Tim Newman [00:00:09]:
Michael Phelps felt the exact same nerves you feel before a big presentation. He just called them something different. He called them fuel. 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 your journey to becoming a powerful communicator. All right, so here's the scene. You're backstage, or you're staring down a big meeting, and someone leans over and says it: take a deep breath, calm down.

Tim Newman [00:00:51]:
Sounds like wisdom. It's actually one of the worst pieces of advice you'll ever get. And today I'm showing you why, using the same research pro athletes use to turn shaking hands into an advantage. You've done this before. Eyes closed, slow breath in, tell yourself to relax, eyes open, and you're still shaking. Here's why that trick keeps failing you. Back in 1908, 2 psychologists named Yerkes and Dodson ran an experiment and found that performance and stress follow a curve, not a straight line. A little stress sharpens you.

Tim Newman [00:01:31]:
Too much blurs you. But zero stress means zero edge. That's why you feel dialed in at rehearsal and frozen the second the real thing starts. The sweet spot sits in the middle— alert and loose at the same time. Most speakers never find it because they're too busy trying to kill the feeling entirely. Here's the part almost nobody tells you: right before you speak, your body is already flooding with adrenaline. Your heart rate's up, your palms are sweating, your muscles are primed. Trying to force calm in that moment is like slamming the car into reverse at 60 miles an hour.

Tim Newman [00:02:11]:
It asks you to do 2 things at once: drag your energy down and flip your mindset from negative to positive. Most people can't do both on command. And when it doesn't work, they get anxious about being anxious, which just cranks the dial even higher. You start checking your hands for shaking. You start listening for a tremor in your own voice. The more you hunt for calm, The more evidence you find that you're not calm, and that evidence feeds the spiral. I've watched this happen to a client 5 minutes before she was supposed to walk into a board meeting. She kept stepping into the hallway to settle down, and each trip out made her more convinced something was wrong with her, when nothing was wrong with her at all.

Tim Newman [00:02:57]:
Her body was just doing exactly what it's supposed to do before something important. Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks tested this directly. One group tried to calm down before performing. Another group did nothing at all. They performed identically. All that effort to relax, and it bought them nothing. She ran the same test across karaoke, public speaking, and timed math problems. Same result every time.

Tim Newman [00:03:29]:
I used to give my students the exact advice I'm telling you to throw out. Take a breath, settle down, you've got this. And I watched it fail over and over in front of a lecture hall full of 19-year-olds who were shaking just as hard after my pep talk as before it. Because I was fighting biology with a platitude, and biology wins that fight every single time. So if calming down is a dead end, The real question is what elite performers do instead. Athletes don't eliminate adrenaline. They build a system to point it somewhere. Michael Phelps ran a detailed mental film before every race.

Tim Newman [00:04:10]:
Every stroke, every turn, every possible way a competitor could try to rattle him. He rehearsed it so many times in his head that the actual race felt like a rerun And not a debut. His longtime coach, Bob Bowman, built that habit on purpose. Every night, he had Phelps run the race in his mind before sleep, start to finish, including the moments where something went wrong— goggles filling with water, a bad start, a rival surging late. Phelps didn't just visualize winning; he visualized problems and himself solving them, so that by race day, there was no version of the race his brain hadn't already lived through at least once. Kobe Bryant used a different tool. For almost 20 years, he ran the exact same pregame shooting routine— same spots, same rhythm, same pace— every single night. That routine became a trigger.

Tim Newman [00:05:07]:
It shifted him into a focused, competitive state before the lights even came up. Rafael Nadal does something similar on a tennis court. He lines up his water bottles with obsessive precision. Looks like superstition, but sports psychologists call it a deliberate trigger. That small ritual builds a pocket of control inside a chaotic moment, and it tells his body, we've been here before. Tom Brady and Russell Wilson both worked with mental conditioning for years, and the goal was never to feel less nervous. It was to build a pregame routine that managed the adrenaline instead of fighting it. And that's the pattern across every sport.

Tim Newman [00:05:49]:
The pros don't calm down, they prepare up. Now, you don't have a pregame routine because you're not walking into a stadium. You're walking into a conference room or a Zoom call or a stage with your name on a slide behind you. But the mechanism is identical. Your body doesn't know the difference between a free throw and a keynote. It just knows adrenaline is rising, and it's looking to you for instructions on what that actually means. Give it the wrong instructions, and it reads the moment as danger. But give it the right ones, and it reads the moment as opportunity.

Tim Newman [00:06:27]:
And here's where Brooks's research gets really useful for you. She didn't just test the calm-down advice. She tested an alternative. Before performing, one group said a simple phrase out loud: I am excited. Independent judges rated the group as more persuasive, more competent, and more confident than the group that tried to calm down. Here's a 2-second reframe. It's a tool, and it costs you only 2 seconds. Say, I'm excited, out loud.

Tim Newman [00:07:01]:
Not, I am calm. Not, I've got this. The exact words matter because they change the interpretation without touching the physiology. Anxiety and excitement feel almost identical in your body— racing heart, quick breath, tense muscles. The only difference is the label your brain slaps on it. Reframe it as excitement, and you shift from a threat mindset to an opportunity mindset. Your body stays amped, your brain just points the energy somewhere useful. And saying it out loud matters more than thinking it.

Tim Newman [00:07:42]:
Speaking it engages the part of your brain that handles control and quiets the part that's scanning for danger. You don't have to fully believe it. You just have to steer the label. I know how that sounds. It sounds way too simple to actually work. And I thought the same thing the first time I read the research. But simple isn't the same as weak. Simple is just easy to forget when you're standing in front of a room with your heart pounding, which is exactly why you need to practice it long before you need it.

Tim Newman [00:08:16]:
Pair the phrase with a 30-second physical trigger. A brisk walk backstage, 2 hard handshakes, the cue word under your breath. That's just your version of Nadal's water bottles. It has to be yours and has to happen every single time. Then swap the sentence in your head. Trade, I hope I don't mess this up, or this is my chance to add value to others. One frames the moment as a threat. The other frames it as an opportunity.

Tim Newman [00:08:53]:
Here's what all 3 pieces look like stacked together. Say you're 2 minutes from walking into a performance review that you've been dreading. The old habit: you take a breath, tell yourself to relax, and spend those 2 minutes losing the fight against your own heart rate. The new habit: You say it under your breath. I'm excited. You shake out your hands twice. You swap, I hope this goes okay, for, this is my chance to show them the value I've created this year. Same room, same nerves, same adrenaline running through you, but completely different 2 minutes because you gave your body a job to do with the energy it was already producing instead of trying to shut the energy off.

Tim Newman [00:09:40]:
Watched this work with a student before a big pitch. She said the phrase and told me afterwards she felt it shift in real time. The shaking didn't disappear, it just switched teams. One more thing before you try this: more excitement isn't always better because your sweet spot moves depending on the task. Complex or unfamiliar material wants a lower arousal level. If you're improvising a Q&A delivering something brand new, aim for focused calm, not full hype. Well-rehearsed material can handle a bigger wave of energy, and it usually plays better with more edge, not less. Your personality shifts the curve too.

Tim Newman [00:10:25]:
Introverts tend to peak sooner because their baseline runs higher already. Extroverts Often need more stimulation to get there. Know which one you are and calibrate accordingly. Not sure which one you are? Think back to your last few high-stakes moments. Not how you felt walking in, but how you felt in the first 60 seconds once you started talking. If you tend to blank or speed up, you're probably peaking too early. Dial the energy down and lean on the calm version of the technique. If you tend to feel flat or forgettable in the first minute, you're probably under-peaking.

Tim Newman [00:11:05]:
Lean into the excitement and let yourself run a little hotter than feels comfortable. Either way, you'll only know your curve by paying attention to it on purpose a few times, instead of guessing. One more distinction worth making: this tool is built for acute, situational nerves— speech, Pitch, big meeting, something with a clear start and a clear finish line. It's not a fix for anxiety that follows you around on an ordinary Tuesday with nothing on the calendar. If that's what you're carrying, that's a different conversation and deserves a different set of tools than a 2-second phrase. And watch for those signs you've gone past the peak— mind blanking, racing thoughts, A shaky voice. If that happens, don't panic. 2 slow exhales.

Tim Newman [00:11:56]:
Unclench your jaw. Drop your shoulders. You're not trying to flatten the feeling. You're nudging yourself back to center. Adrenaline isn't a flaw. It's fuel. An engine doesn't run better with an empty tank. It runs better when someone knows how to aim the flow.

Tim Newman [00:12:16]:
And you're the one holding the wheel. So let's bring this all the way back. Yerkes and Dodson mapped the curve over 100 years ago. Allison Wood Brooks put a modern number on it. And Phelps, Bryant, and Nadal have been living proof of it for decades. None of them are calmer than you. They just stopped asking their bodies to do something biology was never going to let them do. They aim the energy instead of fighting it, and that's the entire shift.

Tim Newman [00:12:46]:
Not less adrenaline, better instructions. So here's your challenge this week. Before your next high-stakes moment, whatever it is, say the phrase out loud, I'm excited. Then build your own 30-second trigger, something small and repeatable that's entirely yours, and do it every time. And let it become the thing your body recognizes before anything else does. That's all for today. Remember, we're looking for progress, not perfection. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free ebook, The Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them.

Tim Newman [00:13:24]:
You can also 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.