I'm Jesse Thorne. On Bullseye, I usually handle introducing and promoting our guests, but well,

Hey there, this is Paul Walter Houser. Yes, the man with three names for each of his acclaims.

That's right. Paul Walter Houser from Itanya, the naked gun, and the Fantastic Four on Bullseye for maximum fun.org and NPR.

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I want you to think about the last time you knew you had to do something, or you wanted to do something, at least in theory, but then the moment came and you just didn't have the juice.

You got scared, or you started to doubt yourself.

You lost motivation.

Friend, I believe what you needed in that moment was a pep talk.

I have to give myself a pep talk every single time I parallel park. And I live in Chicago so I am constantly parallel parking.

And every single time without fail, I have to talk myself down, remind myself

I can do it, remind myself that I've done it before, that I'm capable. And I don't think that

will ever change. I think I'll just never get used to parallel parking. And I will just have to keep

being used to giving myself the pet talks. This is Paula Skaggs.

She and fellow writer Josh Linden wrote a book together called Tiny Pep Talks,

and it's full of motivational speeches for life's small but still daunting moments.

The moment when it's terrible outside, but your dog needs to pee.

Or when you're really bad at something that you've never tried before,

or when you have a little crush. The point of a pep talk is encouragement, of course,

and it's also a simple act of support. Really just the concept of you're on their side. You're

...