I'm fresh out of college and, you know, I'm still experiencing the stage fright. And, and as young people were wont to do back in the Radio Shack days, I, I decided to, uh, go into a Zen center, Zen monastery, right, in, in Berkeley, California. And it was, um, founded, directed by a Korean Zen masters named Seung Sahn. Now, I didn't go there for stage fright. I just did it because that's, you know, like what I said, what you did back in that day, right? All right. So, um, Seung Sahn was wonderful. He was very pragmatic, right? You know, Zen can be very, very, you know, uh, you know, existential and mystic and, and so forth. Like, what's the sound of one hand clapping and all that stuff.

David Fish [00:23:50]:
And, and Seung Sahn did some of that, right? But he also had this all-purpose precept. He'd say, only go straight, don't know, right? And that meant whatever you're doing, whatever that task at hand is, just do it, you know?

Tim Newman [00:24:07]:
Right.

David Fish [00:24:07]:
And, and that goes back to like Zen adage, you know, when you eat, only eat. When you walk, only walk. So do it wholeheartedly. And that's one of the reasons you don't want to get involved with that internal bodyguard because it's taking— Right.

Tim Newman [00:24:24]:
Right?

David Fish [00:24:25]:
So the only— only go straight, that's that part. The latter part of it is keep don't-know mind, which means, is that guy cross-eyed out there because he doesn't like what I'm saying? don't know. Just don't, don't make a judgment about it. Just accept it and return your attention to what you're doing. Right?

Tim Newman [00:24:50]:
Right.

David Fish [00:24:50]:
So, uh, it— and so, you know, I, like the others of Seung Sahn's students, you know, start applying this to all sorts of things in our lives. Um, and me as a musician, I just naturally fell into using it as a musician. And then speaking when I become a young professor. And when we had a pre-chat, we were talking about, you know, faculty meetings when you're a young professor. Talk about threats, right?

Tim Newman [00:25:21]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:25:22]:
Your whole career, you know, is flashing before your eyes, you know, and Professor Rumpel, you know, Vest in the back row as well. Professor Fish, you obviously don't understand about— So, so there's just an incredible threat there. So, so I, you know, I just naturally found myself applying Sun Sun's, you know, only go straight, don't know, to lots of aspects of my life, including stage fright and speech fright. Okay. So then, yeah, about 20 years or so ago, 18 years ago, I decided, uh, you know, I'm, I'm now the director of a popular music program, and I've got lots of students under me who are getting stage fright. And I'm thinking, gosh, I really want to help them. So I started looking for books. There were no books, nothing good out there.

David Fish [00:26:10]:
So I like to say my mother didn't raise no idiot. She left that to my father.

Tim Newman [00:26:17]:
There you go.

David Fish [00:26:20]:
So I thought, well, I don't know anything about stage fright, but if I partner with a therapist that does to write a book, Well, you know, she brings the expertise. I, you know, soak up half the royalties, you know.

Tim Newman [00:26:35]:
Right.

David Fish [00:26:36]:
So, we're having writing sessions, Tim. And about a month into it, she says, well, David, how do you— what do you do about your speech fright, stage fright? And I told her, well, it's kind of quirky. You know, when I was young, I studied Zen and this Zen master, I only go straight, don't know. And she stopped me and she said, have you heard of mindfulness? I said, No, what's that? She said, well, it's this new, new type of therapy that's really coming on strong. Here's a book by the person who created it. So, you know, I went home and I looked at it and said, oh, that looks familiar. Well, I've seen that somewhere before. So then I bothered to look at the author, the bio of the author.

David Fish [00:27:17]:
He'd studied under the same Zen master.

Tim Newman [00:27:21]:
Right.

David Fish [00:27:23]:
So what we call mindfulness— and I'm not a big fan of modern mindfulness because it's become in a lot of ways McMindfulness, right? But that original mindfulness that was coming from Sangsan of only go straight, don't know, is a really powerful solution to what ails you. Right. And one of the reasons is it doesn't bother to worry about why do I feel that guy in the second row's looking at me cross-eyed.

Tim Newman [00:27:56]:
Right. As I think about it, I go back to the whole idea of preparation. And again, it doesn't matter whether it's you're on stage, job interview, what have you. If you've done the things that you need to do, You're not necessarily— you're, let's just say you're more concerned with providing the value, more concerned with whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish, as opposed to absorbing whatever you think the audience is giving you about you. And in doing that, that helps us control our adrenaline. Adrenaline isn't, isn't It's not linear, right? It has more of a curve shape. And where you fall on that curve that is optimal performance is what you truly need to find in terms of adrenaline that's going to help with that level of anxiety, that level of nervousness, that level of outside noise that we hear.

David Fish [00:29:03]:
Yeah. Yeah. And that's so important because, as you know, adrenaline gets flowing in your system for 2 reasons. One, because of a threat. The other one is because of excitement.

Tim Newman [00:29:18]:
Right.

David Fish [00:29:19]:
Right? So what you want to do is bring the adrenaline— well, what is that? The bar, that curve on performance that shows that a certain level of excitement maximizes your performance, but beyond that, it's counterproductive. But bringing the adrenaline through excitement is better because it's more controllable.

Tim Newman [00:29:50]:
Right.

David Fish [00:29:50]:
That has more to do with you, what you were just saying, with you inside more than the external factors. Right, right, right, right. Um, so yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Tim Newman [00:30:06]:
Yeah. And going back to what you said, it's that inner self-talk, like excitement. I'm excited. I'm not nervous. Yeah. I'm excited about this opportunity. I'm not nervous that I'm going to fail. So it's how we— it's that inner dialogue, that inner conversation that we have, which just everybody knows, I'm the absolute best at being negative for myself.

Tim Newman [00:30:37]:
There's nobody better at being negative to me than me. And so I understand and can feel the difference when I go from I'm excited from I'm nervous. And everything changes from that. And so it's so important to understand that inner self-talk is, to me, step 1 is preparation. Step 2 is inner self-talk.

David Fish [00:31:07]:
Yeah. And it can hinge on a little thing as a kind of trick. I don't like You know, I'd like to offer— believe I offer a solution that's more than tricks. But one of the tricks I like to throw in as an added benefit is substituting but with and. I'm nervous. I want to speak well, but I'm nervous. You can say, I want to speak well and I'm nervous. You can be both things, right?

Tim Newman [00:31:36]:
Right.

David Fish [00:31:37]:
Now, in terms of bringing the excitement, one of the things I find, Tim, that helps a lot is grounding what you're doing in just your core beliefs, right?

Tim Newman [00:31:51]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:31:51]:
Not goals so much, but your core beliefs. And the example I give of that is a father giving a speech at his, you know, giving a toast at his daughter's wedding, right? Just think of all of the sort of core values that he's bringing to this, love for his daughter, belief in community, all the sorts of things that certainly can, if they can't excite him about doing it, at least they can give him the courage and commitment to get up there and speak despite being nervous.

Tim Newman [00:32:30]:
Yes, yes, that's so true. And I would say to take that just a step further, when you look at, let's just say, the complexity of whatever it is that you're doing, a father giving a speech at a wedding is a highly complex thing because of the emotion, because of the values, because of the weight. This individual could be— he could stand up being talked in front of people all day, every day.

David Fish [00:33:02]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:33:04]:
And this is what he does. And now you're putting him in that high stakes where you're going, you're going to be judged. If you mess up, you're definitely going to be judged. It goes back to your 3 pillars. And I'm pointing like people can see me pointing at your 3 pillars. But that's the whole piece of it. The more The more complex and the higher the stakes, like you, like you said, the, the, the more nervous, the more anxiety that's there, even for somebody who is very, very good at what they do.

David Fish [00:33:42]:
Yeah, yeah, sure. You got to believe that, you know, the players in World Cup.

Tim Newman [00:33:48]:
Oh, yeah.

David Fish [00:33:49]:
Even, you know, at the highest level, you know, may well be experiencing nervousness. Now, you know, I, I would say that this, you know, you mentioned something that I think a lot of performers, a lot of people in general, but in particular performers and, and athletes never get to, is sort of differentiating adrenaline flow with excitement versus nervousness, you know.

Tim Newman [00:34:16]:
Mm-hmm.

David Fish [00:34:16]:
And I think that's one of the best things, you know, my uh, you know, corner of the universe with performers to, you know, to just preach and have them understand. And, and, you know, and, you know, in, in the sports world, hey, listen, it's not necessarily that you're completely nervous here. A lot of this could be excitement, right?

Tim Newman [00:34:37]:
Mm-hmm.

David Fish [00:34:37]:
I would say maybe the difference between competitors, athletes, and musicians— musicians sitting backstage, we typically don't have an outlet for that excitement. The adrenaline's already flowing through our, our, you know, bloodstream, and sometimes we misinterpret it as nervousness, right?

Tim Newman [00:34:58]:
Right.

David Fish [00:34:59]:
I, I think if athletes, at least, they can hop around the, the, you know, the, uh, you know, the locker room or something or other to, you know, to work with that adrenaline a little bit. But maybe I'm wrong. I mean, maybe there's a lot of You know, athletes that just have to sit there. Well, maybe like swimmers when they're waiting, you know, for their competition.

Tim Newman [00:35:20]:
Well, I think one of the things that athletes do is the visualization, you know, the visualization of them performing the task at hand, whatever that is, whether it's Tom Brady throwing a football, whether it's the receiver running the exact route, whether it's the running back doing his exact steps for a particular play, that visualization is part of it. And that's why, again, I go back to the preparation and the practice. And this is something that I talk about on kind of on a regular basis, is if the greatest players in the world, the greatest of all time, Work on fundamentals. Why can't you, as somebody who is fairly new at doing something, why are you not working on the fundamentals? Because the more the fundamentals become automatic, that's also taking away a piece of that nervousness or anxiety.

David Fish [00:36:29]:
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I, I, uh, a friend of mine, uh, was a member of Prince's band, and it— he used to rehearse them exhaustively.

Tim Newman [00:36:41]:
Yeah.

David Fish [00:36:42]:
Like over, over, over, um, practice, because he would say, you know, I want you guys to know this so well there's no chance you could make a mistake with it when we're on stage. Right now, let me go back just a, a couple of minutes here with something— confidence, right? And, you know, and we, uh, are, uh, you know, our, our courses, what we do, are very close in, in, uh, wording. Yeah, I have a course called Speak with Confidence, right? And what I found, Tim, is that with professionals— now this isn't young, like students, or, you know, that Uh, you know, rookies, something like that. They have lots of confidence in what they do professionally, right?

Tim Newman [00:37:32]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:37:33]:
Um, you know, the CEO who's been running a corporation for— successfully for 15 years, you know, um, or, you know, a marketing person who knows how to do that, or, or like me as a musician who knows how to make music, just fine, right? So it's not that they lack confidence. And often you'll hear people talk, oh, if I could just find more confidence, then I wouldn't be nervous. Well, that's not how it works.

Tim Newman [00:37:59]:
That's not how it works, right.

David Fish [00:38:01]:
Yeah, what's happening is that the performance anxiety is undermining the confidence. All of a sudden you get up and you've forgotten all of this expertise you have. You know, it abandons you because of the nervousness. But, you know, so one of my main messages is, at least for the professionals I work with, oh, you've got plenty of confidence. That's not the problem. I'm not here to teach you confidence so much as I'm here to teach you how to keep performance anxiety from undermining that confidence. Now, I'm like a muffler shop. Tim.

David Fish [00:38:43]:
That's all I do with speaking, right?

Tim Newman [00:38:46]:
Right.

David Fish [00:38:46]:
With performing, yeah, I teach all the other aspects about performing. With speaking, I teach this one thing, how to get beyond your performance anxiety, going back to the Mike Tyson. Your plans don't matter if you get smacked in the mouth, right, by performance anxiety. society, right?

Tim Newman [00:39:07]:
Right. That's so true. And every time you say that, I laugh because everybody gets smacked in the mouth. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how good you are. I mean, it happens.

David Fish [00:39:27]:
Yeah. And a lot, I think, of our success professionally is How you handle what happens after you get punched in the mouth.

Tim Newman [00:39:38]:
Exactly. Let me ask you kind of a different question. Just, it just kind of popped in my head. I'm a big fan of the walk-up song. What do you think?

David Fish [00:39:49]:
Yeah, yeah, I love it too. Sure.

Tim Newman [00:39:53]:
You know, I tell my daughters this, you know, I want them to tell me their walk-up song if they're going into a big meeting or they're going to a job interview. They say, Dad, you're nuts. And I said, well, if you tell me what it is, yeah, I'll be playing it in my head, you know, cheering you on. You know, it's— you've got to have that one thing. To me, you got to have that one thing that's—

David Fish [00:40:13]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:40:14]:
That as you're going to do your thing, going to do whatever it is that you're going to do, be on stage, go to a meeting, make a sale, whatever it is, you've got to have that last little piece of last little push to get you to that next level.

David Fish [00:40:32]:
Yeah. And truth told, I try to get everything technologically set up for podcasts. So I'm like 5, 10 minutes early. And then I have my walk-up song that I always listen to before the podcast that gives me some inspiration. Right? So that I'm not, in a way, what it does for me, I don't know about you, it's not like I'm stepping on the gas when the podcast starts. I'm already cruising down the highway in terms of energy.

Tim Newman [00:41:08]:
Right, right, right. And it's so funny you said this. Last night was not a good night of sleep. It was not a good night of sleep for either me or my wife. For whatever reason. And we had to get up early, had to go somewhere. And she came to my office for lunch, and at noon she's leaving. She says, I'm going to go home and take a nap.

Tim Newman [00:41:34]:
I said, well, I can't take a nap. I've got to start bringing the energy. I've got to start ramping up because I've got to bring a lot of energy when I'm on these podcasts and bringing You know, being on camera because it's, it's so important. Because if I come in dull, this whole thing is going to be dull. And Dave, this is no knock on you. If I come in dull, it doesn't matter how good you are.

David Fish [00:42:01]:
Oh, yeah.

Tim Newman [00:42:02]:
It really doesn't.

David Fish [00:42:03]:
Absolutely. Yeah. No. Right.

Tim Newman [00:42:05]:
And it's my— if you come in dull, it's my job to bring you up. I didn't have to do that with you like I've had to do with other, with other people. We match energy. We came in, okay, so we're locked, cocked, ready to rock. We're rolling with it. And that really does change the whole dynamic of the episode.

David Fish [00:42:27]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:42:27]:
So like I mentioned, I do another podcast. It's golf related. And me and my partner were interviewing winners in the episode that just dropped the other day. And both of those winners that we interviewed were about as dull and boring as you could be. And nothing we could do could get them going. So, I mean, it's— and that's what happens from an energy perspective. And you've got to make sure again, and you can't let that energy be the thing that punches you in the mouth.

David Fish [00:43:00]:
Yeah, absolutely. And isn't that a mark of professionalism?

Tim Newman [00:43:04]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:43:05]:
You know, I, I, you know, I, I think it, in some ways, it would just suck to be a, let's say, a professional basketball player where tomorrow night in Albuquerque I gotta be up and ready to play no matter what's going on in my life, no matter what time zone it is. Um, you know, that's, that's got to be a really big, you know, uh, burden to shoulder for, for professionals. But it's a mark of being a For sure.

Tim Newman [00:43:31]:
Right. And anything you do, go back to when you were a professor. I promise you, there are days that you got up that you really did not feel like being in front of the classroom. It happened.

David Fish [00:43:42]:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. At times I just had a fight with whatever spouse that was.

Tim Newman [00:43:48]:
Right.

David Fish [00:43:49]:
And have to turn around, get off the phone and go in and, hey class, let's be happy.

Tim Newman [00:43:55]:
Let's get this done.

David Fish [00:43:55]:
through it.

Tim Newman [00:43:56]:
But that's part, like you said, that's part of being a professional. And just like anything else, as I would tell my students, it doesn't matter what job or profession you get into, there's going to be something about the job or profession that you hate doing. It's not all. And even when you hate doing those things, you can't just slack off on them. You have to do them at the same level that you do the things that you really love doing. Yeah.

David Fish [00:44:21]:
Let's bring that back to to public speaking for a second, right?

Tim Newman [00:44:26]:
Yeah.

David Fish [00:44:26]:
You know, I think as a musician, I know it's a performance, right? When I go on stage, we call it a performance, right? I think athletes probably understand that what they're doing is a type of performance. People who speak in public, they don't necessarily appreciate or they somehow feel that it would be phony for them to perform. But performing is really only just kind of bringing your best self, the way I see it, right? And there's nothing— they can be very authentic. It can be very genuine. Like right now, I'm performing, Tim.

Tim Newman [00:45:08]:
Right.

David Fish [00:45:08]:
But I don't think there's anything phony about what I'm doing. It's very authentic. But if I didn't bring it as a performance, yeah, then the energy wouldn't be here, right? If we were to have this conversation just like we were, I don't know, just the two of us over telephone or over coffee or whatever, that's not going to be persuasive typically, right?

Tim Newman [00:45:34]:
Right.

David Fish [00:45:34]:
And when you perform something, speaking in front of others, typically, I think, a very important aspect of this, of you being persuasive. And a lot of being persuasive is to perform well. Right, right. So now that comes back to, I think, more what you and other coaches do with public speakers and, you know, doing well. Like I said, I'm the muffler shop. I just work with the performance anxiety aspect. But I do think it's very important. I think also very helpful for people who speak in front of others to appreciate that it's a performance and that it doesn't mean that you're phony or inauthentic necessarily.

Tim Newman [00:46:30]:
Right, right. You're absolutely correct. One of the things that I am personally working on in terms of speaking, because again, I do get up on stages and speak in addition to coaching, is transitioning from speaking as a recovering college professor to speaking as a speaker. Right.

David Fish [00:46:57]:
Yeah.

Tim Newman [00:46:57]:
2 different things. 2 different ways of conveying information, 2 different ways of persuasion and allowing my— I wouldn't say maybe a more natural, but maybe it is a more natural emotional emotions coming out as opposed to being a college professor and what we're trying to accomplish and what the value we're trying to add to the different audiences.

David Fish [00:47:24]:
Yeah. So, yeah, no, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's so easy for us to fall into academic ease and not even know it.

Tim Newman [00:47:36]:
Right. That's what we did. I mean, that's, that's what we did for, you know, 25, 30 years.

David Fish [00:47:43]:
But yeah, that's, that's what, what is valued.

Tim Newman [00:47:46]:
Exactly. So if anybody that's listening, remember just one sentence from today's conversation, before their next performance, presentation, interview, whatever, what would you want that sentence to be?

David Fish [00:47:59]:
Oh, you're not broken. Right? And if you're experiencing performance anxiety, it just means you're perfect, perfectly human. It's your internal bodyguard stepping in to protect you from a threat. Don't try to fight them, accept them, and just keep returning your concentration To the speaking, competing performer. And, you know, and, and that can be over and over and over again, Tim, right? Right. That you have to do that.

Tim Newman [00:48:31]:
Right. Well, yeah, I guess I was gonna say it's— you really should be doing it over and over again, you know?

David Fish [00:48:38]:
Yeah. Yeah. And this is, this is, uh, sorry, you're breaking up, so maybe talk I'm talking over you here. But, one of the things that I remember reading is that moments of concentration for most of us typically only last about 9 seconds.

Tim Newman [00:49:01]:
Yes.

David Fish [00:49:01]:
Right? So, if you find something distracting you, if it isn't nervousness, it's your rumbling stomach or you don't like the temperature in the room, you got your shoulders back. If you can only muster 9 seconds of concentration, that's par for the course. Now, where you break free from that is with flow. When you get into moments of flow, then typically you can just only go straight, don't know.

Tim Newman [00:49:33]:
Don't know. I love that. David, where can people connect with you, learn more about your work? Pick up a copy of your book and take your course.

David Fish [00:49:43]:
Well, down below here, and I think it's the right way. As you know, Tim, there's different technologies for doing these podcasts. And the one you're on, Riverside, you have to flop everything horizontally for it to not be backwards. But I think it says riseup8.com, right? And there they will find 3 courses. Well, actually, uh, 2, uh, the, uh, but the main one I'm, I'm, you know, marketing, if you will, um, I'm behind, uh, this summer is Speak with Confidence. There's another one called Perform with Confidence. And as you know, we've been talking about a 3rd course called Compete with Confidence. Um, so you'll find information for these courses at riseup.

David Fish [00:50:34]:
And there is also a link to a free intro lesson. Right. So, they can try out what I do before they commit.

Tim Newman [00:50:46]:
Awesome. And I'll make sure that it's flipped the right way when we download it. And I'll also make sure that it goes into the show notes for everybody to have that as As well. So, but David, thank you so much for joining us today. I really do appreciate it. And keep up the good work.

David Fish [00:51:07]:
Thank you, Tim. Only go straight. Don't know, man.

Tim Newman [00:51:09]:
I love it. I love it. Take care. We'll talk to you soon.

David Fish [00:51:12]:
You too.

Tim Newman [00:51:13]:
Bye. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, Top 21 Challenges Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register register for the Forming for Public Speaking course. Always remember, your voice has the power to change the world. We'll talk to you next time. Take care.