Summary
Tara Howley and Janine Parzi Ali explore stage fright and performance anxiety through deeply personal experience. Tara shares how debilitating stage fright and panic attacks nearly ended her acting career, and how decades of work with fear, anxiety, and the nervous system transformed her relationship to performance. The episode covers practical techniques for before, during, and after performing.
The core reframe is that fear is excitement without the breath — a teaching from Gay and Katie Hendricks. By breathing into the fear and physically moving the body (shaking hands, pumping fists), the frozen parasympathetic energy can be discharged and redirected as fuel. Intellectually, naming the fear as “excitement” literally changes hormonal responses. They also explore how shame differentiates stage fright from ordinary fear — it’s the self-consciousness and fear of being seen that makes it uniquely paralyzing.
The conversation culminates in a profound reframe: stage fright is not something to conquer but a fuel cell. An actor Tara worked with eventually became nervous when he didn’t have stage fright, because the energy powered his performance. The invitation is to welcome the chaos, “pray for an accident,” and trust that real moments — including mistakes — are where the magic happens.
Key Concepts
- Fear is excitement without the breath
- Stage fright is a fuel cell, not an obstacle
- Shame differentiates stage fright from ordinary fear
- Pray for an accident — real moments create magic
- Permission to be imperfect dissolves freeze
Key Quotes
“The number one fear is public speaking. The number two fear is death, which means you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
“Fear is just excitement without the breath.”
“Now I get nervous if I don’t have stage fright, because it gives me all this energy to get through the show.”
“We don’t call this company the art of perfection. It’s the art of accomplishment. You’re going to be highly imperfect.”
“Pray for an accident. It’s a gift.”
Transcript
Today I want to talk to you about stage fright. Yippee. And or performance anxiety. Um I want to start off with what is it? What what do what do you experience in it? What have you learned about it? Mhm. I see stage fright and performance anxiety as the um anxiety that shows up before um before public speaking, presenting to a board, presenting to your um board of directors or getting on stage like classic stage fright. It’s the anxiety and the the overwhelming almost shutdown of the system before doing something public. I saw your hands like come up and it almost looks like this whole tightening of the chest. I’m curious how it you’ve experienced it and what you’ve gone through with it. Yeah, it’s a very personal subject matter for me cuz it was in a way my intro to all of this work was I was an actor. I had been doing film and then I was segueing in LA to stage and I started getting stage fright and panic attacks. I had two panic attacks in the ocean swimming usually before like opening nights. And how it hit me was just this overwhelming sense of anxiety. Like I I couldn’t hold it in my body. It was debilitating and um really made work thoroughly unenjoyable and it was like this this sense of complete overwhelm in my nervous system. That sounds intense. It was intense. Yeah. Yeah. Where did that lead you? Well, it to a lot of retreats, okay, a lot of studying, a lot of therapy, a lot of studying with elders, working fear and anxiety and performance anxiety, stage fright everywhere I could, and really learned how to um see through it intellectually, physically with the body, and work with the nervous system so that it didn’t um it didn’t kill my career. That’s sounds really profound honestly because it’s one of those things where I would never have guessed I could even be on a podcast like this talking to you cuz when I first met you I was just terrified terrified of being seen. And so there’s something again that feels very personal of like right I remember acutely that experience of please don’t look at me. I I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to be here. And I’m sure a lot of people have this. So, it’s very relatable. And I’m I’m curious what’s the value of even working with it? Like there’s there’s something where I I have a quote that um comes up. It’s from Seinfeld of all places where he says, “The number one fear is public speaking. The number two fear is death, which means you’d rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.” Oh my god. just like I feel like this. I’m like, it’s going to kill me. I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be dead than do this. So good. Welcome back to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore living the life you want with enjoyment and ease. I’m Tara Howley and today I’m here with my co-host and amazing facilitator, co-facilitator Janine Parzi Ali. Hey Tara. Hi Janine. Tara, why should I handle my stage fright? How why is this worth it? The benefit of working with stage fright is so that you can go do the things you dream of doing. who can um you know raise money for your startup or speak to the board or speak to the team or run a meeting at work or um go on stage or you know become a stand-up comic whatever it is your dreams it’s worth doing it so that you can fulfill your dreams if they in some way require being in front of an audience or making a presentation that makes you nervous and there’s a beautiful energy in it. There’s a way to transform it and it’s like quite alchemical like transforming shit into gold. Say a little bit more about uh what that journey is like. What does that even mean to transform it? It would be working with the anxiety, working with the freeze, working with the nervous system, with the body shutdown, whatever your symptoms are, learning how to work with it. So instead of it shutting you down, you’re working with it intellectually, emotionally, nervous system to use the energy to propel you into the thing you want to do. That sounds really exciting. Yeah. Yeah. I I want to try some of that. Yes. Yes. Great. Um so the the first and and the easiest and the one that I just love doing is to um reframe the fear as excitement, right? And this is the this is sort of like the preparation phase because I’m curious to hear that before during after of of stage, right? Yes. Like okay, so before and you’re freaking out before. Before you’re freaking out and there’s a reframe and um Gay and Katie Hendricks teach this that you can take fear. Fear is just excitement without the breath. So you can simply start breathing into it like I’m scared. I’m scared. I’m scared. Breathing and then reframe it as excitement. And it’s literally just to take all that frozen energy and like I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. I’m excited. Okay. I feel silly and goofy. We’re pumping our hands over our heads. And you know, that’s funny. It’s like I feel like I’m the cheerleader that I maybe loathed as a kid, but I’m also like It’s nice. It breaks through the I feel silly instead of stuck. Exactly. and you’ve intellectually reframed from fear and anxiety to excitement and you’ve taken the the parasympathetic system and started moving it and all of that like blood leaving the head is now you’ve moved the hands like sent the blood back to the head so you can start thinking that’s true and you’ve just moved fear into excitement and it becomes like feel your body now it becomes quite pleasurable there’s something of I’ve moved my body like I I’m giving myself permission to shake the energy that is definitely there has built up. It’s um almost like a if I think of an electrical charge that wants to discharge. It’s like oh it wants to go somewhere. That’s exactly right. And for me I would get overwhelmed and the overwhelm would lead to freeze and in doing the I’m excited I’m excited. I’m excited. I could discharge that too much energy so that I wasn’t so overwhelmed and I could work with what was there. And during COVID, I worked with a lot of executives who were suddenly had no problem presenting to a room of people in a team, but when they went online on Zoom, they suddenly froze. And I would just have them under under the table moving their hands before they got on their Zoom call. Just two minutes with deep breathing of moving the hands. We’re like flicking our wrists. And it feels Well, again, it sort of feels silly like I’m flapping my hands as if I’m trying to doggy swim. the fly like little birdie wings. Bird wings. I can get up. I can get up. I can get up. And there is something about even like letting my breath pant. Like that has a um again maybe a bit of a release to it. Uh I don’t know. It it has a fun. Um yeah, it’s unlocking something. And I do feel more like I’m closing my eyes right now and I can feel the movement or the sensation in my body. And that’s exactly right. When you finish closing your eyes, letting yourself have a full soft belly breath and noticing how the body feels different. Often times that like zing electrical energy just feels like it’s calmed, it’s flowing and you can kind of come back and be in the body. In the body. There’s something about the when you said that I’m like right I feel more calm connected when I get to be in my body. So what’s the difference of when I’m freezing versus getting to be in my body? Yeah. I think the freeze a lot of the time we’re either like like kind of frozen and behind the body or up and out of the body, but we’re not in the body. We’re not with ourselves, right? We’ve separated from self and from um other Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That has me wonder uh what else one might do to prepare in stage fright. Like what what else could I possibly do knowing that this is coming? It’s coming for me. I’m going to go do this thing. Yeah. So that’s the um body work. There’s one other body piece. Yeah. Sure. Which is I like um and I learned this again from acting which is to kind of move around like I get to be shit on stage. Like I get to shit off anyone who says I don’t. Shit off judgmental thoughts. Shit off shame. Shit off you know whoever judged you for being bigger than normal. Like actually um reclaiming a part of yourself that gets to go on stage that gets to take control of a meeting in in big like I shit get everybody off my shit back. I get to be big. I get to go on stage. I get to shit do this thing. Shut up, everyone. Shut up. Judgment. Shut up. Everyone, shit off. I get to take this space. This is mine. I’m allowed to do this. This is great. Yeah. All right. So, there’s a handful of other things that can help and prep for our stage frame. Yeah. Definitely. If I know I’m taking on something big that’s going to make me anxious, I’ll cut out coffee, tea, chocolate, all of those stimulants or cut them down and adding really nutritious food and um bananas, potassium rich foods, root vegetables, grounding foods. So really taking care of yourself nutrition-wise. Also exercising like sweaty exercise can give a place for all of that like to go. So like before you’re getting on stage going and having a run or doing something sweaty can be quite useful and the um like cold showers and the Wim Hof work and breath work all are super supportive for it. Yeah, I love that. It seems like everyone has their own tricks and hacks on ground finding really what works for you is what I’m hearing in that for the nervous system. Yes, that’s exactly right. actually trying a bunch of different things to find out what works for you. And then intellectually there’s a handful of things. One is simply reframing it. You can call it stage fright. You can call it performance anxiety. You can call it anxiety. And that doesn’t help you. If you can reframe it and call it excitement, literally that reframe like, “Oh, I’m really excited about uh leading a presentation. I’m really excited about speaking to my team. I’m really excited. Simply reframing it from excite from fear to excitement can change your um how your hormones react to the thought. Whoa. Right. Those two those two uh pathways are very similar. Right. So just even naming it out loud. I’m excited. Can have that shift. And intellectually being like, “Oh, this is excitement.” and experiencing it, identifying it as excitement as opposed to fear or stage fright. And I like asking the question like, “What’s so scary?” Like, “What are you afraid of?” Like really figuring out like, “Oh, I’m afraid I won’t raise the money. I’m afraid identifying the underlying fear. I’m afraid I’ll go on stage and suck. I’m afraid I’ll forget my lines. I’m afraid the audience will hate me. I’m afraid I’ll forget my speech. or I won’t get the money. I won’t get my goal. And really identifying the fear and then being like, okay, yeah, so I might go on stage and forget my lines. I have other actors to help me. I might have a whole speech and forget my way midway. I might stumble across my words. Okay, I’m allowed to be imperfect. It’s creating a compassionate way to speak to yourself. There’s really something interesting about normally if I experience a fear I don’t want to be rejected. I don’t want people to think I’m weird or judge me or say something um about me or not give me the money or I don’t want to make the mistake. It’s like I I’m trying to avoid it. But what you’re actually saying is you get to embrace that too. And then something happens when you embrace it. Yeah. It’s you become gentler on yourself like the shame also there can be shame in it. Shame of being seen, shame of making a mistake. When you embrace it, there’s less space for shame. Yeah. How does shame play with stage fright or performance anxiety? What’s the relationship in your experience? I think that shame is what differentiates stage fright from general fears. It’s like, all right, when you’re afraid of a bear attacking you in the woods, that doesn’t have shame involved. But when you’re afraid of speaking, public speaking or singing in public or um presenting, there’s usually an element of shame to it, right? And you were also saying something about self-consciousness as well. And self-consciousness. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You’re you’re inherently self-conscious. Like you like stage fright doesn’t happen without self-consciousness. like, “Oh, what if I what if I what if I kind of a solipsistic self-consciousness?” And another intellectual hack there is to put all your attention on something else. Like all your attention on your mission or put all your attention on someone else, your best friend in the front row or your co-founder right across from you at the table when you speak or your team mate who’s right on board with you. Um but putting your attention on something else, not on yourself. This feels like the start of the transition into oh when I step on stage this is what I can do. I can actually put my attention on the people who are really on my team or index on I know that people have my back. That’s right. And even um picture yourself at the front of like the prow of a boat and you have all your everyone behind you at your back rooting for you and you put everyone you want back there like you know all of your heroes and public speak great public speakers and orators and have them or people who’ve raised you know done great fundraising in the past like just put them all in the back and feel their support can also help while you’re actually doing it. And breathing can also really help while you’re doing it. If you do go blank, what often people do is they’ll forget a line or forget where they were in a speech or what they wanted to say next and then they hold their breath and start beating themselves up. When you’re stuck in the mud, the tires start spinning. The more you hold your breath, yeah, you’re just digging yourself into the hole more. Whereas if you can go, oh, that thing’s happening. I had told myself those might happen. It’s okay that it’s happening and I’m just going to breathe and feel my body. Being in the body often can motivate you to remember what the next thing was. The breath. I have to say you’re like my model for being in the body in moments on stage. We’ve facilitated together a number of times where I mean I’ll get into my head sometimes going, “Oh, I need to prepare. I should have my notes.” And one thing I noticed is when you’re teaching, you’re very um it feels like you have the capacity to remain very internal like in the body when you present. And if you’ve forgotten things, I know we have this story that goes around where you had you got had a concussion. You went you went skiing, you had a concussion, and we go do this retreat and you you outed it. You were like, I have I’m I’m struggling to remember things. It’s going to happen a lot. And what I noticed was even when that would happen, there would be a blip. You’d misspeak or you’d have a mistake. It felt like a permission to just be human with you of like, oh, that doesn’t need to even be perceived as a failure. It’s just another it’s just another piece of what’s in the room. And I imagine like when you’re acting, you must forget lines all the time. All the time. Like, okay, how do you weave that into something magical? Yeah. And I think that people who might invest in your company or your team, I think we want to we want to connect with each other’s humanity, not some bigger than life perfect image. Like we want to connect with reality and and humanity. And so, um, yeah, when I when I blubber, I always mix up my words. I’m like, I go, there I go mixing up my words again. I just call it and name it. And it deshames it for me. And it’s like, oh, look, I can laugh at myself. I’m not teaching the we don’t call this company the art of perfection. It’s the art of accomplishment. Like you’re going to be highly imperfect. So just naming it and it’s like ah have a good laugh. People connect with it. It’s human. People totally connect with that too. That sense of oh wait, you don’t have to be so self-conscious that you can’t just be in that humanity, too. We don’t have to disconnect in that moment. Yeah, that’s all right. We can all just be here with you. And oh, you forgot your words. Okay. and we have a laugh like that like all right. Yeah. It brings a certain realness and sweetness to it. I actually think that on stage when something happens or an actor forgets their lines. It’s a gift. And I think that um happens too when speakers are speaking and they forget where they were. It’s a gift they’re giving the audience of like hanging in the unknown like what’s going to happen here? They made it. Okay. But they didn’t make it. What’s going to happen next? And we all get to sit in the unknown together. That speaks a little bit to the magic of what happens in an improvisational moment where we actually are leaning into that space of wow, I could be very afraid of this blip. I could be afraid of this moment of fright. And actually, there’s an opportunity. Yes. Yes. We I mean, you know, we say like this could be a dumpster fire. we actually really invite the chaos like to permission ourselves like this could go all to hell and that’s okay and I think that’s quite useful with stage fright there was a young actress I worked with who would get such stage fright debilitating stage fright that she would be throwing up backstage and she actually several nights couldn’t make it onto the stage they had her understudy come in and she was working on this we were working on it and she discovered that she thought she had to be Meryl Streep when she came out and she’s 24, 25 years old and she’s basing her um comparing herself to a woman who’s has like three decades of experience and she realized like oh she was expecting not just perfection but beyond expectation perfection and when she saw that like I’m allowed to mess up and that intellectual like permissioning like I’m allowed to not do this perfectly let her get on stage. So yeah, this could be a dumpster fire permissioning like this could all go to shit. That’s okay can really help. There’s a really good distinction. It doesn’t mean I’m inviting and want the dumpster fire to happen. And I am here for it. I have signed up for whatever happens here. I trust there’s a reason and it does almost too of right when that blip happens there could be magic and I’m going to trust it. Okay. Yeah. And I have prepared. I’ve given myself permission. And I am allowed to. All right, let’s see what happens now. Let’s go. Yes. Yeah. It can actually lead to the beautiful moments, the precious moments. I saw a performance of The King and I on Mount Tam and it was windy and the set started falling over and the actor playing the king, he’s supposed to be an asshole and he just started yelling at everyone to get the steps, get those back up and it I this was 20 years ago. I’ve never forgotten that moment. Like one of the greatest moments in theater ever because something real happened and he had to respond in real time and it was like the whole audience was like, “Oh shit what’s going to happen?” And then he pulled out. He’s like, “I’m the king.” He’s like, “I’m the king.” He’s like barking at everybody. It was it was genius. And that’s that that’s available to us when we’re facilitating a retreat, when we’re leading a meeting, when we’re making a presentation. Used to almost say pray for an accident. Like pray for a shit. It’s a gift. I love that orientation, too, of oh, there’s that there’s the the layer of I want to prepare. It sounded like prepare to the point that my body has the calm it needs. Oh yeah. If you’re having stage fright, for sure prepare the prepare until your body is like, “Okay, I got it. I know what I’m going to say.” And give yourself all the support you need. If you need a cheat sheet, if you need notes, like you get the if you’re presenting, you get those. Like give yourself all the support you need and prepare. Prepare until your body’s like, “Okay, I got it. It’s in the body.” And so now when the mistake comes, I’m also prepared for the opportunity of that. And prepare for the mistake. Like a mistake is going to happen. It is impossible to be perfect. Impossible. Right. Like pray for it. That’s an extra step for sure. That’s bonus points. Bonus points for prayer. Yes. So then you’re on stage, you’re going through it, you’ve got those moments and my So sometimes I have full body reactions like my palms start to sweat. Oh yeah. I smell my own sweat. I’m I can feel my voice getting a little bit off. Yeah. Exactly. And so all of those nervous system level things. What do you recommend in that moment? What what happens for stage fright? So it’s great the sweaty palms. It’s like think how much can you enjoy sweaty palms? Like when else do sweaty palms happen when it’s enjoyable? Usually when you’re holding hands with your lover in a movie theater or walking around like how much can you enjoy those physiological reactions would be the first thing and can you breathe and go oh my hands are really sweaty that’s cool that that means I have a lot of energy to get through this. Or oh my voice is getting high. What do what do I need a breath? when I would start teaching in the early days, my voice would always be really up here cuz I was like excited and nervous and excited and nervous. Um, so how do you bring it down? And what I like to do, and when you’re teaching, you can do this. If you’re on stage, you can’t really pull it off, but I like naming like, “Oh my god, I’m really excited to be here right now. I’m really nervous about this.” And that instantly changes things. But if you’re on stage, you can even go, “Oh, I’m really I’m really I’m excited and I’m nervous right now.” internally say it and acknowledging it, not trying, not resisting it, not fighting it, not trying to make it go away in the moment, but embracing it like, “Oh, this is what’s here. Great. This gets to be here. I get to be nervous on stage.” Usually instantly changes the reaction to it. Yeah. There’s a really big difference to the way we are describing that relationship to stage fright versus um I feel like there’s the classic examples I’ve heard and this might just be in like the the greater lexicon of overcome the fear. Conquer the stage fright. How do I beat it? How do I make it go away please? This feels terrible and I really don’t want to feel it. I want to acknowledge it does feel terrible. I have had a stage fright. I have had panic attacks. It does feel terrible and it’s how do you support yourself first of all in it I will still get anxiety before I’m doing something new I’m suddenly going to teach a class with a hundred people or um do different work with a different team than I’ve ever done and I’ll feel the little like and I’ll give like what do I need the day before what’s the downtime what’s the walk in nature the hike or a hot bath that I need beforehand what does my body need my nervous system need afterwards to reregulate and come down. Mine is always like go into nature. And exercise like you know a gentle walk or a hike. Yeah. I like that on the back end. What do I need on the back end too? Because so um as a as a recovering perfectionist but also the overachiever type. It’s like I will push my way through an experience and just be glad I survived it rather than celebrate the fact that that just happened. That was this was great. we’re, you know, we’re recording a podcast today and I get to celebrate on the back end that it was so good. It was great. It went well. That experience too of, oh yeah, what’s going to be the the piece for my nervous system, my body on the back end. And the celebration, that’s a really key piece like, yeah, did it. did it. Yeah. Well done. That’s right. And, you know, I’ve seen you even do um in our company, you ran an exercise where you even celebrated when it didn’t go well. Oh, yeah. celebrating all I mean you that’s how we learn and learn from our mistakes like they’re to be applauded and celebrated and welcomed and otherwise we’re not going to grow from it. Right. Like if we’re beating ourselves up from our mistakes we’re not going to get the wisdom like oh what did work? What didn’t work? How do we make that happen again? How do we make that not happen again? How do we learn from this? There’s so much information in it. Yeah. There’s something about Oh, right. So when I experience that stage fright, the freeze, the thing that went off, getting to be seen and celebrated in the learning on the other end, that really can shift to I feel like I’ve learned so much in my own arc because you, Joe, everyone just celebrates that was learning. You’re learning. Of course, you’re not going to be Meryl Streep. You’re going to be where you are. Yes. And like that is it’s the learner’s mindset, right? How do we really uh compassionately adopt a learner’s mindset for ourselves so that we are always learning because we’re never going to get rid of it. I haven’t gotten rid of it and I’ve worked on this for three decades like how do we reframe it so that we can welcome it and you use it as well because there is a wisdom in stage fright. There’s a real gift in it. I talked about you could take like shit and turn it into gold and the gift this comes from an actor actually I worked with who was having like debilitating stage fright and at some point he called well into a run and he was like Tara now I get nervous if I don’t have stage fright cuz it’s all that it gives me all this energy to get through the show and if I don’t start getting you know the butterflies around 5 o’clock what do I do? So perfect. This is my fuel. I need the fuel actually. This is good that there’s a really big reframe there. It is. It’s like a little fuel cell. Stage fright is a fuel cell to get you through getting on stage in front of 500 people or making a presentation to the board or raising money, doing the song and pony dance show to raise money. It’s the fuel cell to get you through and um and get your cause through and your message through. So, how do we reframe it so we get excited about it and welcome it? So, we’re going to end with of course stage, right? We’re excited about it. We’re excited. We want it. So good. So good. It is so good. It feels so good. Feels very good.