Matt Abrahams: preference

Transcript context

…Yeah, so it's like another example of this sounds so trivial and why would breathing differently do have any impact on my nervousness? But one, there's all this research that shows that it does, and two, if you try it, and this is another one I use, is it actually works very quickly and you do it a few times and like, wow, I feel really different. Absolutely. It is interesting you put these together. From the way I've seen it, these are two different techniques, but I've never tried them together. One is... I think Huberman is big on this one. All his clips are always talking about this. One of you inhale fully and then you inhale a little bit more and there's some capillaries or something in your lungs that fill up that- [inaudible 00:28:12]. Yeah. And then there's the 4, 4, 8 is the way this other guest shared is like breathe in four seconds, hold it four seconds, breathe out for eight seconds. But I'm going to try both. Wow. That's going to double up my calmness. You'll be so mellow, nothing will bother you. So mellow. Okay. Are there any other techniques that you love that you find people find really helpful in calming their anxiety? Well, so the first book had 50 techniques and not all 50 techniques work for everybody. One that I personally think is a lot of fun is getting present oriented because when I'm in the present, by definition I'm not worried about the future. And many of our anxiety comes from our fear of a potential negative future outcome like, "I'm not going to achieve my goal." So if I can do anything to be in the present moment, that helps me out a lot. Something I do as part of my personal anxiety management plan is I say tongue twisters. Tongue twisters for me are a great way to get present oriented. You can't say it right if you don't say the tongue twister if you're not focused on the present moment. And it also warms up your voice. A lot of nervous speakers get so inside their head that they don't warm up their voice. And we all know if you've ever done any exercise or competed in any sports, you should warm up first. We have this mistaken notion that we can go from silence to brilliance without warming up. And I like saying tongue twisters out loud to get present oriented and to warm up my voice. So that's one that I often recommend. People think it's silly, but I have people who are like, that really works. It really helps me to get centered and to warm up. And so I like that one a lot. Well, let's share a couple of tongue twisters.…

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