Her Discussions by Dr Faye - Confidence Expert: Stop Faking It (Communication Tips That Actually Work)

Episode Date: May 4, 2026

In today’s episode, we’re joined by voice and confidence expert Caroline Goyder, who helps people understand what’s actually happening when your voice shakes, your mind goes blank, or you suddenly start overthinking mid-sentence.We also get into why confidence isn’t about ‘faking it’, how your nervous system directly impacts the way you speak, and the small, practical shifts that make you sound calmer, clearer, and more in control when public speaking.What you’ll learn:⭐ How to stop your voice shaking when public speaking❌ Why pretending to be confident doesn’t work (and what does)🧠 The real reason your brain freezes when speaking (and how to fix it)⏸️ The 2 second trick that instantly makes you sound more confident💨 The 1 breathing habit that improves how you speakResources & links mentioned:Caroline Goyder’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinegoyder/Toastmasters Public Speaking Club: https://www.toastmasters.org/Ultra Speaking community:https://ultraspeaking.com/Links to subscribe / follow:Apple Podcasts: ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/her-discussions-by-dr-faye/id1835829612⁠Spotify: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/5viLYizHD4Zy6J42iqtPRo⁠Can I ask you a BIG favour? 💙Please leave a review or rating. It helps us grow the podcast and bring you more amazing guests.Share with someone who needs this; it might help them live a happier, healthier life.Follow us on social media or join the broadcast channel to send us your questions for our guests. I'll leave the link here: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/channel/AbY4liwxlLnewx4H/?igsh=MWhuaXFweGtucTB3cA==⁠🛑 Disclaimers:Opinions are my own. This content is for educational / entertainment purposes and not medical or financial advice.

You just have to know what your nervous system needs to get you into peak performance. Caroline Goide is a leading expert in confidence and voice coaching, helping you understand why your voice shakes and how to be confident in everyday situations. An out breath slows heart rate, in breath spikes it. I just got goosebumps when you said that. There's loads of science on nasal breathing. You also really helps the neurons in the brain a nasal breath in a way that a mouth breath doesn't. A lot of the tips you're giving relate to.

to self-awareness. The most important thing for speaking is eye contact. The George Clooney tip. Imagine everyone you meet is an old friend. I'm quite hardline about not having your script on your phone. When I saw that question, I thought, God, how do you answer this one? This is the million dollar question, isn't it? But first, please don't forget to subscribe or leave a five-star review.

It really helps us keep bringing new guests that help you live a happier, healthier life. Thank you. Hi, I'm Caroline Goida and welcome to the Her Discolde. discussions podcast. Caroline, our community have sent in so many questions about confidence and overthinking and especially as women who often struggle with this the most. This is an extremely relevant episode for all of our audience. So I'm extremely excited to talk to you today. But first, I would love to hear what is it that inspired you to go into this career in the first place? I mean, it was a lot about the problem of being in my head. You know, I left university and I got to

drama school and they said to me, you're in your head, you don't have any presence. I hadn't been a sporty kid at school. I loved movement. I hadn't really been taught it because you were either a clever kid or a sporty kid at my school. So although I wanted to be an actor, I hadn't really trained my body and they were saying to me you're stuck in your head, which means your alignments out, you're not breathing properly. But they didn't explain that to me. They just said, you don't have any presence. And I think I just went, okay, I don't really like that. feedback. It makes me feel quite unconfident, but I'm not going to accept it. I'm going to find my understanding of presence and I'm going to change. Now, I didn't really know how that would work,

but I just had a faith. I think I had a bit of a growth mindset that I could change. I didn't know how and it was quite hard, but I'm now able to teach my clients the easier way what I learned the hard way. And that's really meaningful because it meant something to me to learn it. I think so many women are fighting a losing battle. They feel more nervous in certain situations, but then they also receive that feedback that you received, which having that growth mindset meant that you could develop from something and not see that, not be knocked back by it. But I think so many women are knocked back when they get feedback and they need to improve. what would you tell someone who's received that feedback themselves

and is feeling a little bit helpless when it comes to confidence? I love that question. And you know what? For my first book, I interviewed Aadus Sacks as about confidence. A mini driver gave the best advice for this question, which is basically she said, when someone gives you feedback, when they give you advice, you've got to work out which parts of the feedback are useful to you.

And kind of be aware that it says more about them than it does you. We live in a very fast age now, don't we? Where people are judging at lightning speed. But I think I would say to someone, when you hear feedback, just check in with your gut. Get a really somatic felt sense, not in your head, which will spike you. You know, imposter syndrome is not your friend. But get a real felt sense of, is this helpful to me? Maybe it feels hard.

maybe I feel disappointed or angry, but perhaps this feels useful. And if it does, then a little bit every day, five, ten minutes every day working on the feedback will make the biggest difference. And I'd also say you might not change fast, which is frustrating in the age we're in. But if you just do the thing on a daily basis, like, you know, if we want to lose weight, we go for a run or we go to Reforma Pilates or we go for a half hour walk with the dog. And if we do that every day, it starts to change. Confidence works the same way. A little bit every day.

Trust the process. Trust your gut. And then it's yours. It's not someone else's. And I think that's what matters. I'm so excited to come on to the Gravitus method. So the method that you've developed to help grow their confidence. But first, we've got a section on this podcast called Buy or Bye Bye.

I will show you something. and I would like to know your opinions on this thing. Love it. So whether you would buy it metaphorically or say bye-bye, you don't really like it. So, excellent. It's a lot of fun. First up, power poses. Yeah, I'm a buy. I think I love Amy Cuddy's work. She's a fabulous speaker. And I think power poses, they've had a lot of flack from the academy, but they've blumen well work.

So yes, it's a buy. For those who have never heard of power poses, What are they and why is it a buy for you? Amy Cuddy looks at the body as the key to confidence and she talks about how when we open up our physicality, I'm not going to do it now because it won't help your Joseph who's doing our sound for us. But if you really open up your body,

then she says that gives you confidence because it says to your nervous system, you're in charge. I mean, Apex Predator is the wrong expression, but it says you're on the savannah and you're not threatened. right, whereas a small, closed off body says, you know, I am prey. Those who are watching on video now, the way that I am sat is very, I am prey right now. Well, no, because you see your shoulders, your collarbones, your breath is open. So I would dispute that.

I think if your shoulders were hunched and you were leaning forward. Yeah. But I think you're beautifully aligned in a relaxed way and breathing diaphragmatically. So you're power posing in your own way. to do this before a lot of my exams and then I saw some, yeah, some slack about it. So I stopped doing it. I used to do the Superman pose in the toilets for two minutes before I'd sit an exam. And, you know, regardless of whether it was a placebo or not, I walked out and I did feel like I could, I could conquer it. And I think if it's what works for you, isn't it? If you're

someone who gets anxious in a situation and that gives you that sense of power and control, do it? Yeah, exactly, exactly. I had an exam the other day and I did, I did, I, didn't do it. So I'm going to do it again. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Public speaking clubs. Yeah, that's a buy. Okay. Now, okay, fair disclosure, I joined a Toastmasters. What is a Toastmasters? Because I have no idea and it was in the podcast notes. And I was thinking, what is this? It's a club that you go to once a week and they help you practice your speaking. For me, it didn't work because I'm not great at rules. Same. But I think anywhere that you get to practice public speaking is a good thing. I mean, it's not also.

an introverse dream. If you're an introvert and the thought of the public speaking club is a nightmare, then I would say just practice at home. Put your voice on voice memos, run the presentation through, but you do have to practice speaking. You can't just write a speech and hope it'll be okay. Public speaking clubs are really good for that. So it's a bye. Nice. So we're going to come on to my experience doing my TED talk a little bit later on as well. But just on the toastmasters, what is the setup? Do you rock up and they ask. they ask you to prepare something to speak about or how does that work normally? There's a real formula and there's an MC and there are different speaking exercises and

different people will do things different weeks and as you get to know the group better, you'll be asked to do more. So it's a really clever framework for upping your public speaking, but only if you like rules, only if you like a very defined framework. But for the people it works for, it's absolutely brilliant. and there are other public speaking clubs out there that are less formal as well. Nice. And how would people go about finding something like this?

You just go online and you could Google Toastmasters. There's one called Ultra Speaking Online that people like. It's looser and it's more like improvisation. And there are groups for women as well. So I would just say, you know, your friend is one of your favourite LLMs. Put public speaking clubs in in your area and I guarantee you. you will find something. Fake it till you make it.

I think that's a, well... God, give me your controversial opinion. It looks like your torn or you're holding back. I think in the old world that works better. But I think fake it till you make it says there's a layer of overthinking or there's a layer of masking, there's a layer of overwork. And I would say rehearse it until you make it. and also regulate yourself until you make it.

Because I think what really matters now in an age with incredible microphones, great cameras, a world where AI can replicate humans to like an almost near level, I think the thing that matters more is our ability to be at ease in our skin. And I don't think faking it is about ease. But if you're really nervous and you have to see. say to yourself, I've got this. This is fun. That's the kind of telling yourself you've got this that I'm there for, but what I'm not there for is a kind of, hi, everybody, brittle confidence. I'm not there for acting. I would love to hear your opinions on what I found is the only thing

that's helped me with imposter syndrome because it relates to this. So when I first started working as a doctor, you have to overcome imposter syndrome because they're there's a difference between imposter syndrome and actually not being out of your depth. You have to hone in on what you are good at and what you do need to improve on because actually that can be the difference between someone's life or death. I would be in a situation and maybe a patient would be sick. And I had to make a decision of do I need to call my senior because this is not what I know or am I be doing the typical womanly thing of telling myself I'm not very good when I am.

And I found that the only thing, it is really hard. And I found the only thing that grounded me, it was looking at the evidence. So I would say to myself, I'd say, Faye, you have completed your medical degree just like everyone else. You have, you know, maybe managed a patient with these symptoms before. You know what to do. Or if I haven't managed a patient with those symptoms before, you need to call your senior. But I would hone in on the evidence. And I think that that really helped me.

find the truth rather than what I think a lot of the advice around imposter syndrome tends to be fake it so you make it and I don't think if that helps I think it it means that we lose trust in our brains oh I love that going from the evidence we build you as a woman it's so important to trust your brain and that fake it till you make it I think that what you're saying the masking the covering up it just it breaks that trust even more absolutely love that it takes us out of ourselves into something we think we should be whereas I love this thing about trusting the evidence, trusting your instinct about is this something to refer

or is this something I, even if I'm doubting myself, evidentially no, I know enough on, I mean, on a not life and death level, when I left my voice masters, I said to my, it was a bit different teaching actor's voice. Nobody's going to die if you get it wrong. But I said, I don't know anything. and he said you know more than they do. And that was similarly, it's like trust, trust that you know enough

and also trust your instinct to know when to ask. And for a bettick, that's a much more serious, you know, choice to make, isn't it? An example with my TED talk was when I was going to walk on, I was telling myself in my head, you have practiced this to death. You have put in the hours. The evidence is you have run this through. perfectly, perfectly multiple times.

The evidence is there. I trust the work that you have put in. Whereas if I hadn't done the work and if I hadn't put in the hours, hadn't put in the graft, and I was stood about to walk onto that stage saying, Faye, you're amazing. You can do this, faking it till I make it.

And then I walked out and I absolutely bombed it. What does that do to my trust in my brain, my trust in my self-esteem, my trust in my ability. It just, it's, because you're giving yourself mixed messages. It applies to every, you know, all these situations. Our gut always knows when we're ready. Now, that readiness always has jeopardy because live performance is always a risk, isn't it?

But there's absolutely something for everybody to get to when you're doing any kind of performance that your gut says I've done enough to know that I can hit a certain level, Even if it goes wrong, I will hit that level. And that's all about, as you say, Faye, rehearsal. Yeah. But rehearsal doesn't have to be in the mirror.

It can be sitting down with your phone talking it through. It can be tidying up the house while you run the speech. It can be running it to your mate on Zoom. You know, it can, rehearsal can be loose. Yeah. It can be fun. Believe you. No, me and my boyfriend, we had great fun rehearsing.

Exactly. It was my side talk. I was doing dances around the living room by the end because I was so delirious and we'd run it so many times I was just, it was quite fun. Actors would totally buy that because then it's in your body.

Actors will say get it into your body. Nice, okay. Which dancing it does. Memorizing scripts, word forward. It depends. Okay. So we've just been talking TED and as you know with Ted,

I said when I did my TED, it's almost like a poem. It's like because there is, you have to be really timed, you can't run over, you've got to hit certain signposts. So I think my TED was 96% true to the script. Yeah. With a little bit of riffing. But most presentations are not TED.

So most of the time, I'm a huge fan of mind maps. Okay. Love a mind map because it's not like being at school. When we're remembering a script, it's like we're back at school in the French class. Whereas if you're visual and you have a map, in your head in front of you at first when you're rehearsing, when you get on stage the maps in your head, you just remember the signposts, you remember the pictures. And it's such a lovely way to do a speech. Nice. Filler words. Oh, I did a radio four program where they

edit, it was on filler words and then they didn't edit them out, which was clever, clever editor. I think filler words are okay as long as they're not a tick. So I have said filler words tick, which is like. I use like in every sentence, every other, you know, it's awful. You know I also do as well. I'm quite bad at filler words. I am cutting every single like out because it sends shivers up my spine. I think, why are you diluting your voice with these words?

Do you have any tips for the girlies who are listening? how can we get rid of these filler words or minimize them? This is the million dollar question, isn't it? Mine is sew, okay? So if you're listening, just listen out for the soes. My strong sense around fillers is that if you just close your mouth, which sounds like the kind of advice my mother would give me, if you just close your mouth instead of using the filler word

and take a relaxed breath, it does two things. an in-breath allows your brain to take in new information. So it helps you think, there's a sew. And it also stops you doing the filler because your mouth is shut. So just taking a full stop, close mouth, let the air come in, and then saying the next bit will minimise fillers so quickly. But we've just got to practice. So a breath instead of a filler?

Yeah. That in-breath, it refueles your. brain, it tells the system it's safe and it also takes in new information. And when we're rushing and, you know, kind of this, you know, going really fast and I'm talking that I'm not really taking in the oxygen and my brain can't think properly. So I'll start tripping over words and doing more fillers and it becomes this horrible vicious circle and dumb, and I'm really stuck. I've never thought of that. But if you're going on a run, you want to be breathing properly to get the oxygen to your muscles. If you are speaking, you need to be breathing properly to get the air

to your brain. Otherwise, you will speak like silly things. Why don't we learn this at school? And the other thing is there's loads of science on nasal breathing, you know as a runner. It also really helps the neurons in the brain a nasal breath in a way that a mouth breath doesn't. So making sure we're getting our nasal breathing in. Closing the mouth on those pauses. Brilliant. Okay. Q cards. My mind maps are a kind of visual cue card.

A mind map is a set of cue cards all on one page, so I think I'm in for the cue cards. As long as you're not reading them, you know, if someone's awe doing it on your phone, cue cards, I'm quite a hard line about not having your script on your phone. I currently have the podcast questions on my phone right now. I'm very sorry.

But you're not looking at it. If you were staring at it, at your phone, it's fine down there, right? The most important thing for speaking is eye contact. So as long as you're using a mind map or a cue card or even a script, as long as your eyes are up, that's okay. But if you're reading it, not okay. Bye-bye. I've got a side question that is, I think it will be relevant to the audience. I am made of honor for my friend's wedding in September. Oh, exciting. Do you have any tips for wedding? speeches because I'd imagine if you're not in a job where you are required to speak, you may be

required to speak at someone's wedding and that is a lot of pressure. It's so high stakes, isn't it? Because it's all the people that you love. It's a once in a lifetime, you hope, day. My father died a year ago and so at his funeral, you know, we thought about the rather sadder end of this. And these moments in our lives where we're speaking for the people that we love are really, really important. But I think what I would say is that the best advice I got on this was for that first book and it was the playwright David Hare and he said, nobody else can tell you what to say. It's a bit like what we're talking about in terms of being a medic and that real felt sense of what's true for you. You have to really sit down and think, well, two things. What is it that I

want to say about this person I love? And how would they like that? it to be framed? I don't think, well, obviously with a funeral, you can't ask them, but with a wedding speech, I don't think you would go to the bride and groom and ask them, how would they like it to be done? You might say, what's your favorite wedding speech you've ever heard? That would give you a sense. But then I think it's like choosing clothes for a wedding. You think about what's their, what's their vibe, what's their style, what would work for this person? And then with that in mind, you really, really speak from the heart, but you have to rehearse it. And I think you have to rehearse it with someone you trust. And you have to ask them for a couple of congratulations,

things they love, and one consideration, which might be slow down or it's too long or have more fun. But I think if you get someone to tell you what did you love and then one thing you think I can do better, you have a bit of an outside eye on it as well, an outside ear. we had Heather Elkinson on the podcast a few weeks ago and she said something that she's a career leadership coach and she said a phrase that I really, really, really loved. And it was perfectionism avoids feedback and excellence seeks it out.

Love that. So I love that, yeah, you said ask for feedback, seek it out, don't just settle for, that was absolutely amazing. That was brilliant. That's really, really helpful. Before the podcast started, you said some really interesting comments about AI, and we'll come on to AI in more detail a little bit later on. But on the point of wedding speeches,

I was having a conversation with a friend recently, and they said they went to a wedding where the best man's speech was painfully AI. Oh, no. So impersonal. And they almost felt like at the end of the speech, they would say, insert name, here is my best friend in the entire world. It was just so generic.

Oh, God. So I really, really, really love your point that no one can tell you what's right, especially not a bloody robot. No, because it's about love. And robots, they don't do love. They might talk a good game, but they don't have a heart. Yeah, yeah. It's very wizard of alls.

Yeah. Voice training apps. Oh, okay. So fair disclosure, I've never. never used one for obvious reasons. I've heard good things about Microsoft voice coach in that it will help you on your pace, your pause, too many words. So I think probably, surprisingly, I would say bye to get you to a kind of basic level of good, but it's not going to get you beyond that. So yeah, to a level. Okay. I'm a bye. That was a very lovely segue into, so if the voice

training apps are not going to get you to that level. What is? Oh, here we go. We all have a great voice inside. So there's my filler. There are a few medical conditions where you might not. So with that, you know, corollary, all of us are able to speak with power and with energy and with ease and with expression.

We just have to let it out. There's a lovely Aristotle word called. Enteliki, which means the oak contains the acorn. And I think we just have to look at what stops us expressing ourselves. So when people were saying to me, you have no presence, you're in your head, I had a very noisy inner critic. My body was held, my shoulders were tense, and I wasn't breathing in a diaphragmatic way, so my voice didn't have power. I was very much in fight or flight a lot of the time. And when we're in fight or flight, our voice flattens out because the nervous system figures you're not going to survive by being you're relaxed best. You're going to survive by

running away. So the thing that the AI apps won't do is help you self-regulate, help you be playful, help you find the inner expression that's deeply you. And I think the thing I say to clients is when you're at your most relaxed, when you're having a fireside chat with your. buddies over a glass of something lovely or a cup of tea, how do you talk? Because that ultimately is the you that's going to work on a TED stage. Even, I mean, even to some extent in front of the UN or Davos being, you might be more formal in style, but that ease, that expression, that sense of what matters to you, that's where power is for speakers. You can't pull it in from outside. You have to find it within. That's really interesting because, um,

I remember when I first started filming YouTube videos and I'd film them in my living room on my camera at home. And before I filmed them, I would put on loud music, really like hype, girl power songs, like girly pop princess music to try and get me motivated and psyched up. And then what happened is I sat down in front of the camera and I was just like so tense and not myself. And I've done it before, before.

big things, big events where I have this mindset like rocky Balboa vibes of trying to get myself going and it just has the complete opposite effect and we were talking beforehand about my proudest achievement from doing the TED Talk was not doing the TED Talk. It was regulating my nervous system beforehand because it wasn't a case of me standing outside that door going, come on Faye, you can do it. You can do it. When I was getting mic'd up, I got mic'd up and I said, I'm going to sit down on the ground and I sat down on the ground because I just knew that that was how I would feel my calmest. Do you find that maybe a mistake that other people make? It depends.

So the actress Catherine Hepburn said, you've got to know, do I need to get the motor running or do I need to kind of calm down? And I think I'm the same as you, Faye, in that my nervous system can get really overstimulated and then I will rush and I will lose contact with the audience and it will be a disconnected experience that I like you need to ground. But I know from my clients that that's not true for everyone. So I think to that Catherine Hepburn point,

you just have to know what your nervous system needs to get you into peak performance. And that might be different at 9am to going on at the end of the day. When I did my TEDx, I was a bit of a kind of control. freak unlike me in that I said I really want to go early because I knew that by the end of the day my focus as much as I keep it gets scattered. So I think there's also something about as much as you can knowing when your energy is on point and stewarding it. Now that doesn't

always, you know, sometimes you've got to go on at 5.30 in which case how can you get yourself like you're saying to that point by grounding, drinking enough water, not having too much coffee, taking yourself off, you know, walking around the block three times, whatever it is that gets your motor running at the right speed. It feels like a lot of the tips you're giving relate to self-awareness, which is really interesting in a world where I think our awareness is being pulled away from the self.

I mean, I've just been on the London Tube. you know, this morning. And when I see people who I know are going to work on the tube, distracted, scrolling, staring at their phones, watching a good show that someone's made for them, you know, deciding what to buy, you know, I love all of those things, those distractions. But if you're going into work to do a presentation, put your phone down, stop, pay attention to this incredible system in your body. What's my heart up to? How's my breath this morning? Which seatbone am I sitting on? How, you know, what, what is my nervous system saying? What are my levels of safety? How am I perceiving the space around me? Am I filtering for connection or for threat? Because that, as you say, that is the awareness that when you walk into a presentation or log into teams, you notice, oh, I'm filtering for threat. That's interesting. Slow my heart rate a bit by slowing my out breath before I speak or, oh, I'm in connection. This is fun. Great. you know, carry on.

And it is, I think the superpower now is the ability to put your phone down and all the distractions on it that aren't yours and come back to this incredible thing in our own system that allows us to really show up with awareness and presence to the world and control. Because most people are not self-aware and they're not in control. So if you're the 10% who is, guess what? You stand out. That's super, super helpful. Before we come on to your thoughts on AI and also what is the Gravitass method,

I would like to do another section that we've got called Real or Not Real, where I will show you a social media clip and I would like to hear your thoughts. There's a lot of misinformation online. So it's always good to hear an expert's opinions. The next time you order a cup of coffee, it's to ask for a 10% discount. not because you expect to get one, but because it's a really fucking uncomfortable situation. In many cases, you're asking someone who can't give you a discount. It's completely out of your control. There are people around you, and it's just a weird thing to ask.

So I wrote the chapter. I'm in Sydney. And I thought, I'm a fucking hypocrite if I don't do this. So there's like a little cafe near where I work. I was like, I'm going to do it. And there's no one there. I was like, sweet. No one's in the queue. And as I get there, it got to the point where I just didn't get served. And then there's two people behind me. I was like, fuck, don't do it. And I was like, well, it's going to feel very difficult right in the next chapters of the book, feeling like a fraud. So I was like, can I get a 10% discount on my coffee, please? And she just looked at me like, what?

And I was like, I'm such an entitled look prick right now. This is how I must seem. And she was like, what do you mean? And I was like, can I get a 10% discount? And at this point, I was like, this is the most uncomfortable I've been. I was like, I would rather go out 5,000 people in a crowd. Nothing pre-organized. I'd rather do that than do this situation right now.

And she turned around behind and they had like a stamp card where you get your 10th coffee free. And she was like, you buy 10, you can get 10% off. And then I walked away, I was sweating from that. And I realized why it was such a great example, because it's not about the discount. It's about putting yourself in a situation that makes you feel very uncomfortable. And then when you leave, you realize,

why did I create this fast? Why was I sweating? Why did I have adrenaline? Why did I have sweat patches from such a simple interaction of being uncomfortable? And I felt very accomplished. And I won't lie, when I got back to writing, I felt invigorated.

I'm never going to use that stamp card. To me, I'd rather not worry about the and pay extra for the coffee. But I was like, wow, I was like, what else can I do? And I only did it as an exercise to help me with the book writing process. And I was like, wow, I get it. I get why people would tell other people to do that. Because people seem to think people are paying a lot more attention to us than they actually are.

Mark Manson, he said, as his favorite quote on your podcast, people wouldn't care what other people thought of them so much if they realized how seldom they do. Thoughts. Mixed thoughts. I think that I'm more interested in. the how than the what. So the asking for 10%

that feels a bit naff unless it's their cafe otherwise, you know, what... You can definitely tell it's a man that's come up with that because I think the thing that I don't like is, yeah, you feel uncomfortable but you're also making someone else feel uncomfortable like her boss is watching. Yay, yay, yay!

The kind of the how of the advice, which is to put yourself into situations that make you feel vulnerable, yes, and then regulate through that. But maybe it's ask if you can, do the presentation or go to a party and walk over and have a chat with people you've never met before if you wouldn't do that. But there is something really powerful about stepping out of comfort zone and finding ease while you do it. But I'm not, yeah, the coffee thing, no, not sure

about that. Yeah, yeah, it's not a great, great example. I like your examples of going up to people who you have never spoken to before. I sometimes find when you enter a room where no one speaks to anyone and you don't want to go over to someone new you're worried about what they will think of you but then the moment someone comes over to you and says hello to you and you really really really appreciate that person it's lovely yeah we love it and even if they're not feeling it it's not I think his thing about don't don't make it a big deal most most people are not doing things that are personal to you so even if someone kind of you know brushes you off Okay, you know, that's fine.

Someone else will chat to me. There's something about that lightness. And I'm learning it as I get older. If we can move through the world with lightness and less attachment to other people's opinions of us, I think there's a paradox which is that we pull people in more. Nice. And I think that's at the heart of what he's saying. So, yeah, I'm kind of, I'm there.

98%. Do you have any practical taste? tips that have helped you, I guess, as you say, travel through the world with more lightness. So when you say travel through the world with more likeness, do you mean caring less about what other people think caring less, putting less pressure? What do I mean? Yeah. I think there's two levels to this. I'll come to the deep level.

The lighter level is the George Clooney tip, which is in my mind. imagine everyone you meet as an old friend, which I think unlocks a lightness in our nervous system with filtering for connection. And that playfulness is really, really compelling. So that's the kind of simple version of it. But I'm deep in a breathwork facilitation course at the moment. And what I'm learning about a daily breathwork practice is how that kind of gets under the bonnet of my nervous system. and gives me a deeper level of ease, which is almost the unconscious. I sleep better, things worry me less, I show up with more lightness.

So channel George Clooney on one level, but also find things, whether it's meditation or breathwork or Alexander Technique or chigung, whatever your thing is, can be boxing for some people that gets your nervous system to a place of balance because that's where the lightness starts to become who you are, not something you're trying to do. Now, I'm at the foothills of learning about this, but it's kind of magic.

It's really interesting how confidence is often portrayed as very balshy and, yeah, like a bravado, you know, when actually what you're saying is it stems from almost car, like calmness, which is everything we're not taught about confidence. The metaphor I come back to a lot is pilot of the plane. What's that going?

You know when you're on a flight and there's a pocket of turbulence and you hear the pilot's voice over the intercom, there's something about the calm that tells you, we'll be through it in 20 minutes, you put seatbelts on. And the voice has a really powerful effect on our nervous systems. And there is a kind of confidence, you know, if I'm going to a fitness class, then I might want that very Tony Robbins, you know, more press-ups. But most of the time what I want is to feel safe.

And the pilot of the plain voice that makes you feel safe comes from a very deep place of safety in someone's own nervous system. And I think in a world that is so, is feeling so uncertain and sometimes quite unsafe, I think this inner feeling of safety in someone's voice and in their physicality, in their face, it's really important. Nice. It's not there in our leaders much at the moment.

You have worked with some very high stakes communicators and politicians and you've recently been analysing some of the gestures and movements that they've done. In people like Donald Trump or Zelensky, I'd love to know what you've learned from analyzing those moments specifically in these high pressure contexts. I love that question. I mean, the first thing I would say is when I look at leaders, you know, like Zelensky in the Oval Office, you just think, how hard must it be to walk into that room? So the first thing I always have, and, you know, when I've worked with Heads of State, rarely, but sometimes, I also look at them and go, what must it be like to wake up every morning with that responsibility?

incredibly hard. Within that, I often notice at that level, the Zelensky-Trump moment a few months ago was interesting because both leaders were, their nervous systems were pinging off each other. They were jangled. What do you mean? When I'm not on my centre, when I'm dysregulated, when I've got too much adrenaline, too much cortisol, I'm in fight or flight, then I'll show up. My voice will be a bit aggressive. I might be faster than normal. I might be a bit punchy in my tonality. You know, you can hear a few global leaders who have that kind of slightly punchy, slightly edgy. My empathy's not there. You can hear it in my voice because my voice is a bit flat. That in our homes, in our houses and in the political

sphere instantly has an impact on someone else. So if I start talking like this to you, your nervous system is kind of picking up that energy and then you'll send that back to me and we'll have a really, really different discussion. It's more like a kind of BBC political show. I always look at what's going on underneath that leader's presence. Like the Mark Carney example at Davos where he was really, really calm. Now probably some Canadians are looking at that

and not thinking what I'm thinking. But when I watch someone like him, I say, God, with all that pressure on you, you're able to stay really centered, really calm and really present. Hats off to you. And I also watch other leaders on the world stage who show up disregulated, distracted, unfocused, rather, aggressive. And I think you've got all this responsibility and you haven't taken the time to centre your own nervous system.

There's a lovely Marcus Aurelius quote where he says, how can we lead others if we don't first lead ourselves? And he ran the Roman Empire. That's what I look at in the good, the bad and the ugly of some of the political leaders. I mean, I can't even go there with some of them at the moment. It's so interesting because for the whole of this conversation, I felt so calm the moment your voice changed.

I did. Like I felt it in my chest. We ping. Why are these people entering these high stakes situation? in a position where their nervous system isn't regulated and we know that when we're in fight or flight our amygdala, our emotional processing part of our brain. The system goes down, frontal cortex goes down.

Yeah, we're not using our executive functioning. Like that just terrifies me a little bit, I can't lie. It's terrifying and it's also there's something terrifying it feels like it's about social media and it's back to the point of everybody staring at their phones and swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping, swiping, if we're not regulated as the electorate, how are we going to choose leaders who are regulated?

So we kind of have to look to ourselves. I really, really hope this move to take teens off social media, to start to hold the social media companies to account. I hope it's like when driving, when they suddenly went, hey, we shouldn't be drinking alcohol and we should probably be wearing seatbelts. I hope that moment's coming for 10. because I think otherwise we're in the arena of the unwell politically

because it's disregulated. Yeah. I would love to get through some community questions before we come on to the Gravitass method and AI. So this is one that I would really love to know the answer to and I'm going to read it off my phone. I'm very sorry. How to not lose your trail of thought when speaking

and what to do if you do. Love it. We have to think, why am I losing my train of thought? there were probably two reasons for that. One is perhaps you needed a bit more rehearsal. So I would always say to someone, if you're going to say something prepared in a meeting or a presentation,

say it to yourself at least three times before you say it to the audience, at home with a cup of tea on voice memos, voice notes. Three times. That's actually extremely doable. Because the thing is with speaking, If there's any kind of adrenaline spike, as we're saying, that's going to take your brain a little bit offline. So you need a kind of backup drive from rehearsal. Now, that's not always possible.

You might be in a meeting where someone's asking you a question that you haven't expected. At that point, nervous system regulation is key. What most people do in that moment is they hold their breath, which takes part of your brain offline. And then they gasp, which spikes fight or flight because we, when we're under pressure, when I'm running away from something or when I've had a shock, it's the startle reflex. So what's really important, if a question comes that you haven't expected, is first, breathe out, ground, wait for a breath in, they won't notice, oxygenate your system, tell your system it's safe, and then reply. It's a millisecond, but it's a left.

allowing you to self-regulate. Now you can do that on a pause. Sometimes, you know, for lots of reasons it can be hormonal, it can be, you know, a day in the month where your brain feels a bit different or when you're older, it can be because you're in peri or menopause. There's estrogen in every cell of our brain, right? So if your hormones are shifting, your brain is shifting, if you notice that happen, stop, close mouth, breathe, wait, tell your system it's safe, tell your system it's okay, and then go on, because no one minds. Yeah. What they mind is when the inner critic goes,

oh my God, you couldn't think of the word estrogen. You're an idiot. What are you doing here? Then I'm not in the situation anymore. Then I've gone, and I've just made it way worse. So it's just come back, breathe, stop, take a moment, have a glass of water if you need, and on you go. But if your brain is blanking, you're in fight or flight.

That's really, really helpful. will be taking that away with me. Thank you. Another community question is how do you stop second guessing how people are perceiving you when you're speaking? Ooh, if I knew the answer to that fully, I think I would be very, very wealthy. I think it's really validating that you haven't found that solution, you know, is a part of all of us. And I almost believe survival, right? Yeah, yeah, Exactly. We're wired to notice the grass that's been crushed over there and the queue of safety from the other person.

But I mean, there's a theme here, isn't there? When I'm regulated, then I'm filtering for connection. I'm filtering for the nod that says you're listening, the energy that says I'm on the right track. when I'm dysregulated, when I've been rushing, when I'm feeling a bit stressed, when my heart rate is slightly too high, when my frontal cortex is slightly, you know, locking down a little bit, I'm losing my limbic system, I'm not really tuning in empathetically. Then I think I noticed myself filtering for threat. And that's where I think it gets dangerous because the more I filter

of a threat. The less safe I feel, the less safe I feel, the more I filter for threat. Someone said this beautifully in a session the other day. She said, I have to notice when my system starts to flag an alert. And I have to stop it before it. Because once we're deep in fight or flight, it takes a little while for everything to calm down. But if I can just catch the slight spike in heart rate, the shift in my voice, the speeding up, then you can come back to safety. And our system's always, I mean, you know this way better than me. We're always cycling between vital flight and rest and digest.

There's never a sense that we're in one. But the more aware I am of what's happening inside me into reception, the more control I have of how I'm reading your response. And again, I think that's the master key to modern life. Yeah. Because a lot of the time we aren't safe in a big city. Yeah. There is an element of risk.

there's a taxi, there's the tube, there's that person over there who I need to really be aware of as they come towards me. How can I stay regulated within that? Yeah. I've got an example from my TED talk kind of a positive example. So as I have proudly declared, I managed to regulate my nervous system for my TED Talk in a way that I've never been able to do throughout my life. I'm a very excitable, very like jittery person in general. And I said, a joke in my TED talk and my boyfriend had told me before this TED talk, Faye, I don't think that's going to land. I don't think anyone's going to laugh. And I backed myself. I was like, no, I think it's funny. I think it's funny. And then I said it in the TED talk. No one laughed. Like,

critics. Damn, I wanted him to be wrong. No, it was so bad. It was so bad. A testament to how regulated I was. I was like, that's kind of funny that no one laughed. I just thought, ha-ha, He was right. Cracked on with the rest of my head talk as if nothing had happened and then afterwards I said, you were right. Damn you.

No one laughed. If my nervous system had been dysregulated in that moment, in that moment, horrendous, yeah. I would have walked out and I would have been rocking backwards and forwards going, everyone thought you were terrible, everyone thought you were so bad.

Thinking about people's opinions. When I saw that question, I thought, God, how do you answer this one? When we're disregulated, that is when we think about what are the people are thinking. It's life or death for the brain at that point. I have a rule. of like checking in with my nervous system

whenever I go on my phone. If I know that I'm not in a good place, I will go on my phone and I will see good things happening to other people, like really good things. And I will compare myself and I will feel shitty. If I am in a good place in my nervous system, I can look on Instagram and I see, I don't know, someone's got a job opportunity, someone's got this. Wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I think it's that same principle of if you want to worry less about how you're being perceived, focus on yourself. I love that for social. media and also checking in as you are in it what's this doing to my heart rate to my nervous system and don't do it before you speak it's the thing I always say to speak is step away from your phone because it's going to hijack your nervous system for good or ill and you don't want it hijacked yeah that's a really important really important to get in your zone um okay another community question why do so many people feel anxious speaking even in normal situations

like meetings or conversations. I mean, it's kind of what we're saying, isn't it? There's a deep, ancient, human, sensible response to lots of eyes looking at you, which is be careful because the tribe keeps you alive. If you say the wrong thing, if you lose the tribe, that's an existential risk. And our nervous system hasn't been updated since, you know, 30,000 years ago, really. So I think of my nervous system like my little dog. Nice.

In that my little dog sometimes has a threat that, you know, she sees another scary dog or she, the postman comes and she gets stressed. I know that if I give her a cuddle, if I stroke her, if I talk to her with a soft voice, which will regulate her, I calm her.

And I know that I can do the same thing to my own nervous system. And I think if we can remind ourselves, that that weekly team meeting is a group of people who actually want you to do your best, because that helps all of you, that you're there to help, that you know something here that maybe they don't know. We just need to remind our nervous system, I've got this, I've got you, you're safe. And then it performs perfectly. But I think we've got to really take our own nervous systems by the hand and not just let,

like I heard someone, an expert, a futurist the other day, say, we can't control our emotions so we should look after the system and I was like, wait, what? Who said that? We can't, of course we could control our emotions. Was that a man or a woman? It was a man.

Yeah, why am I not surprised? I like actually not surprised. Carry on. We are really so, as it's back to your point, fate. The more self-aware we are, the more interception awareness of the inner body we have, the more control we have. I love Sam Conniff's work on this.

The uncertainty experts, they're absolutely brilliant. The secret to uncertainty, which is that presentation, is interception. Manage your own nervous system. And then we can handle anything. I wish I'd had this podcast this time last year when I was working a job in orthopedics in a big London hospital. Every morning we'd have a trauma meeting. And as the junior doctor who worked overnight, you would present the patient.

from overnight. On no sleep. No sleep. No sleep. And me, 26, 25, a young state-educated woman, very self-conscious of being young, a woman and state-educated amongst very high density of middle-aged men who were privately educated. Every single morning that I had to do this meeting, my face just went completely red all over. So hard.

Couldn't get out my words. And it wasn't good because I couldn't explain the patients properly. And when I left that job, the number one piece of the. of feedback that I got that I looked, I looked extremely anxious in those meetings I needed to work on that. And if I just heard this, this podcast before, at that point, and recognise that I did have that control to pet my nervous system like a dog and, you know, talk to myself softly and remind myself that I was safe beforehand. Yes. It would have been so, so, so helpful. I think that's really true. I also think that no sleep. Yeah.

is a beast, isn't it? And I think those senior private school male medics might have tuned into that a little bit. We always have responsibility for our own nervous systems right. But there is also a responsibility of the more senior people in the room to assist the nervous systems of their team. I think that's leadership. Yeah, they wouldn't do that. They would see that I was stressed and they would grill me more. it was honestly one of the most terrific experiences. I would do a million's head talks over because they'd see me getting stressed and then they would ask me more questions. You know when your brain just goes completely blank

because you're stressed as we've spoken about and then I'd walk out the room immediately and as soon as my nervous system calmed down, I was like, oh, the answer suddenly appears at the wrong time. That's a really specific trait in some leaders that we call cat in some of the work I do, which is that some people are dogs, they're all about relationship and connection,

and some people are cats. They're about task and independence, and it doesn't matter if you like them or not. That is a trait of very senior medics that I've seen across hospitals. And the trouble with those cat leaders is that they're looking for cues in the nervous system of regulation to say this person has got this. But what they don't realize is that the fact that they're all staring

with cold expressions, focused on the task, not focused on the relationship, is spiking the nervous systems of people who need connection and making it worse. So I would love to take a couple of those senior medics, those clinicians, offline and just say, hey, you know, if you want the best out of your junior team members, who haven't slept, by the way, tell them what they're doing well, give them, you know, a couple of congratulations. and then give them a bit of help.

You know, hey, Faye, I know that, you know, you've been on night shift, how are you doing? Thank you. Great summary. Anything else we should note. That would allow you to step into confidence in a different way. And I think, yes, we can regulate our systems, but also, hey, people who've been doing this job for 20 years, you have some responsibility to help the nervous systems of the people who are working for you. And I'm a little bit hard line on that. that's really interesting that you have spotted the cat in a lot of medics the cats are very prevalent

this is also very very apt question how can you reduce that shaky voice feeling when speaking in meetings or in public i was definitely the shaky voice person and let's think about why you know you'd been up all night so you'd probably had to drink some caffeine to keep you going you probably had some sugar because that's what we need when we're really tired you'd been dealing with probably acute medicine, trauma situations, high stress, your nervous system was really jangled. When our nervous system is jangled, the body's figuring, am I going to fight, am I going to freeze, am I going to fawn, am I going to run away? What do I do here? And the shaky voice is a productive fight because there's so much adrenaline flooding through your system that your voice is really

ready, it's there for fighting. Yeah. It's not. there for connection. So the only way to stop a shaky voice is to center our breath. Because the thing that we don't learn at school, really, unless you sing or do, you know, drama exams, is that all voices out breath. Now, if you had had 10 minutes and in medicine, you might not get 10 minutes, you might have two. If you've got two minutes to go into the disabled loo and come back to what you did before the TED talk, which is really get grounded. Just say to yourself, my feet are on the floor, the air is on my face, I can feel the clothes on my skin, I can feel that I'm here, I'm safe, I'm in my body. If you take a nice breath in for four, hold, breathe out for six,

slowly through the mouth, take the breath in, breathe out for eight, slowly through the mouth, take a breath in through the nose out for 10 a long out breath well first an out breath slows heart rate in breath spikes it out breath slows it so a long out breath steadies your heart and what that starts to say to your nervous system is yeah they've got quite stern faces and they ask tough questions but you're safe relatively they're not going to hurt you physically And so we go in then with that sense of, even if I'm looking around and they all look a bit stern and I know they've been doing this for 20 years, I know that I'm going to be okay in my own skin. And then my voice doesn't shake and I don't flush.

And so I get the feedback loop that they're listening and maybe the questions aren't as tough. And it's just that two minutes in the disabled loo. And I think even in that situation you could take two minutes but you might say no sometimes that didn't happen if you haven't got two minutes then it's just relax your feet because relaxing our feet sends a message and also relax your jaw oh my god I know my jaw too

yeah my jaw is yeah the jaw is so close to the brain that if it's tense and mine you know it's something I've been kind of living with all my life But if we can just in the moment feel air between our back teeth and soften our jaw muscles, that says to the brain, you're safe. The other thing is peripheral vision because fight or flight is saying, where's the exit? Who do I punch? Where do I hide?

So if I just get a, you know, these hospitals often have wonderful views. So if you're high up looking out of the window or even if you're in a room without windows, just imagine you're standing on the top of your favorite hill. Yeah. And you can see to both sides of you. Because that says to your nervous system, you're not in fight or flight. Love that. That brings me neatly on to what is the Gravitus method and how you developed it. I was asked about Gravitass so many times over the years.

And I knew having trained actors, I knew what Gravitas presence was, but I didn't have a definition. So I went back to the ancient world. And I looked at how they were describing presence. They weren't really talking about Gravitass in performance. It was a Roman virtue. But I borrowed from Aristotle, which is cheeky, isn't it really? Hey, borrow from the best. He talks about ethos, logos and pathos.

He talks about character, your knowledge. He talks about logos, your clarity, your language. And he talks about pathos, your emotion. So I said knowledge plus passion plus purpose. minus anxiety. And my engineer husband says that's not an equation. If you think about great leaders, they know what they're talking about. They've got a sense of passion.

It lights them up. And they've got a sense of common purpose. It's not just about them. And they're calm. And for me, that still works. Engineer boyfriend, who would absolutely say the exact same thing. It's not an equation. Yeah.

So that's gravitas. Knowledge plus passion plus purpose minus anxiety. I mean, are the bits that I would add in now 10 years in? Yeah, probably. And before the podcast, you spoke a little bit about how you think that confidence is going to completely change over the next few years. Tell me a little bit more about that. It's interesting, isn't it? It's this, I think what you said about the best man at the wedding.

Was it a best man? Best man speech. Yeah, of course it was a man. Sorry. Sorry. I've done a lot of man-mashing. Because we can get AI to write a speech doesn't mean we should. The perfectionist in all of us

likes the fact that in five minutes you can have a seemingly polished script. Really dangerous because the thing that engages in audience is that it's like we said from your heart. And AI can't do that for you. And from my heart is imperfect. Yeah.

It's like when someone makes you home-cooked food, it doesn't look as pretty as what you buy from the supermarket. It's not as perfectly formed, but the love they put into it makes it have so much more meaning. And speaking is the same. Don't worry about perfectly formed.

Make it yours. Authorship means you're writing it, you're creating it. It's original. It's something that no one else on the planet could have said quite like you. That's what matters now. Not perfect.

Not polished. stay a million miles from AI if you want to connect with an audience and I think we all know that at some level but we're lazy. Lazy is the wrong word. Our brains love a shortcut. That's the biggest danger

for all of us as speakers now. Do you think that that idea about imperfection being seen as more desirable and more beautiful in the future is actually quite reassuring for people going into any sort of public speaking whether that's a meeting or whether that is a big talk.

That knowledge that if you slip up, it's okay. Preparation, then connect. Connection over perfection every time. And when we're worried about perfection, we don't connect because there's too much control. You have to prepare it to the point, like you said about your TED, prepare it to the point where you can let go.

It's like jazz. It's like dancing. You learn the steps and then in the moment, you're just with the other dancers, you're present. That's what good speaking is. It's more a physical act than an intellectual one because the intellect happens before you get on stage. Nice.

This has been an absolutely phenomenal episode that I wish I had had, you know, a year ago, two years ago, even five years ago. Before we finish off, there's a question that we've been asking all the guests. So that is, Caroline, what do you wish every woman knew by the time she was 25. It's a big one. That within your reach, a breath away, is nervous system regulation.

I, oh my God, I wish I'd known that. It would change the world. Because when every woman knows that, we'll speak up more against all the bad stuff that people with superficial confidence are reeking on this planet right now. And I think when we trust our voices, There is no more powerful force than women. And I think it's time for us to stand up and say, enough of this.

And self-regulation is where it starts. I just, two things. I just got goosebumps when you said that. Number one. Number two, please for the love of the Lord, Savior, Jesus. Christ, can someone teach Donald Trump some breathwork? And on that note, I think that is the end of a wonderful episode. Thank you so, so, so, so much.

It's been a delight and a joy and amen to that thought.