Headspace Studios.

Hi everyone. I'm Matt Abrahams, your guest host this week. Welcome to Radio Headspace

and to Monday morning. I teach strategic communication

at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and I'm the author of Think Faster, Talk Smarter,

and the popular podcast Think Fast, Talk Smart. I've spent my career helping people feel more

comfortable and confident in their communication, whether it's

giving a presentation, speaking up in a meeting, or just having an important conversation.

This week we'll explore how mindfulness and simple communication tools can help us express

ourselves with calm and clarity.

The fear of speaking in front of others is ubiquitous. It exists everywhere.

In every culture we've studied, we find it, and we find that it develops at the same time

when kids first become teenagers, that's when anxiety really begins to spike. Certainly for me,

when I was 14 years old, I was instructed by my English teacher to give a presentation on his behalf at a speech contest.

Every teacher in my school had to nominate one student to go to this contest, and I was his choice.

The only advice he gave me was, do something that gets the audience interested.

So I showed up on an early Saturday morning, cold outside, into a big, large auditorium.

My friends were there.

The parents of my friends were there judging this competition, and the girl I liked was even

in the room.

I had decided to do a speech on the martial arts.

This was something I thought that would be engaging.

I was so nervous about doing this speech that I forgot to put on my special martial arts

...