A short podcast episode (Areté +1°) by Brian Johnson presenting a behavioral tip from researcher Allison/Alison Wood Brooks: when facing acute stress (e.g., public speaking), reframe anxiety as excitement by telling yourself "I'm excited" rather than trying to calm down. The host summarizes the lab finding (participants told to say "I'm excited" outperformed those who said "I am calm"), notes that 91% of people intuitively choose the wrong strategy, and closes with promotional details for Johnson's new book Arete: Activate Your Heroic Potential (shipping Nov 14) and several preorder incentive tiers and launch-event information.
Questions this episode answers
91%
"I'm excited."
November 14 (shipping date stated in episode).
Austin, November 10–12 (launch event dates stated in episode).
Free advanced reader copy of the ebook.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Arete plus one Degree, a micro chapter from our new book Arete Activate youe heroic potential. 451 ideas in this thousand plus page book. Hope you enjoy it. If you get it, here's one of my all time favorite ideas. I say that a lot because I got a lot of all time favorites, but this one's tied for first as well. Literally fundamentally changed my own life. Here it is. I'm excited what to say when you're nervous Allison Wood Brooks is a researcher at Harvard Business School. She studied the most effective strategies for dealing with acute stress. First, a little test. Imagine that you need to give a big presentation in front of a bunch of people. Your heart's been pounding for days at the mere thought of this talk. Palms are sweaty, all that. What should you tell yourself? Should you try to calm down or should you try to feel excited? When Alison asked that question to hundreds of people, the response was nearly unanimous. 91% said they thought the best advice was to try to calm down. But that's not what her research shows is most effective. Get this Allison brought people into her lab and gave them a super stressful test. She made them give an impromptu speech, something that has been proven to do a very good job at eliciting a very high level of stress. Side note, did you know that people are more afraid of public speaking than dying? Yep. That's why Jerry Seinfeld once joked that if you have to go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy. So back to our study. Everyone is told that they have to give a speech. The normal stress response kicks in. She instructs half of them to say to themselves, I am calm. The other half were instructed to say I'm excited. And guess what? The I'm excited group way outperformed the group that tried to calm themselves down. Why is that? Because anxiety is what scientists call a high arousal state, while being calm is a low arousal state. It's almost impossible to shift from a high arousal state of fear, anxiety, etc. Immediately into a calm state. It's like cruising at 80 miles an hour and slamming on the brakes. Not a good idea. Much wiser to take all that fear energy and simply reframe it as excitement, channeling it into a positive, constructive direction and effectively pressing go on the accelerator rather than stop. Simply saying I'm excited is a surprisingly powerful way to make that happen. So if you feel so inspired the next time you feel yourself getting energized before something important to you, remember to say I'm excited. I hope you enjoyed that. Arete plus one degree from my new book Arete Activate your Heroic potential. The book will be shipped on November 14th right before black Friday in time to make it the perfect holiday gift perhaps. I wanted to let you know that we have some special giveaways if you think you might like to pre order the book, and even more goodies if you think you might want to give the book away this holiday season. Here's the deal. Pre order one copy and get a free advanced reader copy of the ebook today. Pre order three copies and get a free advanced copy of the ebook and the audiobook and a limited edition Arete coin that we'll send to you. Pre order 10 copies of the book. Bless you and get all of that plus an autographed advanced hardcover reader copy sent to you immediately inside the fancy Arete VIP box, which is packed with other goodies including this Arete T shirt, a Heroic t shirt, and 10 free annual heroic memberships for your gift recipients. You'd be able to give them a book and a year's worth of Heroic for free. If you pre order 25 copies, you'll get all that plus a free ticket to our launch event party in Austin November 10th through 12th and you'll get a personal voice memo. Thank you and a high five from me if you're feeling inspired to order over 50 copies of the book. We've been blessed to have a lot of CEOs and corporations do that. We'll give you a huge discount. Just let us know all of this. You can learn more about at Heroic U.S. book. Heroic U.S. book. Of course you can order the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Independent bookstores will be everywhere you can buy a book, Hudson's Airport stores, et cetera. And let us know of course when you've done that and purchased a copy or three or ten or more if you feel inspired to do so. @ heroic US book. I appreciate you and I hope you love the book. I'm super excited about it, super proud of it, and I hope it helps you and your families transform your.
