Speak Without Notes: Fill Your Speech With Flow Using Ultraspeaking

Everything that UltraSpeaking is based on is just a lot of reps. We want a lot of very quick repetitions where you're doing the thing that you're trying to train for, so you're actually speaking. It's tempting if you mess up or if you're not doing well, or if the thing you hate that always happens to you is happening to you in that moment, to stop and say, "Ah, sorry, this was a bad one. Can I go again?" And that's the absolute worst thing you could do. If practice makes permanence, you're just teaching your brain that it's okay in that moment when things are unraveling to stop and start over. That's not what happens when you're in front of 200 people or you're on a date or you're speaking up in a group and suddenly, oh no, I feel like everybody's looking at me and I'm losing my train of thought. You don't have the opportunity to say, hey, can I start over? That's the best rep you'll ever get. It's when something goes wrong and you stay in it and you find a way out. Because when you do that successfully, now you've earned a level of confidence.

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before? What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting? Nothing is ever the same again.

Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance, access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance. Performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Ryan Doris, and together with bestselling author Steven Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio.

All right, so this is Dr. Tori Higgins for the Flow Research Collective Radio podcast today, and I am super excited to welcome Michael and Tristan from Ultra Speaking. I'm super stoked about this, not only to share all of the incredible strategies and tactics that they have to actually integrate Flow training into your speaking skills, but also to really share with the, with our collective how impactful the training has been for the Flow Research Collective as an organization. I've gone through this training, Rian's gone through this training. It's incredible. And I'm excited to, to share some space on the podcast with you guys to bring, bring all your words of wisdom and strategies to our community. So welcome.

Thanks for having us.

Thanks for having us. This is very exciting.

So I want to, I want to kick things off with, first of all, for those of our listeners that are not familiar, what is ultra speaking?

One of the most challenging questions to answer, try to try and define your own. Your own creation. Ultraspeaking is a new way to think about speaking, public speaking in general, but really we always ask the question, what's the difference between speaking and public speaking? Because the more we study it, the more we realize the difference is mostly in your mind. The stakes, the pressure, how we treat the audience. Everyone has a different relationship to it. But what we've noticed that's most interesting to us is that people already speak really well in the right context with their friends. When you're at home, when you've had a couple beers, like we already have those skills and yet something changes when the pressure rises. And ultra speaking is the study of what those changes are and how can we return back to this feeling of normality, this feeling of ease, because at the root of it, speaking is so fun. It's like dancing, it's like drawing, it's like surfing. It's a flow-based activity. And so Ultra Speaking began as this research project, and now it's a school. It's a community of people learning how to improve their speaking skills. And everything comes back to what is the root of communication? How can we go back to that human-to-human flow state of conversation? And how can we access that in moments that feel difficult or pressure?

I love that. I love that. And I mean, really what that all boils down to, to me, is how do we access flow on demand every time we speak? Because that's what allows us to get into that pure execution mode, just to be ourselves, to quiet that inner voice, right, that tends to spark up when we're in those high-pressure situations, or at least we feel pressure in a situation, right? So, um, flow plays such an integral role in how you train people to speak. So Can you explain a little bit about how flow fits into your ultra-speaking principles?

I think it's at the root of it all, and it may have been one of the first discoveries, if we can call it a discovery, that we made along the way. And that is that speaking is a very subconscious process, but as soon as we feel pressure, we want to turn it into a conscious mechanical thinking process. So anybody who's ever felt pressure speaking knows the feeling of somebody asks you a question or you're on a stage and suddenly your mind goes into hyper mode and you're judging everything you're going to say before you say it. You're trying to create fully formed phrases in your mind before they come out. And then the more you do that, the more the voices get noisy. And the harder it becomes to access your own content. And suddenly you can't even remember the most basic ideas that would be so easy to express were you not in this state. So what we've discovered is, well, when we studied speaking, and if anybody really thinks about what speaking is when it feels good, it has nothing to do with the words. It has nothing to do with What is coming out of your mouth really when you think about the state or the feeling you should be tapped into when speaking? What that is, is a state of presence or a state of flow, or you're just either tuned into the person in front of you or you're tuned into an insight, an idea you're trying to convey, a story, a memory. And when When you come back from a weekend and you're sharing this crazy thing that happened to you to someone you feel comfortable with, that's all you're really thinking about is you're just trying to remember every detail of what happened to you and seeing if you can convey it in a, in as truthfully as possible. And if you're trying to express a complex concept, it's the same idea. You're just trying to tune into this concept and you keep coming back to the concept. When speaking goes wrong, It's when we forget to tune in, where we stop tuning into the thing we're trying to express, and we start thinking about the way we're expressing it, or if we're making any sense, or start judging ourselves. But if you're in this state of flow, you know, because you're not thinking about the words. The words are an aftereffect, a secondary effect of being in the right state. They just flow out and you almost discover them as they're coming out of your mouth.

I love that. And so much, so much to unpack there because you're absolutely right. When we start to feel that pressure, and this is so well documented in, you know, the sports psychology, um, you know, research world, that we start to reinvest in the mechanics of how to do a thing even if we've mastered it already. And what happens when we do that? The skill falls apart, right? Um, because we're thinking too much about it. And so I think I want to pull the thread there of what you're talking about because You're talking about in order to mitigate that tendency, right? We really need to tap into, we need to be intentional about the state that we're going into the performance with. We also need to be, what I'm hearing is really intentional about maybe, Ed, to use your language, the one thing, right, that we want to convey and then we'll fill in the rest as we go. So, How do we start doing that? How do we do that when we feel a ton of pressure going into a situation? Because this sounds amazing, but what are the— what are the tactics here?

Well, we quickly discovered working with different professionals in the— in the world of business that as soon as you put somebody in the spotlight, as soon as you ask them a simple question, the first thing that they do is they hesitate. And that hesitation is the seed of everything that's about to go wrong in their speaking. And what we've noticed, what's fascinating about it is imagine you ask your CEO, what's the greatest invention in the world in front of the entire company? That CEO feels so much pressure to come up with the single most Great invention. And if in that moment the person doesn't start speaking, then enter the process of second-guessing. Maybe it's this. Ah, but is that really the greatest? Maybe it's the wheel. Ah, but we have the iPhone. And then the clock is ticking. And so it kicks off this cycle of doubt, hesitation, overthinking. And even if they come up with, you know what, I really found the answer. I think it's this. I think it's the, camera. The initial seed of doubt and uncertainty seeps into the tone of voice, it seeps into the delivery. We can— it's a palpable feeling. You can tell when somebody is confident versus when somebody has that hesitation. So what's fascinating is we began to short-circuit that process for people. We came up with this exercise called Speak Before You Think. Which can sound controversial, but the philosophy behind it is what if we didn't give your brain any time to think about the answer and you jumped into it? What we noticed immediately is that confidence goes up, energy goes up, flow becomes quicker to access, and eventually the person figures it out on the fly because once you start speaking, you enter a flow state, and in that flow state, Creativity arrives, clarity dawns, and pretty soon you figure it out. So I don't know the only way or even the right way to overcome all nervousness and improve your speaking, but I do know that the faster you get into flow, the easier speaking becomes. So when you're put on a stage or you're in a meeting, it's so tempting to want to think before you speak. And that's a helpful strategy. But make sure you don't overthink before you speak, because if you do, it will ruin the entire process. And for that reason, we often encourage people to practice the opposite. Practice jumping in, trusting yourself, and discovering that, that feeling of flow, which will autocorrect everything afterwards.

I, You know, and I think that's powerful because it takes away the pressure of the first thing coming out of your mouth needs to be the perfect thing. I think you're, you're talking about building the confidence that you're going to find your way. And I think the strategy really aligns nicely with the research too, because instead of being internal and thinking, right, which takes you out of the present moment, you're saying just start talking, be in the room, be with the people you're in front of, right? And have confidence that you'll find your way. Um, which I think incredible, incredible strategy. I actually, um, you know, like I said, you know, I had a few coaching sessions with you, Michael, and picked this, this tactic up. And, um, the other day I was actually in front of a crowd of about 200 people, and they, they were jumping in, they're asking me all these questions, and it was wonderful. And then I totally lost track of where I was in the talk because of it. And again, I've been joking around that Michael is on my shoulder during all of my presentations now, and it was— and Michael on my little shoulder said, just, just start talking. And, um, I told the audience, I've loved these questions so much, I totally— I forgot where we were, and like 20 people simultaneously yelled out my last sentence. We had a great laugh and rolled right into it, right? But I think But that you're talking, it, that's really a testament to the confidence of just being in the moment, be with people, right? So I think, I think that's phenomenal. What about, what about people who are training, right? That are maybe not in the moment yet, but even just thinking about speaking in front of folks gives them anxiety. How do you manage that state? How do you kind of start, start the process of building that level of confidence?

The first step, we stole this saying from acting, theater, which is staying in character. And it's the easiest step and maybe the first step. It's our cardinal rule at Ultra Speaking. We have the belief that practice makes permanent. So you should be training in a way that you want to perform as close to the way you want to be performing. So if you're in the middle of a training rep, and that's everything that Ultra Speaking is based on, is just a lot of reps. We want a lot of very quick repetitions where you're doing the thing that you're trying to train for. So you're actually speaking. We have all kinds of different games and tools that put you in a position where you have to speak on the spot with all kinds of different challenges. When you're doing so, it's tempting if you mess up or if you're not doing well, or if The thing you hate that always happens to you is happening to you in that moment to stop and say, ah, sorry, this was a bad one. Can I go again? Yeah. And that's the absolute worst thing you could do. For why? If practice makes permanence, you're just teaching your brain that it's okay in that moment when things are unraveling to stop and start over. That's not what happens when you're in front of 200 people or you're on a date or you're speaking up in a group and suddenly, oh no, I feel like everybody's looking at me and I'm losing my train of thought. You don't have the opportunity to say, hey, can I stay? Can I start over? What you want to do instead is, can I train my brain? That's the best rep you'll ever get. When something goes wrong and you stay in it and you find a way out. Because when you do that successfully, now you've earned a level of confidence that, oh, I actually managed my way out. And by the end of it, you hear the reflection of the group. And suddenly everybody's saying, oh, I didn't even notice that you were struggling, or you actually came off as really confident. So the concept of staying in character is that from the moment it's your turn to speak until 3 or 4 seconds after you're done speaking, you are embodying a confident version of yourself. And in doing so, it's like if your normal state is a 5 out of 10, you want to show up at a 6 out of 10 in confidence, and you want to stay there the whole time regardless of what's happening on the inside. You want to continue projecting this outward-facing confidence. Very quickly, you notice that regardless of what's happening inside, people can't tell. They're not transparent, which is the feeling you actually had. So after a while you realize, wow, that's crazy. I'm going through this crazy inner turmoil. I'm experiencing thousands of different things, but for other people, it just looks like I'm speaking to them and I'm coming off as confident, which is the default state of any human being. So once you've heard that enough times, you start realizing, Hey, this is working. And that projection of confidence that you get from staying in character actually turns into real confidence based on all of these reps that you've stacked one upon the other.

So I'm hearing reps, the quality of the reps, and then no matter what, stay at it during all of those reps. So I want to pull the thread on all of those because I think each of those pieces is really important because, so first of all, the reps, getting the practice in. I know I, I wanna talk a little bit more about, tell me how you train people to get reps in. Yes, stay in it, but I know you talk about scripts being a trap, right? Memorization is a huge no-no in ultra speaking. So if you're not writing a script, um, how do you prepare? How do you get those reps in?

We use something called the accordion method, which is a format for rehearsing your talk or your presentation without memorizing and without writing anything down. And the premise is really simple. If you have a 10-minute presentation, can you try a 2-minute version of that? And you might go, wait, a 2-minute version? There's no way I can fit it all in. Well, exactly. Something's gotta go. In fact, a lot of things have gotta go, but what remains in the 2 minutes is interesting to discover. And as you go through a 2-minute version, maybe even shorter, a 1-minute version, maybe a 30-second version, you discover that what remains is what's most essential to your presentation. That's what we call the one thing. So if you only had 30 seconds to tell everybody in the audience what you wanna say, what would it be? It's a really helpful exercise to go through. We call it the accordion method because we compress time, but then we do multiple reps where we expand it back. So we'll do a 2-minute, a 4-minute, maybe a 6-minute, an 8-minute, and then back to a 10-minute version. Each time that you do a rep, there's really only one rule: stay in character. Because you're teaching your brain to improvise within whatever time constraints you have. So imagine you're going on a— imagine you're asking your boyfriend or girlfriend for their hand in marriage, and you go through a 60-second version of that, and halfway through you're like, oh no, that doesn't sound good. And then you do a 2-minute version of that, but halfway through you're like, no, no, no, let me start over. If you continue that behavior, you're going to go into the actual thing without any trust in yourself. Because every time you've given up. If you're able to do every rep and no matter what, you find your way to the end, then by the end of the accordion method, you've said the same thing in 10, 15 different ways, in 10 different 15-time constraints. What's really cool about it is you start to internalize your message and you start to connect some of the patterns like, oh, I've always said this story, but I've said it in 15 different ways. The bottom line is that your message and your script becomes, it becomes natural. You don't need the right words. You kind of know the general flow, but each rep forces you to improvise in some way so that when you get up on stage or when you go on that date or when you go in front of them, in front of the board, it's conversational, it's natural, it's unscripted. Why? Because you've trained that way. And that's so beautiful because people are going to say, wow, you've— it was almost like you were so spontaneous. Well, it's because you practiced for spontaneity. So those are the most valuable reps you can put in when you have some event coming up that you want to prepare for. Practice through speaking and change up the time constraints.

Yeah, I, you know, this is, this is my first experience with you, Michael, as you asked, how, so how long is your talk? And I said 90 minutes, and you were like, fantastic, do it for me in 5 right now. Ready, go. And I was like, oh my gosh. But through that accordion technique, it's so true, you, you whittle down really what is the most vital pieces of the talk. And then, you know, when you show up on game day and they say, hey, we've actually cut your slot by 20 minutes, is that okay? It's No problem. Totally fine, right? Because the heart of your message is already internalized and everything else is kind of the supporting details that you can add or subtract as needed.

I think it's also the only way, at least for us, the only way we've discovered to prevent your brain from learning everything word for word.

Yeah.

Because your brain wants security. It does not enjoy the idea when there's pressure and it knows you have to perform. It doesn't like the idea of spontaneity. It wants to know Every single word. And when you, as, and the first time you have a good turn of phrase, it's like, oh, remember that. Remember that exactly that way. 'Cause we're not sure we're gonna be able to do it again. So if you make the mistake of preparing, but preparing with the same time constraints, so you go over, even if it's 5 minutes, but 3 times in a row, mm-hmm. Then you're learning it. And now that you're learning it, you've lost that elasticity. You've lost the ability to dive into your body and mind and discover new things and adapt to the moment. So it's really important that every rep be a different time so that your brain has no choice but to adapt. And I'm sure you've noticed this as well. The process of the accordion not only is incredible in giving you clarity, but it's also one of the most powerful tools for discovery. Found that when you go through the accordion, you discover all these little nuances that you didn't even know existed or you forgot about as you're going through the different time constraints.

Truly. Yeah. And I think in order to really apply this, this strategy, you have to be really intentional when you're practicing. Cuz like you said, I, I totally catch myself starting to use the same phrases or I tell the story in exactly the same way as I'm getting those reps. And so I give myself kind of a little check there of like, mix it up, mix it up. Um, And so I've heard you both talk a little bit about this before. If you don't do this, if you start to learn it, if you start to attach yourself to a script, you actually start to travel into the realm of performing versus speaking. Can you talk a little bit about why it's really important to stay in the speaking side?

Oh, so many reasons. Well, I think the most obvious reason is if you've ever had to learn a poem, you know that feeling of forgetting one single line and then there's no poem anymore. It's gone.

Gone.

Because it's like you just had one thread. So if you cut that thread or interrupt it in any way, game over. Whereas if what you're learning is not the sequence of words but to really understand and get to the core of what it is you want to share, of what your one thing is, of what the few anecdotes you might want to hit along the way are. And that's what you're really cementing and tattooing into your brain. Now you're, you have this incredible level of freedom because you're speaking and you can get lost. It's like, I love to say you, it's like you have a GPS in your pocket. You can walk in the woods and go take any path. It doesn't matter because at any moment you can pull out the GPS, take a look, and you know where home is. You know where to, where you have to go. It's the same thing in speaking. If you have deeply understood the one thing and where the one or two areas you want to hit or more, that it doesn't really matter if you get lost because you'll always be able to come back to the right place. There's also the side of what performance feels like. Performance does not feel like you.

Yes.

And that's so important because the second you stop feeling like yourself, you're not going to feel comfortable. You're not going to be able to— it's kind of like being caught in a lie. I don't know if this speaks to you, but I think every kid, some adults, but like at least as a kid, we felt this. You start on a lie, and then suddenly you have to maintain that lie. And every single time you open your mouth, you have to go back in your mind and make sure everything you said prior will fit in with the next thing you're about to say. And so it's such a difficult act because now you're acting, right? Whereas if you can find a way to feel like yourself, you mentioned before that speaking before in front of those 200 people felt like you were having a conversation with 200.

Yeah. Yeah.

That's what we have as humans. We have conversations. So if you can tap into that state of what it feels like to be yourself, to feel like yourself, then you're always going to be able to navigate. It doesn't matter if you fumble here or there, because that's what it, that's what humans do.

And I think there's so much cognitive load associated with performing and putting on a persona, and it influences even your tonality and your energy. So absolutely, there's cognitive load there. And I also, it sounds, it feels to me like it also creates a barrier from authentically connecting with the people that you are having that conversation with. And so, you know, not only is this vital for, I think, individual flow, But in order to cultivate a group flow experience, right, there has to be, you know, we talk about group flow triggers like familiarity. If you are not showing up as yourself, how can you be that group flow catalyst? And really that's kind of, to me, the ultimate speaking experience is if you can get the entire room into group flow and have this phenomenal experience and learn together, come together with new ideas and be innovative. That's, that's the ultimate goal, I think, for at least when I'm speaking with people. And you just, you absolutely cannot do that if you're not showing up as yourself authentically.

Totally. Where else do you go in with a script or with like prepared remarks? It's so unnatural to us as humans. And that's not to say it's impossible. You look at some stand-up comedians and they know to the dot of every laugh and every breath and Tristan, when he was competing in the World Championships of Public Speaking, he prepared the same way. He knew every line, every breath. And still, despite the hundreds of hours of training, it was really hard to get it perfect. It was really hard to, what's the word, to pretend to be natural. It's possible, but it takes a ton of work. And I think that the cost of that, besides the effort, is that it's not reproducible. So when you get a new speech or a new presentation, well, time to start from scratch. Whereas if you build the skills of improvisation, of navigation, well, then you have a toolkit for all the scenarios in which you have to speak, which feels a little bit lighter and and more natural.

Hey, it's Joshua with the production team. Thanks for listening to Flow Research Collective Radio. Before we dive back into our conversation, there's something to consider. It may be that today we are under-challenged. We're drowning in comfort. Now, in his book Antifragile, statistician Nassim Taleb pointed out something that's of key importance. Quote, undercompensation from the absence of challenge degrades the best of the best. The best horses lose when they compete with slower ones and win against better rivals. Now, put another way, who we could be, or our highest potential, is squandered by safety, coddled by comfort. If you want to train with us at the Flow Research Collective, it will require boldness. But what's life without a little adventure, right? To learn more about how you can get more flow in your life and achieve your professional and personal goals in less time and with more ease, go to getmoreflow.com. If you're a good fit, we'd love to train with you. All the best.

Absolutely. And I think, you know, what we're really talking about is getting reps that really situate you to get out of your prefrontal cortex in certain ways and access the depth of mastery, which you have to be tapping into your subconscious. If you are, you know, going line by line on a script, that's going to be a flow. Blocker, you're not gonna tap into that wealth of mastery and knowledge and experience that you have in that subconscious if that's where you're staying.

Um, totally.

So tell me, so I love that both of our training philosophies at FRC and at Ultra Speaking, um, we really, really emphasize first and foremost having, uh, you know, in our words, pristine clarity about your north star or one thing. How do you coach people to dial that in?

So we have, we do two things. We, we have tools such as the accordion method where you basically either kind of have you dive into this tool that will extract a framework from you. So it's really the only way if you're starting at 5 minutes and then 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute. 30 seconds. There's no other way to get to a 30-second rep without extracting your one thing. We also share that framework pretty explicitly. But as Michael was saying, and I think this is really important, there's the learning something by heart isn't repeatable, but it's also not transferable. What we want, we want to create resilient human beings who can navigate the world in all kinds of different interactions while feeling at ease. It doesn't— there are too many of us feel amazing in one environment, but terrible in the other. I can't tell you how many, and it's like the opposite for one person. I'll have one person walk in through the door. And they say, when I'm with my friends in a group of friends at a social event, I feel fantastic. But as soon as I'm at work, I can barely open my mouth. And then the next person walks through the door and says, at work, I'm a superhuman, I can do anything I want. But put me in a social situation, I don't know how to speak. And one person says, I can't speak in a group, but I can speak one-on-one. And another person can't speak one-on-one. And it just keeps on going. So what we want is, can we create an environment where it works everywhere? So we've created certain games to help that only work. You can only win the game if you're able to choose one thing. One of these games is a really fun one that's called Triple Step. And the concept is very simple. You hit play, you get a speech title, and you have 3 seconds to start speaking. So you start speaking. The speech title could go from what matters to what's the greatest invention in the world. It really could be absolutely anything. Expired pickles is one of our speech titles.

Perfect.

Start speaking. And as you're speaking, you're going to have random words that are going to show up. At a regular interval until the end of the speech. So easy mode, you might be speaking for a minute and get 3 or 4 words. When you get to hard mode, you might get double or triple the amount of words. So as you're speaking, you have to find a way to integrate the word into your speech seamlessly, as if it were part of the speech the whole time. And if you can't choose one solid direction upfront, if you get expired pickles, expired pickles, are the worst thing in the world, or expired pickles are a metaphor for life. I don't know, whatever you choose, it doesn't matter as long as you choose one thing and you create a solid, strong, deep groove for yourself. If you do it well, then it's going to be pretty easy to make the words fit into your groove. But if you don't have one thing, then you're going to get buffeted by each word and every word is going to send you in a different direction and you're going to have no idea where you're going. And you'll struggle even to find creative ways to integrate the words into your narrative. So this is one of the games we, but our method of teaching is very, very game-based. It's under pressure, time to speak, but through play. So triple step is one of the most powerful ones we have for picking the one thing, but there are other variants as well.

So I'm hearing a big strategy here is first and foremost, I mean, really at the inception of it, when you're planning a talk, first of all, defining what is that one thing. And this is actually— this is something that we've integrated into our coach training and FRC, that before, before every group call, we have our coaches identify what's the one thing that we want to make sure that people are leaving that call with and connecting with that energy and making sure that You know, that's the arrow that they, they thread through that entire call. So I'd love to pull the thread a little bit more on your, your games because this is a huge part of how you train people and we love gamification at the Flow Research Collective and your games play such a huge role in helping people get the reps and really build grit, right? So how do they, how can they build confidence to stay in character, to stay in it when the wheels are just completely falling off. So can you talk about how your games help us do that?

Yeah, I think any pilot can fly in smooth, clear skies. What makes a great pilot, I imagine, I'm not a pilot, but in this metaphor is how well do you handle the turbulence? And that's really what your passengers want, is the pilot that knows how to navigate turbulent skies. So you might, in the simulator, test out different conditions, maybe, maybe change the weather patterns, maybe increase the wind, maybe an engine goes out, simulate all the scenarios where things can go wrong, and get lots and lots of reps of handling those failure case scenarios. To the point where you become comfortable with most, if not all, of these doomsday scenarios. We created a suite of games that we call The Simulator, which has the same intended effect. You're speaking in all these games, but our job is to throw— is to cause engine failure. It's to throw heavy winds at you. It's to change the weather patterns. And that might be by throwing random words it might be by changing your energy, giving you— we have a game called Conductor where the only point of the game is to be controlled by the conductor. So like in music, if the conductor goes up, well, you have to meet the energy demands of the conductor. If the conductor says, hey, slow down, be more thoughtful, get grounded, okay, you have to follow that. So what happens when you are no longer in control, and there are all these different variables at play. Well, at first it sucks and you want to quit and you basically are like, I'm going to go the traditional way of learning. But the issue with the traditional way of learning, which is taught by so many public speaking coaches, is it focuses on structures, it focuses on frameworks, it focuses on basically like the skill of choreography. Here's a set, a sequence of steps. To follow. But speaking is part of life. It's so versatile. One formula is not going to cut it. So you either learn 27 different choreographies or you learn how to freestyle. And I think that's at the core of our games is there's elements of freestyling to it. You're thrown all these different variables. So as you're in the fire, so to speak, and you got words coming at you and that we're playing with your energy level and there's so much unpredictability, what you realize is that there is one thing that you have control over, and that's your ability to stay in character. It's your ability to put off a confident exterior despite the inner turmoil. Now, at first it feels impossible, but with practice you realize, oh, I do have a degree of control over this. And once you have that degree of control, then you're not wasting energy panicking on, oh no, everyone can tell I'm nervous. And that energy that you've now conserved, well, now you can put it productively towards breathing, towards thinking, towards— it's like extra storage space in your, in your brain. So we play with turbulence, but it's the turbulence and it's, it's training in turbulence that creates freedom at the end of the day.

So, and so the games, absolutely. I mean, I've played many of them at this point and they do feel impossible, right? The, the difficulty gets to the point where failure is inevitable, right? Um, tell me a little bit about how experiencing that failure, like what tactics do you coach people to use to come out of that with more confidence versus just feeling beat up?

So if you're playing the games and you're failing to the point where you think you suck, then the games aren't working well. In fact, what the games are supposed to do is create micro failures. Yeah. The little fissures down the line. Because if we take a step back and we think about what speaking is once more, the state we want to be in when it's time to perform is a state of flow. We want to be completely immersed in the concepts we're trying to convey. So we shouldn't be thinking about speaking, right? The feeling I should have is a feeling of complete trust that my mind and my body know what to do. So I don't have to worry about that at all. That's the ultimate state I want to be in. Now, the reality is what's most likely going to happen, even if you've achieved mastery, is that every once in a while, certain triggers are going to pull you out of flow, or at least close to getting out of flow. You're going to fumble on a word. You're going to say something that doesn't sound right in your mind. Somebody is going to react in a way that you weren't expecting. And so in those specific cases, you need to have strategies, very simple tactics that you can grab onto and apply based on the situation. Was it you who made a mistake? Did something complex just appear and you need to address it? Uh, did you lose your train of thought? For each of these scenarios, you might have to react in a different way. And the only way you're going to be able to react quick enough to get back into flow is if you spent time training. So in training, the games are supposed to constantly try to pull you out of flow, not make you fail and feel bad, yet they should be— you can make them more or less difficult. You can give yourself more time. There are different versions of the games that are simpler or more complicated, but you should be playing just at that right level of struggle where you're consistently kind of pulled out of flow and you have to apply one or more tactics to jump back in.

So I appreciate that, that clarification. Really what I'm hearing is, and this is exactly what we train people to do when they're, when they're learning new skills and trying to build mastery, is take themselves to the edge of their skillset, right? Where they're really being stretched and you are gonna experience micro failures there. You're in, you're in the struggle. Um, and I think I'm hearing that it does a number of things. Number one, that feeling of, you know, everyone ha— I think, well, many people have the question of, What happens if I lose my train of thought? Or what happens if I stumble over a word and misspeak? And your games are providing those actual lived experiences of like, so, so put yourself in that situation, pull that thread, go ahead and experience that thing in training so that there isn't a question. You can collect data on how that feels and then implement new strategies to actually manage it successfully, right? Um, and it, as you were talking there, it, it is making me think about, so Stephen Kotler, our executive director, he's actually, um, conducting research right now on that moment right before flow, like what happens. And, you know, the research is suggesting that either, you know, when you experience an event, right? So in this situation, some serious turbulence in your speaking, um, what happens that either pushes you in the direction of, you know, basically post-traumatic stress, right? It was their trauma, or did it actually push you through into flow and you have post-traumatic growth, right? Um, and so talk to me about the strategies in particular that you teach in these situations so that people actually have that moment and boom, get pushed into flow instead of, you know, fall apart on stage.

Yeah, I'll mention one that we absolutely love called summary prompts. Summary prompts are great because your brain is like a prompt machine, kind of like Google's autocomplete function, where once you start speaking, I don't know how it works, but your brain is able to continue the the train of thought. So when you blank, when you lose, when you're starting to feel like you're rambling, when you're losing your train of thought, one of the ways to get back on course is to use a summary prompt. An example of a summary prompt might be, I guess what I'm trying to say is, or the point I'm really trying to make here is, and so two things happen. Number one, The fastest way to get into flow is through speaking. It's not through being stuck in the thinking brain. So by saying these words out loud, you're creating the right combination of pressure and commitment. You started the sentence in front of people, so your brain's— your brain feels that pressure, and it's that momentum of speaking that activates the brain in order to deliver the result. And it's really fascinating because once you start that sentence, I guess what I'm trying to say is you're giving yourself a moment to snap out of the actual sentence and reflect on what was I really taught? What's the point of all this? And it's this process of coming back to the heart of what you're saying, that arrow, that North Star that helps you re-navigate and snaps you out of the the word-by-word, you know, evolution of speaking. So summary prompt— there are more techniques, but summary prompts is one of our favorites because it just helps people get back on track.

I think that's a great one and it lands for me a real tactic of, okay, you said before, speak before you think, but that's, I think, a great— that's an easy plug-in for, okay, you said speak before I think, summary prompt right away, buy me some time. I'm going to find my way once I start going. That's really helpful. I'm going to— can you talk a little bit? I know another one of your strategies, and it's also one of FRC's favorites, is just breathe. Can you talk? And we do state management before and after all of our trainings. That's, you know, part of peak performance training for us is knowing how to intentionally shift your physiology to make it work for you rather than against you. So when you taught me this strategy during my grit training experience with you, it really landed for me. So can you, can you tell us a little bit about that one?

Well, the breath is one of our core tenets. Pause and breathe, we call it. And if I could only choose one thing, I would probably want to talk about the breath. But it's not the first one we speak about, case in point, because it's a little bit more complex to implement. People, you, it takes a few more reps to get to that point where you feel confident enough to actually apply it. And it might be a little bit tougher to actually experience the effects of it in the moment. Like a summary prompt, I mean, anybody listening can try it right now in their next conversation. It works. It is, it's like magic. It's astounding. The breath takes a little bit of, a little bit of experience and practice to get to, but it's the most powerful one of all because, well, let me start here. One of the, one of the things people fear most when it comes to speaking is not speaking. Is I find myself in a situation where everybody's looking at me and I don't have anything to say. That's scary. And I personally think that comes from way back. It's primal. It's the primal fear of everybody's looking at me and I'm going to be thrown out of my tribe. And if so, I will die because I will be alone.

It's immediate amygdala activation for sure.

Yeah, exactly. Immediate amygdala activation. I have to reuse that. So the first thing we need to understand is, I mentioned this very briefly, but we're not transparent. People can't see inside. So if I stop speaking, Well, you can't tell if I didn't know what to say, if I'm doing it on purpose, if I'm lost, if I'm confused, if I'm panicking. No, you just can't tell. As long as I don't show it or I don't tell you, I actually just look like a confident person who's taking a pause. So anytime you blank, the first thing to understand is if you're in a situation where you don't know what to say, and you're not speaking, the people looking at you are thinking this person is confident. That's the opposite of what you're probably thinking. Because when you're in that situation, you're thinking everybody's looking at me, they think I'm crazy, and I shouldn't be up here, and why am I here in the first place, etc., etc. So the first thing to really understand is we have to take the fear away from not speaking. It's one of the most powerful tools we have. It's an opportunity and a gift you're giving your audience. Because if you stop speaking for a second, it kind of feels good too, right? It's like if music only had notes all the time, it would be horrible. Sometimes you need it to slow down, you need it to stop. And when it's words or concepts that we're integrating, that pause allows us to digest. So everybody in your audience gets to digest gets to come back to what you were sharing in the first place, because they were probably daydreaming anyway, just like everybody does when they're listening. So step one is just, let's be very clear, not speaking is powerful and it's a gift. It's a good thing. It's not a negative thing. We must reframe that. The second piece of the puzzle is that when done right, a breath does two things. One, it calms your body. So it puts you in a state where you feel so much better. And to access that, you need the out-breath. A lot of people who tend to panic and run out of breath, they're only breathing in. They're going, and that's, Literally, if you want to induce panic, just turning, yeah, just turning the sympathetic nervous system up.

Yeah.

As you go, keep the volume up, up, up, up, up, only out. But if you take one out breath and we have games that are specifically made to force you breathe in and then out. I mean, if you're listening, do it right now. It feels so damn good. Just let that breath come out. It feels beautiful. So first of all, you're kind of like relaxing your mind, stepping into your body, landing in a place that feels better than where you were a second before. And the second thing is that out breath will get you one step closer to whatever content you have in your mind. We like to see it as the snow globe, one of our games. That works specifically on the breath is called the snow globe game. Because the way we see it, uh, so there's snow globe, right? You have a round dome inside, you have all these snowflakes and a beautiful little something in the middle. And when you shake it, the snow fills up the snow globe and you can't really see the thing in the middle anymore. So the way I like to think about speaking is when I have an idea and I'm going to express it, the snow globe is settled and I see that little thing in the middle and that's my idea. The moment I start speaking, I'm shaking the snow globe. And so before I know it, what the thing I was trying to share has kind of become blurry. It's hard to see. So the only way for me to get clarity on what I wanted to say in the first place, and to even get a sense of like, what has it turned into now that I've spoken and shared more words, is to stop. So if you stop, Take a breath out. That's the quickest way to get the snow to come down. And suddenly you see with clarity the thing you wanted to share once more, and you can pick back up. And so it's this beautiful rhythm of, I speak, sometimes all you need is to slow down, but many times pause, breathe, and it's a way to access clarity. It's a way to calm your body. In your mind. And as a result, you come off as more confident and more clear.

So many— so I think so many important points in there. And first of all, so we also use in our Zero to Dangerous program, we talk about building the skills to settle the snow globe as well. So again, in alignment there, I think the reframe is really powerful. And I think some of this is mindset training too, right? That all the things that we kind of in a knee-jerk way think are scary or intimidating or anxiety-inducing about speaking. I— what I hear from you constantly is challenge those, right? You stopping speaking for a moment does not equal you're losing it and everyone's judging you and you just bombed, right? Really, it's an opportunity for your audience to kind of catch back up and reconnect with the present because maybe they were daydreaming, or maybe even been reflecting on what you were saying for a moment. It's an opportunity for you to manage your state and come across really confidently. So I think, first of all, identifying what are those things that make you really anxious about your performance, whether it's speaking or whatever else, and directly challenging and reframing them is huge. And I think really what you're calling upon is state management throughout the performance, checking in. And I think To me at least, a flag of I'm overactivated is that maybe I'm starting to lose my train of thought, right? And that's really just, it's not a red flag, it's a yellow flag of like, just pause, breathe, settle the snow globe, right?

Yeah. The hard part, Tori, is that this is impossible, near impossible to apply. By yourself, because what we're fighting against is the feeling. And one memory I have— Tristan and I once went to Hawaii for this adventure camp, and we were working with a freedive instructor who was teaching us to hold our breath underwater and challenging our perceptions of what's possible. And so when we tried in round one You know, the maximum was like 2 minutes. Somebody was able, I think Tristan held his breath for around 2 minutes. Then the instructor said, well, did you know that in that moment when you want to come up for air and your body, your body sends the signal to your brain of like, hey, or maybe it's the other way, your brain sends a signal to your body of like, hey, this is fun and games, but it's time to breathe right now. You're only at 40%. You have so much oxygen inside still. You have reserves that you just don't know you have. And can you stay patient? And your body will start contracting and you're gonna undergo through these physiological changes, but just, just know, even though it feels terrible, just know you're okay. You're not gonna pass out. Everything's gonna be fine. And I saw before my own eyes, Tristan, who had a 2-minute breath hold by the end of the day, and it was like maybe an hour later. How long was it, Tristan?

5.

Wow. Unreal. Unreal. And I don't think he could have done it on his own. I don't think he could have gone into the pool and had the courage and the willingness to go beyond the comfort zone. And when people are going to go into that meeting if that's the first time that they're testing out this idea of, let me just pause when I'm losing my train of thought, let me not panic and just try. It's near impossible because the stakes are too high and the wiring, the signal that your brain sends you is danger.

Yeah.

So I say this not to depress everybody and say that it's hopeless. I say this because from all my experience, the only way to improve at speaking is to practice with people. It's to practice in environments that are constructed where you get feedback, where the pressure is there, but it's not career pressure. It's not, you know, it's a designed environment for you to fail. And that's what Ultra Speaking has really created. Is this environment, this simulator where you practice with people, which is such an important ingredient because you need the reflection. You need that other people to tell you, hey, when you took that pause, that was so powerful. And you're going to go, but no, no, no, that actually, did you know that I blanked during that pause? Until you have that experience, this will continue to be theoretical and conceptual. So I just, It's so important to stress that for those that really want to feel self-expressed and thrive as communicators, as speakers, the most effective way, and potentially the only way, is to find an environment to practice with people. When you have that, the improvements are so rapid, so rapid, but without people, it can take forever.

But truly, and I want to jump into that just to add a little bit of a nuance, because I think a good chunk of the training can happen without people. It's just that if that's the only thing you're doing, it'll never transfer, right? The bridge to it working at work or in your social environment is doing it in front of other people. So if you're incredibly bold you could train like crazy on your own. And we have, you have access to free games with UltraSpeaking, but there are other ways, there are other options online as well. Find ways to force yourself to pause in the middle of your speaking and work on different concepts. Then you could just go out and try it. But for most people, the best way, the easiest way is to go into an environment where failing is celebrated, where you'll have a coach there or someone else who will be able to give you a reflection, give you a tip. But in order for the transfer to happen, you have to apply it in an environment that is as similar to the actual environment as possible. It has to be almost identical if you want transfer to happen.

True. Exactly. It has to be domain-specific to have high levels of transfer. And, you know, we teach the same thing in Zero to Dangerous. We call it the 6 levels of grit. And you can start off small just to get yourself used to that feeling. Of discomfort or your sympathetic nervous system, you know, flashing the red light of danger, danger. And we do that through, you know, techniques like modified box breathing with really long holds and really long exhales where immediately you'll start to have that sympathetic nervous system response of, you know, uh-oh, I don't have enough oxygen. And having that moment of, you know, reframing, having that self-talk of just pause, stay in it, and then having that really controlled inhale after that long pause trains that I don't need to immediately react. I've got this. And really, you know, going back to your breathing technique, what I'm hearing is you're coaching people to kind of pull that release lever when they're feeling a little bit overactivated, they're in the struggle, pause, downregulate for a moment, and that's what pulls you and releases you into flow itself. But I think that to have that confidence to actually execute on that, you have to be in that situation. You have to get the reps in. Andrew Huberman, in his podcast, in cold therapy, he talks about practicing climbing different walls. So staying in, you know, an ice bath or a cold shower where you have that immediate sympathetic response, you wanna get out really bad, but you stay in it, you've climbed a wall. You stay there a little longer and you're going to get that feeling again of like, okay, now I really need to get out of this shower. So, practicing having kind of that mental toughness and grip to stay in it. So, I think that can be really helpful to manage that stress response, but nothing is going to get you to where you need to be until you actually put yourself in the performance context, right? And get the reps in that way.

There is one application of the breath that can be immediate for anyone without training it, and that's taking a breath before answering a question. So when you're asked a question, it's the easiest way to feel good and give a better answer. You're asked a question and before you jump in, just, and then start speaking.

That's simple.

Those 2 seconds make a world of a difference.

I think that's a phenomenal rule, and I think I'm gonna steal that. I'm gonna coach people, right? Because I think that it downregulates, it gives you that moment to think. It also, I think, again, it frames you as being confident, right? You're not rushing into, right? Um, powerful.

Can I— so yeah, just for the amazing listeners who spotted the paradox Wait, didn't, yeah, didn't you guys say to speak before you think and jump in without thinking? Now you're telling me to think before speaking. Okay. You guys are frauds or something. And that's what I love about ultra speaking is that both are true. And it kind of makes sense when we think about life. What are the two dictating principles? Well, one is to plan. To pre-plan, to think through, to have a structure, and the other, and we call that maybe control. And the other is let go, surrender, go with the flow, trust your intuition. And which one is right? Well, both are, both are great strategies. And I think we've seen people who lean too hard in each way, and they're imbalanced. So to to mitigate this paradox. Both are true. We use speak before you think as a strategy to bypass overthinking, to jump into flow and to trust yourself to figure it out. And sometimes you get better results than if you had thought about it because you really harness spontaneity and the muse was with you and something beautiful came out of it. Other times, you want to take a moment to settle yourself, to see that first thought and then wonder, well, if it weren't that, is there a second thought? And as long as that thinking process doesn't turn into, uh-oh, but what about the third thought? And now there's judgment and hesitation. As long as you don't enter that fear mode and it's just, it's truly thoughtful and patient and unhurried, then absolutely, 1000%. Pausing before answering a question is a great way to get grounded and to just give yourself that extra moment to, to center yourself.

If I'm an overthinker though, and so I take that moment, I analyze the thought, I maybe have another thought and it starts to get away from me. What's your— is your recommendation just start speaking? What do I do?

Yes.

Okay. Pick one.

Well, basically you need, that's why you need both skill sets. If you don't have the speak before you think ability, which is a trust that I can start speaking and my brain will find a way to make it interesting, I will find a thread. If that trust is not deeply rooted within you, then taking a breath is 1,000 times harder because you don't believe that if you stop speaking or if you breathe before answering, that you're actually going to be able to come up with something. But if you know that worst-case scenario, I'll just start speaking, and that's right there for you, then you can take that breath. And the point of the breath is not to analyze actively the question. On the contrary, the point of the breath is to not think about the question. The point of the breath is to— or not the point, but the actual strategy for the breath is Actually, just focus only on your body. Focus on emptying your mind because it's from that state that you're going to be able to access your best ideas. So what we want is just a, ah, I just let everything melt out. I feel my body relax. And then in that pause, in that moment after the breath, the one thing will pop up for me. And that's when I get to go with it.

I think that's a really important clarification is don't, when someone asks you a question, it's not that we're suggesting that you pause to buy time, look like you're breathing, but really your mind is racing. You're saying, no, no, actually pause, focus on just breathing, then jump in. I think that that's a key tactical clarification.

That's why training this is so important because nobody's going to try this under pressure. Yeah. Like, wait, I'm supposed to not think about what I'm going to say and then it's going to just come to me? A better answer is going to come to me? That's why you have to put it in practice, test it out multiple times and notice, wow, this isn't, this isn't a fluke. This works. If I just let go and I relax, a better idea is going to come to me. And if it's not a better idea, the first idea that I had will still be there for me and I'll be able to go with it.

Truly. And I was joking around with, with both of you before we, you know, jumped on the call, but that The way that I actually implement this personally is I say to myself, "Just breathe," when I'm breathing, which I find totally derails that spiral of like, "I just forgot what I was supposed to say.

I'm totally blanking.

It's not there," right? That's a very scary road to start traveling down. It doesn't get better. So stopping that full stop by just breathe and just shifting very intentionally to that kind of slow exhale to downregulate, to me, truly does the trick to kind of unlock and find my way back on the road I need to be on.

Hey, it's Joshua here with the production team. According to the World Health Organization, poor worker mental health will cost the global economy $1 trillion this year. And without intervention, 122 2 billion working days, or 500 million years of work, will be lost between now and 2030. Can you believe that? So our mission at the Flow Research Collective is to solve this problem by decoding the neurobiology of flow states and helping humans access peak performance on demand. And that's exactly what we do in our flagship program, Zero to Dangerous. Zero meaning you're distracted, you're on the brink of burnout, and you're rarely in flow. But when you become dangerous, you get into flow reliably, regularly and surprise yourself with your new capacity. By working with hundreds of thousands of peak performers, we've perfected the 3 conditions for inevitable flow. So if you're interested in training with us, just go to getmoreflow.com. We'll free you to thrive in the face of pressing demands and endless distractions. That's getmoreflow.com. Thanks for your time, energy, and attention. All the best.

If what you've heard on Flow Research Collective Radio has been helpful, please consider doing us a solid and leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to this. Reviews help us connect to a wider audience so we can get these peak performance principles out to more people.