Barack Obama was famous during his presidency for always appearing cool and calm. The press sometimes called him "no drama Obama" and didn't always mean it kindly.

He said there was some truth to the nickname when he repeated it on stage this week at a tech conference in Salt Lake City, Utah hosted by software company Qualtrics. But he said, just because he appeared calm, when he was younger he would still sometimes agonize with fear of making a mistake.

"I have an even temperament and I don't get too high and I don't get too low, but that doesn't mean that throughout the presidency and throughout my professional career that there weren't times when I was constrained by, 'Man I don't want to screw this up. I don't want ot let people down. I don't want to be seen as having made made a mistake or having failed'," he said.

It was during his second term that he experienced a "shedding of fear" as he described it and that helped him perform better.

"There's no doubt by the time I was in my second term I was a better president than I was in my first term and it did not have to do with analysis or policy," he said. "It had to do with what comes with any career - whether it's sports or teaching or you name it - you get enough reps, enough repetition and familiarity with the nature of the problems that you start being focused on the task and not how-are-you-doing-on-the-task and the self-consciousness that comes with that."

He says that's the attitude that he carried into working on the Iran nuclear deal, which sought to squash Iran's nuclear weapons program and the Paris Climate accords, a landmark agreement between governments worldwide to jointly address climate change. (President Trump has since vowed the US would abandon participation in the Paris agreement which called for each country to make its own emissions-reduction pledge. )

By learning how to get comfortable with tackling large, complex problems, Obama says he stopped worrying about making mistakes. Instead he realized, "You know, I got this. And if I make a mistake we'll figure out how to make up for it, we'll learn from it."

He didn't focus on poll numbers or pundits but focused on "advancing this vision that I have and I hope the country will share, that we create a better country," he said.

But it was more than just self-confidence that comes from experience. He also took deliberate steps to keep himself focused. This included "not reading my own press."

He didn't (and doesn't) look at comments on social media, or watch the cable news pundits. That included the people berating him, but it also included avoiding people praising him. " If people were complementary, people assume you know more than you did," he joked, and that can lead to an inflated ego, which is just as detrimental.

Rep. Ilhan Omar on Friday tried to walk back her explosive criticism of former President Obama in an interview published earlier in the day — claiming that her words were distorted.

“Exhibit A of how reporters distort words. I’m an Obama fan! I was saying how [President] Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy not politics,” she tweeted, referring to an interview published earlier in the day by Politico Magazine.

She included a nearly two-minute recording of her interview. But the audio clip essentially confirmed that her quotes, though edited, were accurate.

In the interview, Omar ripped Obama, mocking the ex-president’s “pretty face” and dismissing his agenda of hope and change as an illusion.

She cited the “caging of kids” at the Mexican border and the armed “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch — and argued
that he wasn’t much different from President Trump.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar ripped former President Barack Obama in an interview published Friday, belittling his “pretty face” and saying his agenda of hope and change was an illusion.

She cited the “caging of kids” at the Mexican border and the “droning of countries around the world” on Obama’s watch — and argued that he wasn’t much different from President Trump

“We can’t be only upset with Trump,” the freshman firebrand told Politico Magazine.

“His policies are bad, but many of the people who came before him also had really bad policies. They just were more polished than he was,” Omar said.

“And that’s not what we should be looking for anymore. We don’t want anybody to get away with murder because they are polished. We want to recognize the actual policies that are behind the pretty face and the smile.”