Here is the full transcript of David JP Philipps’ talk titled “10 Ways To Hack Nervousness & Become High On Life While Doing It” at TEDxLausanne 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
The Power of Internal Communication
Imagine if there was one skill, one single skill that could make you double three times as good the next time you present something. Double three times as good the next time you have a chat with a friend, with your partner or in a meeting. Imagine if there was such a skill. I’ve been in this profession for 20 years, and I didn’t know it existed at first.
And it took me a long while until I found it. Now, this skill, I would argue, is the most important skill of all skills in public speaking and maybe in life, because thanks to me finding it, I was so close to losing both my family and my life before I found it. And that’s the skill I want to share with you today. So what is it exactly? Well, have a look at this.
Previous TEDx Talks
These are my three previous TEDx talks. And as he mentioned, “How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint.” How many in here have been killed by a PowerPoint? Follow-up question, how many of you have killed somebody else with your PowerPoint? Come on.
In order to reach out to another person, they lack that very important skill, which is internal communication. What you say to yourself before going up on stage, while on stage, and then leaving stage is way more important than those. Because I believe that most of you have been in this situation, right? You built this presentation, you built the slides, and they were nice slides, and then you added a couple of neat stories into it.
You practiced some voice, some body language changes, and you were good to go. You went into the room, you started to deliver your talk, and then suddenly it didn’t go according to plans. How many in here has had a talk, has had a presentation, when nervousness got in the way and kind of destroyed it? And it’s practically every single one.
Harnessing Nervousness and Emotions
So what I want to give you today is 10 scientifically evidence-based tools on how you can harness nervousness to make it your friend, but that is just step number one. Step number two, which I find so much more interesting with this talk, is how can you learn to harness your emotions on command to choose if you want to be funny, if you want to be present, if you want to be assertive? Imagine the power of that skill.
And I’ve seen so many people easily double, triple their ability to present by just doing this and you don’t even have to practice it. You just have to apply it. So the first skill I want to give you, or the first tool I want to give you, see to that you have pens and papers, because as I said, for me, this was life-changing and I know it will be in your presentations as well.
Tool #1: Understanding the Nervous System
So tool number one is the following. You have something called a somatic nervous system. That is every time you willpower do something with your body. You then have something autonomic, the autonomic nervous system, and that is usually the nervous system that goes wild when you’re nervous, right?
So what we want to learn is how can we use our somatic nervous system to control our autonomic nervous system, okay? That’s what we want to know. So this is what the somatic nervous system looks like. I choose to jump.
Functional Gestures
After about 10, 15 seconds, my heart starts to beat faster. That’s my autonomic nervous system. So if we can learn how to harness the autonomic nervous system, that is tool number one. And we’re going to do a throwback to my third TEDx talk, which is this one.
I studied 5,000 speakers. It took me seven years to find every skill that we use when we communicate. Quite a bunch, right? There’s one of these skills which is more interesting than others when it comes to this first tool, and it’s skill number 45.
Skill number 45 is you using your hands to describe something from a functional point of view. So when you say, “Let’s underline that,” that’s a functional gesture, that’s skill 45. When you say “It’s going to go up, it’s going to go down, it’s five of them.” All of this is functional gestures.
A lot of people are stuck in tumble dryers, right? Have you seen these people? They go over and over and over again. Now the trick with this is if you use functional gestures, you calm yourself down.
Practicing Functional Gestures
But it’s also the way you do them. So I want to practice something with you. Put your hand out like this and the other hand like this. And then we’re going to do the kind of gesture that most people do, a fairly small one and a fairly sloppy one.
We’re going to go Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Now try to make that bigger. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. Now make it more distinct. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. And now make it slow. Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4. As soon as you take control of your own gestures by doing them slower, more distinct and larger, you cool down your autonomic nervous system because you kind of tell it that we’re cool.
It’s all right.
Let’s take it easy. So that’s tool number one. Tool number two is oxytocin.
Tool #2: Oxytocin
Oxytocin is a neuropeptide, which we all humans have. It is known for being the chemical that allows us to connect with other human beings. Oxytocin is also released when we feel stress. So as soon as you feel stress, oxytocin will be released automatically in small numbers.
What’s beautiful, though, is that you can increase it by will. For instance, you can make out with people. You can, well, not randomly, but when you kiss, when you hug, when you caress, oxytocin is released. And obviously, you could do that.
Increasing Oxytocin Levels
You could bring a partner with you to every presentation you have in the future, and you go like, “We’re just going to snug a bit.” But I’ve got a better idea for you. I want to show you a video of a boy, and his name is Jonathan. He has never seen color before, and he has been given by his class a pair of glasses, which allows him to see color for the first time, or at least a version of color.
I want you to look at that and see what that makes you feel, because studies have shown that videos which make us feel empathy can increase our oxytocin levels. So let’s have a look at Jonathan. They’re all yours. Okay?
[The speaker then describes a video of Jonathan seeing color for the first time, which is not included in the text.]
The Power of Oxytocin
Now what does that make you feel? Warmer? Caring? More present? Yes? Nodding away?
I see some tears here and there, which is lovely. Within 53 seconds, you were moved out of your current mental state into a different mental state. And you become more present and caring. So when I was walking in on this stage, I’ve been doing this for quite a while.
Am I nervous? Yes, I’m nervous. But I want to move myself into the state that I want to be in for you. So I stood out there and I looked at photos of my daughter when she was seven.
Personal Connection and Oxytocin
She’s running through the grass. And I look at this and I tear up. And that makes me move into what is most probably more oxytocin. And it makes me more human for you.
Compare that to being stressed and nervous, where you’re only thinking about the script. You’re only thinking about the outcome and the performance of what you’re doing. So please, for your own sake, go onto YouTube, for instance, and do what you do in your music playlists. Create a playlist for oxytocin.
The Impact of Oxytocin on Daily Life
So whenever you want to feel this sensation, play that playlist. Oh, I assure you this. If you come home to your family high on cortisol, you’re thinking about the problems that you’ve had at work, the problems you’ve got in the future, you won’t see their hug. You won’t feel their eye contact.
And you won’t hear the answer to the question, “How was your day?” But if you just took one minute before going into your family, and you fuel up on oxytocin, for instance, by looking at a video like this, you will see their eye contact. You will feel their hug. And you will give a very different hug.
And you will listen to the question that you asked. How was your day? So oxytocin has a tremendous power over us when it comes to feeling connected with other human beings. Ways to produce this is by sharing things that allow you to be vulnerable.
So in your talk, share something that is personal to you. As soon as you do that, you connect with another human being. Have you ever been in a dinner and you’re talking about weather and wind, and you’re not connecting at all with the other person, but as soon as you share something personal, you connect? Same thing with an audience like this.
Being Generous and Kind
What more can you do? Be generous. Generous has also shown to be connected to oxytocin. So be kind to people before your talk. Open the door for somebody. Treat somebody to water. Be smiling. Be nice.
And perhaps also, you refuel that mental state of presence and caring. Let’s move on to our second substance, which is GABA. The best way to explain what GABA does to your nervousness and your brain is this. If you’re driving your car at 100 kilometers an hour, you’re going, how do you stop it?
Tool #3: GABA
By pressing the brake. And you’ll stop it. Now what is the brake for the brain? Well, in the brake for the brain is GABA.
The accelerator is glutamate. When inducing GABA, we literally slow down. If you’ve ever meditated, it’s enough with just five minutes, and it’s scientifically proven that it increases your GABA levels, and you feel like the world slowed down. So what is beautiful to do just before a talk or a presentation is to do exactly that.
Meditation and Eye Exercises
A five-minute meditation will put you in a state of slowing down your brain so that you can focus on what is important. The tools are meditation, slow breathing, using your eyes can also affect GABA, and the parasympathetic nervous system. So I want to try something super cool with your eyes. So follow my instructions.
Number one, there’ll be three steps to this. Number one, look all over the place erratically with your eyes, like you’re being hunted for something more or less. So go like this, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And then suddenly focus, boom.
Practicing Eye Exercises
And then allow you to watch just the peripheral view. Relax, and eyes out here. And suddenly you can almost feel your shoulders drop. Let’s do it again.
Eyes all over the place, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Focus, peripheral view. And again, that has the potential to indirectly produce GABA, and by so, slow down your brain. Let’s move on to endorphins, our natural painkiller, closely related to morphine, or not maybe closely, but fairly related.
Tool #4: Endorphins
It has the power to also reduce the tension of nervousness. So how do you produce endorphins? Well, the best way to do it is you can hit your toe, you know, walking over onto another place in the room. Yeah, have you been doing that?
That’s an intense pain. Maybe that’s not the best way to do it. But laughing, laughing can produce endorphins, and in quite large amounts as well. The trick to this is this.
Laughter as a Tool
If you feel that, ooh, I need to calm down, I need to become happier, I need to become more open, which is usually then connected to endorphins, go to the bathroom before your talk, close the door, sit down on the toilet, and laugh hysterically for one minute. You will come in as one person, and come out as a different person. You won’t even recognize yourself. But what you did is you took control over your own nervousness and your own emotions.
The tools are laughter and certain kinds of smiles, particularly a genuine smile, can produce a little bit of endorphins, even if laughter is way, way, way more powerful. Moving into dopamine, and this will be our last substance in relation to this. So dopamine has many features in us, it makes us go like this, ooh, I can’t wait, it’s soon Friday, oh my God, it’s soon Monday, soon that thing is going to come that I purchased, it’s going to come, you keep tracking it, you’re longing for things, the anticipation of reward, there we can find dopamine.
And what studies have shown over and over again is, and it’s interesting, it’s been done on people who sing, people who do karaoke, people who do math tests, I don’t want to do this, this is going to be, I’m going to do that presentation, I don’t feel like it, and your nerves are all over the place, if you only reframe that to, I’m excited, I’m excited, I’m excited, I’m excited, I’m excited, they sing better, they perform better at tests, and they’re better public speakers.
Because you choose who you want to be when you want to be it. Because at the end of the day, the quality of your emotions define the quality of your life. So it all begins by harnessing your emotions, to choose how to inject oxytocin when you need to, dopamine when you need to, endorphins when you need to. “I’m excited” is one of the dopamine tools.
Reframing Your Mindset
I want to give you one more. Every time you say, “OK, I’m going to go in there and I’m going to launch all these slides and I’m going to do my very best,” have you ever been in that situation? Of course you have. If you look at top elite athletes, what do they say when they’re being interviewed and they’re going in to a match?
Do they say, “Yeah, I’m going to score, I’m going to score”? No, no, no, what they say is, “I’m going to go in there and I’m going to have fun. I’m going to go in there and I’m going to enjoy myself.” Instead of cortisol, which can be closer to performance. I’m not saying that is the case, but it’s definitely closer if you’re looking for performance and you’re not achieving performance.
Having Fun in Life
So the next time you go in on stage, have fun. Next meeting, have more fun. Even when you’re saying hello and shaking somebody’s hand, have more fun. Have more fun in life.
Not a bad idea, don’t you think? I’m from Sweden. I took a little bit of a bath before I came here. I just wanted to show you that.
Cold Exposure and Dopamine
This is David J.P. Phillips from the cold Swedish lake. Cold exposure has been proven to increase your natural levels of dopamine. The key is to go in, control your breathing and spend at least a minute in the cold water.
You will naturally feel a high and an increase in your natural motivation levels to leave the water. Isn’t that cool? This is a great tool to increase dopamine levels. It’s been shown in two studies that it has the opportunity of increasing your dopamine levels by 250%.
Benefits of Cold Exposure
There’s also a substance called noradrenaline which allows you to focus more easily and it can increase that by up to 350%. So you can, before a talk or before any activity in life, you can literally feel like this. I don’t want to do that. I can’t focus.
But you get into that cold bath, two minutes later you come out of it and you go like, “I want to do that. I want to do that. I’m so focused.” So these are the tools that I have given to you.
A Word of Caution
You must be warned, if you stack these two tied together you’ll actually lose the very essence of life. Somebody challenged me and asked me what is the thing that you’re most scared of when you’re jumping a parachute. I did all of that. I jumped a parachute.
I came down. I didn’t feel anything. Not fun. No stress.
The Power of Internal Communication
No fear. So these tools are so powerful. And to end it off all, I just want to say this that about 8 years ago I realized that I was depressed and the reason I was depressed was because my internal communication was just not functioning. Internal communication and it has changed my life.
It’s given me my life and my family and it’s enriched your life. So I hope I’ve inspired you to take control of your nervousness and harness your emotions before your future talks communication and life. Thank you very much.
