In this episode, Barbara and Dr. David discuss:

*Why performance anxiety is the most common fear among people

*The 5-Day STAGE FRIGHT Solution—a book written by Dr. David Lee Fish

*Why there is no one-and-done cure for stage fright

“Experiencing stage fright or speech fright makes you perfectly human.” – Dr. David Lee Fish.

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Dr. Barbara Hales: Welcome to another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors.

I’m your host Dr. Barbara Hales.  Today we’re lucky to have David Fish join us as we delve into the world of performance anxiety with veteran educator Dr. David Lee Fish the creator of the Five-Day Stage and Speech Fright Solution. You may be wondering why I would have an episode like this. The reason is, as we promote ourselves and try to attract prospective patients, we need to get up on that stage and talk. As you may have heard in the past, people view talking on stage as more deadly than death itself.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Absolutely. It’s the irony.

Dr. Barbara Hales: David Fish explains the science behind stage and speech fright, provides an overview of the course, and offers actionable advice for those struggling with anxiety. No matter who you are, this episode is packed with valuable insights to help you take control of your presence in front of others. Welcome to the show, David.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Thank you so much, Barbara. You know, this is fascinating for me. I’ve been working with my students on performance anxiety, speech fright, stage fright, and the anxiety that athletes experience. It’s essentially the same thing. It’s all performance anxiety, right? And it strikes in so many different ways.

It’s absolutely the most common fear among people; something like 75% of people suffer from performance anxiety to the extent that it mars what they do to a certain extent. You gave an example, the sort of traditional example of speech fright, being in front of an audience, maybe at a lectern or something like that. But it can be anything, like me right now in front of the camera, and you’re not even in the room with me.

Dr. Barbara Hales: You know the true secret is to write everything down and practice, practice, practice, just like you’re going to Carnegie Hall. Otherwise, if you think that you’re going to just wing it, you will just be a deer in headlights and you’ll get up on that stage and all of a sudden you look out at the sea and you lose your voice.

Performance Anxiety

Dr. David Lee Fish: Absolutely. You know, I think it’s a little bit more than that. I’ve come to the realization that there are three factors that play whenever anyone experiences performance anxiety. The first one is you do something in front of others. The second one is that you feel like you’re being judged.

You are being judged, or you feel like you’re being judged, right? It could be something as formal as an audition or a job interview, where you are definitely being judged. But even if you only feel like you’re being judged, it still factors into this. The third one is if that judgment of the people or person is negative, it would constitute some type of threat to you. You don’t get the job. You lose the respect of the people that you’re speaking to.

And frankly, all the preparation in the world will help, but it’s not going to get at that root cause of performance anxiety, that at some level you’re fearful of being judged. And if that judgment is negative in one way or another, it’s going to be a threat to you.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Can you walk us through the five-day solution course that you have and tell us what participants who sign up can expect to learn?

The Five-Day Solution Course

Dr. David Lee Fish: Sure. I call it the Five-Day Solution because of the book that I wrote about five years ago. Now we’re launching an online course, and it’s still called the Five-Day Solution, but it’s one day a week. When I do this, I also lead live workshops, and we can actually do it in five hours. I want to make it clear that it’s not necessarily five days in a row. The normal way that I offer it in my online class is one day a week, so that would be over six weeks, I guess.

Dr. David Lee Fish: The first thing I should emphasize is that at the center of what I do with the Five-Day Solution is mindfulness. Mindfulness has become very popular over the past five or ten years, maybe too popular. It’s maybe suffered from its own success.

But there’s something very simple, effective, and scientifically proven about the benefits of mindfulness. The Five-Day Solution teaches students over those five days to learn what mindfulness is, develop their mindfulness skills, and then begin to apply it to speaking or performance.

Personal Experience with Stage Fright

Dr. Barbara Hales: What inspired you to create this program? Did you suffer from stage fright?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Oh yeah. In fact, in the recorded webinar for one version of this, which is more for performers, I tell about the very first time I performed when I was in high school. I got a chance to play in the band backing Sonny and Cher when they came through Tucson, Arizona. That really tells you how you can do the math and figure out how old I am from that, right?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Okay, so I’m in high school. This is my first gig ever, Barbara. And I’m in front of thousands of people before Sonny and Cher come on stage. The spotlights are turned on and in our faces, and we start playing. The band starts playing, the rhythm section starts playing, and I play saxophone.

The rhythm section starts playing, “down bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom,” which is the vamp from one of their songs, “And the Beat Goes On.” So I’m just nervous too. We call it fight or flight, right? There’s the third part of it, which you probably know, freeze.

So with all of this happening, I froze. The rest of the band starts playing, and I am just holding my saxophone. The only thing that snapped me out of it was the director of the band saying, “David!” So yeah, I’ve known about stage fright from my very first time on stage.

I became a professor of popular music at Catawba College in North Carolina. I started a program of study for students of popular music. Many, if not most of them, suffered from stage fright as well. And you know, nobody does anything about stage fright, the most ubiquitous fear. Most people think there’s nothing that can really be done.

So with my students, I wanted to do something because I saw them suffering like I suffered. So being the savvy guy that I am, I thought, “Well, I’m going to write a book about it.” Problem was, I didn’t know anything. So I decided I better find out something. My way of doing that was to partner with a therapist to co-author a book.

We started writing sessions once a week. About a month into it, she said, “Well, what do you do about your stage fright?” I said, “Well, it’s kind of quirky, but I studied Zen when I was very young. When I was 20, I actually lived in a Zen Center for a year in California.

The Zen master taught us about detachment. That was the best way to handle your fears, anxieties, doubts, whatever—just detach yourself from them. They don’t go away, but they fade into the background.”

I’ve used that approach all my life since those days, and she said, “Well, that sounds like mindfulness, this new form of therapy that’s coming along. You don’t need me to co-author anything; just teach them this.”

So I started looking into it. Here’s the remarkable thing, Barbara, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the developer of mindfulness, studied with the same Zen master I did. So I thought, “Well, I actually do know something about helping others with performance anxiety.”

That’s how I got started helping my own students, my music students, the students in the acting program at my school, and then other students, like those giving reports in my classes, and then beyond that, the professors and so forth.

Dr. Barbara Hales: I know for me, not that I suffered from stage fright, but what helped me tremendously in my skill as a speaker was getting out of my own head. I stopped thinking of myself and how I was being perceived and judged.

I was told, “Listen, it’s not about you at all, it’s about them, your audience. You are there to teach them something, to give them valuable advice, to speak to them like friends, like you speak to people every day.” Taking that approach really helped me tremendously.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Oh, that’s absolutely wonderful. Absolutely great words of wisdom. When you do get, and I like how you put that, just getting out of your head, it often leads to something called peak performance or psychological flow. You find that it’s almost like an out-of-body experience as you’re speaking. It can just be the message and the audience, and you all become this sort of one thing.

Dr. Barbara Hales: What role does mindfulness play in the Five-Day Solution?

Dr. David Lee Fish: It’s absolutely the central role. The wonderful thing is that mindfulness is now being found to be so beneficial for other issues that plague people, from overeating to ADHD, you name it. It’s being proven that it’s beneficial. The great thing is that it doesn’t take long to learn. That’s why it’s a Five-Day Solution.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Mindfulness is a skill. Like any skill, the more you practice it, and I give students ways to practice their mindfulness and then apply it to their speaking, the stronger your mindfulness will be. The more you can rely on it to be there when you need it. After all these years, it’s my old friend. Whenever I get nervous, I just call on it, just rely on the mindfulness. So it’s the central aspect of the course, for sure.

Dr. Barbara Hales: What are some of the most common misconceptions about stage and speech fright that you address in the course?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Yeah, a wonderful big one is that there is a one-and-done cure for speech fright. You may know this, but it’s known as the dead man’s school. It’s like anger or sadness, saying, “I’m going to find a cure, I’ll never be angry again, I’ll never be sad again.”

That’s the dead man’s school because only a dead man can achieve that. The same thing with stage fright. Even politicians, actors—one of my friends, a well-known Hollywood actor who has appeared in hundreds of movies, still talks about getting stage fright.

Dr. David Lee Fish: So, the first thing is to stop trying to conquer it, stop trying to look for some elusive one-shot cure. The second thing is, we touched upon this earlier, 75% of people get stage fright or speech fright when the conditions are right. That makes it look much more like a natural human condition rather than a phobia.

It’s not a phobia for most people. In fact, experiencing stage fright or speech fright makes you perfectly human. Those are the two big ones: you’re not broken if you experience speech fright or stage fright, and there’s no one-and-done cure for it.

Challenges and Approach

Dr. Barbara Hales: What challenges have you faced in your career with performance anxiety, and how has that shaped your approach to helping others overcome it?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Yeah, well, you know, a wonderful question. I face it almost every day in one way or another, given all the different situations where speech fright can rear its ugly head, from talking on the phone to someone you don’t know, to doing an interview over Zoom, to all sorts of formal and informal situations. It does all the time for me, and I think it does for most people, or at least for the 75% of us who experience it. There is that 25% who don’t. It keeps me humble.

I am always challenged to deal with my stage fright and speech fright. But thanks to my mindfulness training with the Korean Zen master, I’ve learned how to set that aside and, as you said, get out of your own mind, get out of your own head.

Dr. Barbara Hales: What is flow, and how does your course help participants achieve this?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Yeah, I think given your audience, they will appreciate this. This comes from the psychologist Abraham Maslow. Maslow came around at a time that was a little bit later than Freud, but he thought, “Why are we looking at people who are abnormal and trying to figure out why they’re not normal? Why aren’t we looking at people who are super normal and figuring out what’s their secret?”

He found out that the one thing they share is this ability to have psychological flow. Meaning, we all experience it in one way or another, whether it’s reading an engrossing book, watching a movie that absorbs you, skiing if you’re an avid skier, or maybe jogging.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Paul Simon had a line in one of his songs where he said, “Have you ever experienced a period of grace when your mind takes a seat behind your face?” That’s kind of it. What song was that? Oh, I think it’s called “Think Too Much.”

And the point being, there are times when the thinking mind melts away, and we become absorbed in what we’re doing to the point we lose track of time, we forget to eat, whatever it might be. That’s flow. The more you can tap into that as a speaker or performer, it typically leads to peak performance. So, that’s what it’s all about.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Can flow lead to rambling?

Dr. David Lee Fish: We see that with some politicians. Sometimes they flow so much that they don’t stick to the message they’re supposed to be delivering, and they begin speaking about Hannibal Lecter or something. It’s wonderful to watch, but it can be counterproductive.

Dr. Barbara Hales: For our listening audience out here today, can you please give us two tips that the listener can implement right now, even before taking your course?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, I sometimes kid and say that the Five-Day Solution could be a five-hour solution or a five-minute solution. I can tell it to you right now. What my course does is help a student activate that. But simply stop trying to—when you have negative thoughts, fearful thoughts, and nervous thoughts when you perform or give a speech—stop trying to fight them.

Let’s start with stop thinking there’s something wrong with you. There isn’t. There’s some type of threat, and there’s a legitimate reason you’re nervous. Sometimes that threat is very obvious, other times it’s very subtle and buried down.

Dr. David Lee Fish: In therapy, they have a thing called the downward arrow. To give you a quick example, if we have time, I had a student who was a very talented singer-songwriter, but got really nervous during performances. I asked him, “Why?” He said, “Because I’m afraid my voice is going to crack.” I said, “Well, big deal. That’s not the end of the world as a performer, a singer-songwriter.” He said, “There’s got to be something deeper than that.” He said, “Well, if my voice cracked, maybe it would happen again.”

I asked, “And if that happened, then what?” He said, “Well, then maybe people wouldn’t want to come hear me anymore.” I asked, “And if that happened, then what?” He said, “Well, I’d have to give up my dream of being a singer-songwriter.” And then, “Well, I’d have to give up on something very important to me.”

So there’s often a legitimate reason for why you’re nervous, even if it’s not on the surface. Sometimes it’s very obvious, like auditioning for Juilliard School of Music, an important job interview, or asking a boss for a raise. Other times, it’s there, it’s just buried.

So, first of all, stop thinking there’s something wrong with you and stop thinking you’re getting nervous over nothing. You are getting nervous for something. Give yourself a break.

Dr. Barbara Hales: What is the second tip?

Dr. David Lee Fish: The second tip is to stop trying to combat that fear. Just when it comes to your mind as you prepare, perform, or speak, just bring your mind back to the job at hand, speaking or performing. Just bring it back, just bring it back, even if you need to do that over and over. Just keep bringing your attention back to what you’re doing.

I know that seems simple, but that’s the idea. You want it to be simple. When you’re in the heat of battle, when you’re nervous, you don’t want some complicated regimen that’s going to desert you. You want something simple. Just keep bringing your mind back to what you’re doing. That’s number two.

Connect with Jonathan

Dr. Barbara Hales: For those people who may be saying, “Man, this course was just made for me. This is something I could really benefit from,” how would they sign up for this course?

Dr. David Lee Fish: Yeah, I like everybody to start with a recorded webinar that I offer on my website. I spoke about there being parallel universes. One is the Stage Fright Solution, the other is the Speech Fright Solution.

So for those listening and watching this, you would want to go to speechfrightsolution.com. On that homepage is the link to the webinar. That’ll talk you through in more detail some of the things we’ve discussed today and more about what the course is about. Then they can sign up from there.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Now, I’m happy—this is the middle of July here, and people may be watching this five months from now, so it won’t apply anymore—but I’m actually offering an early bird special through the end of July because we’re just rolling out the course. So it’s a good time for them. If you’re watching this in the middle of July 2024, hop on it because we’re offering a significant discount.

Dr. Barbara Hales: Well, that’s great to hear. I found this episode to be quite interesting. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.

Dr. David Lee Fish: Oh, well, thank you for the opportunity, Barbara. It just goes to show you how ubiquitous this problem of speech fright is if doctors who are interested in finding ways to market themselves see a connection between that and speech fright. I’m not surprised anymore, but it is remarkable, isn’t it?

Dr. Barbara Hales: This has been another episode of Marketing Tips for Doctors with your host Dr. Barbara Hales.  Till next time!