Nir Eyal

My career will be over.

And if I was a real professional public speaker, I wouldn't have these feelings.

And so maybe I'm not into this.

And I would limit myself.

A speaking engagement would come in and I would say, no, no, no, I'm not ready for that.

That crowd is too big for me.

I'm not ready for this.

And so I limited myself.

Now, here's what's interesting.

I'll admit to you right now, I feel the same physiological symptoms.

I have the dry mouth and that's why I keep sipping water and my heart's beating a million miles a minute because I know that thousands of people are gonna watch this podcast, hundreds of thousands of people.

And so I still feel anxiety.

I feel the symptoms of anxiety.

but I interpret it differently because I've prepared myself psychologically to separate the pain from the suffering.

The pain is just signal.

It's just information.

That tiny keyhole of attention that we talked about earlier, the signal is still coming in, right?

The signal is still there.

The data is there, but my interpretation is completely different.

So now when I have a big presentation, I still feel those symptoms.