Reduce speaking anxiety and achieve your communication goals.

“There’s no difference between the physiological response to something that you’re excited about and something that you’re nervous about or dreading,” says Andrew Huberman, associate professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University.

In this Think Fast Talk Smart Rethinks episode, we revisit one of our most popular interviews. In it, Huberman, from the wildly popular Huberman Lab Podcast, shares his research on the autonomic continuum, a spectrum between states of high alertness or fear all the way down to deep sleep, and shares how to use the system to your advantage. “If people can conceptualize that the anxiety or stress response is the same as the excitement response, they feel different,” Huberman says.

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Chapters:

(00:00) - Introduction
(02:48) - Stress & the Autonomic Continuum
(04:56) - Controlling Alertness & Calmness
(08:45) - Movement & Audience Perception
(11:10) - Eye Movements for Anxiety Reduction
(13:30) - Two Approaches to Managing Stress
(18:14) - Preparing for Stress in Advance
(20:16) - Effective Virtual Communication
(22:18) - The Final Three Questions
(27:26) - Conclusion

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