“Speaking is selling”
It’s an ugly phrase, that. I feel its ugliness.
Speaking is pure – a mixture of art and science.
Selling – urgh – ugly – involves low-down, dirty manipulation, something that forces its recipients and audiences to put up barriers against trust and hope and good taste – at best a game with winners and losers.
!!!!
Well, I have to say that’s a common feeling.
We start out with a fabulous idea. It makes us feel good and full of light. It’s going to change the world.
It might be an idea that will make people feel better, live better, or make the world a better place.
It might even be a product or program that will also make an income for us doing what makes us feel good and full of light instead of dull and bored and chained to a desk.
And then we discover that people do not necessarily come running to be part of that beautiful idea.
It’s going to involve persuasion and marketing … and … selling – and that doesn’t necessarily mean selling, as in asking for money for a product.
It can just mean selling the vision, the idea so that people change their minds, think differently, act differently – persuasion – just another form of that ugly manipulation, really.
What if …
What if …
we could shine that light out into the minds of the audience?
What if …
What if …
we could shine that light as an inspiration, a source of hope, an answer?
What if …
What if …
it illuminated a vision those audience members already had – buried beneath a deep, heavy layer of doubt and self-distrust and painful sense of failure?
Not so ugly?
Not so shameful?
Not so manipulative?
“Speaking is inspiring”!
[Inspiration] Those who win …
I suspect this was well-rehearsed and yet seemed so natural, so conversational.
Do you want to speak to inspire?
We could all do well to learn from this man and the presentation –
repetition,
a mantra,
storytelling skills,
timing,
structure …
“People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things.”
– Sir Edmund Hilary
It’s quite a powerful distinction, Sir Edmund has made here. I haven’t read a lot about him, but I suspect he was a very humble man. Nevertheless it’s a truth that takes some accepting, when so often we believe that we have to be up to a standard before we can accomplish something. It’s certainly something I am learning – that I can Do, then Be, then Have rather than expecting it to work the other way that I need to Be first.
This is a beautiful quotation.
But now I’m giving it some deeper thought.
Really? … “what cannot be said” … what is it that cannot be said that music can express?
I would love to hear your ideas, because there are some incredibly eloquent writers and speakers whom I admire hugely, and I cannot help wondering what it is that they cannot express that music can…?
And add to that the criterion … “on which it is impossible to be silent”
Do comment!
Another thought that occurs to me is that we use images as we speak sometimes, and they add a new dimension to our spoken words.
What is the role of music here? Would it add a dimension, or speak for itself?
“Nothing can add more power to your life than concentrating all your energies on a limited set of targets.”
Nido Qubein
“Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.”
William Feather
“Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain.
The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?”
Mary Manin Morrissey
Original image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/truk/3558806/
Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living.
— Tom O’Connor
“Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking but reflects your choice of what you want to see.”
From A Course In Miracles
“Oh the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling
safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but
pouring them all right out, just as they are — chaff and grain together —
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.…”
safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but
pouring them all right out, just as they are — chaff and grain together —
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth
keeping, and with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.…”
— Dinah Craik
Yesterday you heard a fabulous speaker – wonderful, inspiring, eloquent – with so much to share. You walked away buzzing, happy, enthusiastic and you remarked what a fantastic presenter they were.
That was yesterday. Today. What do you remember of that presentation, that fabulous, wonderful, inspiring, eloquent presentation?
Do you remember the next step that you were inspired to take? Are you feeling different about something? Have you changed your behaviour? What do you remember?
Do you remember the clothes they wore? Do you remember the joke they told, or just that they were funny?
Three weeks later. What do you remember?
Chances are it will be one thing – one idea, one word, maybe one graphic, or maybe the person’s style.
No matter how much information the speaker gave you, chances are, still, that you will not remember much more than that one thing.
Chances are also that it will have been attached to an emotion … happy, sad, euphoric, devastated, frustrated, angry … and that’s why you remembered it.
Where will you be adding or creating emotion next time you speak?
“We all have to start with ourselves. It is time to walk the talk. Take the journey of making very difficult decisions. Start removing things from your life that are not filling your cup and adding things that bring joy in to your life.”
Lisa Hammond
Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.
– David Frost
“Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action for all eternity.”
Johann Kaspar Lavater
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence
Tim Minchin, the former UWA arts student described as “sublimely talented, witty, smart and unabashedly offensive” in a musical career that has taken the world by storm, is awarded an honorary doctorate by The University of Western Australia.
He speaks our language!!
I just loved this presentation, this speech – not just his style, but his content, based around our culture and our language – so wise and so hilarious.
Persuasion/inspiration/information/entertainment at its best!
This is a valedictory speech by a student who feared public speaking.
“I’d literally have sweaty palms and a pit in my stomach at the thought of being called on to answer a question in class. The worst part was that I thought I’d always feel that way but thank goodness I finally figured out how to get rid of it and I’ve never felt better about speaking publicly.”
Watch him as he waits through his introduction. It is still evident. Watch, though, as he makes his speech and know that this is one inspirational human being.
He still has a way to go with his speaking, but with an attitude like that, he should go far.
I would love your comments on this speaker and his presentation in the comments below. Especially I would like to hear what advice you would give him on his speaking. I think he would appreciate it.
So What? How to communicate what really matters to your audience
Mark Magnacca
The people a business tries to communicate with, sell to, or convince don’t really care about the business. Nor do they care what it is offering them—until they understand exactly how it will benefit them. In this book, world-renowned sales consultant Magnacca shows explains how to answer the “So What?” question brilliantly, every time. => http://bit.ly/Zxn7TI
One learns by doing a thing; for though you think you know it, you have no certainty until you try.
Sophocles
The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.
– William F. Scholavino
“I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.”
––Frank Lloyd Wright
“The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.”
-Abraham Lincoln
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do
with what there is.”
-Ernest Hemingway
“If you don’t take charge of shaping your own destiny, others will apply their agenda to you.”
— Eric Allenbaugh
“Light tomorrow with today!”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
“One thing I feel most passionately about: love of invention will never die.”
-Karl Benz
“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”
Edmund Hillary
“It only takes one person to change your life – you.”
— Ruth Casey
“The future is purchased by the present.”
-Samuel Johnson
