Lenny Rachitsky: belief

Transcript context

…That's exactly right. We are often our biggest impediments to good communication because of the anxiety we bring to the party. That's awesome. And I think this can apply to prepared talks too. When you're preparing a deck, don't put this pressure on yourself, "This has to be the best talk ever." Just like, "I'm going to do my best. Let me just start with something that's good enough. " People learn something and then from that, their editing ends up leading to something great in my experience. Right. Awesome. Okay, let's go to the next technique, and this is another one I've practiced and another guest on the podcast actually suggested this and these two remind me of using this one, which is to tell yourself when you're going to be giving a talk. "I'm excited. This is going to be a lot of fun. I'm so excited to give this talk." And reframe it from, "I'm nervous," to like, "No, I'm excited. This is going to be amazing." Can you talk about that technique? Absolutely. So this is one of many cognitive reframing techniques. It is often attributed to my friend and colleague, Alison Wood Brooks, she's at Harvard Business School who did some research into this. And what she found is... Well, first take a step back. When you get physically aroused by anxiety, you're under that fight or flight threat response. It turns out that same response happens to your body when you're excited. The human body has pretty much just one arousal response. Our heart beats faster, we breathe more shallow, we get a little shaky, but the big difference is how we label that. So if I say, "Hey Lenny, guess what? Your colleague couldn't show up today and you need to go teach the class or you need to go give that presentation." You might feel your heart rate go up, get a little shaky, sweat on your brow and you're seeing that as negative. But if I said, "Hey Lenny, guess what? You just won the lottery." Same physiological response would happen, but you would see that likely as more positive. So how we label the arousal matters and what Alison's research and others have followed up with suggests is that when we feel those symptoms of anxiety, rather than seeing it as negative, say, "This is exciting. I get to share my point of view. I get to demonstrate my value." And in so doing by seeing it as more positive, it causes us by definition to relax. And her research fascinatingly found that people actually were perceived as communicating better. And again that's because that pressure was taken off of them. So I challenge everybody to think about what are the exciting elements of the communication opportunities you have and really lean into those. And when you feel those anxiety symptoms, remind yourself these are signs of excitement. This is me being excited about sharing this information and it can really help.…

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