Author John R Miller wrote: Having the confidence that you’ll give the perfect presentation is useless. Real confidence is knowing you’ll misspeak, struggle for the right word and forget where you were and make mistakes. True confidence is being able to recover while speaking directly from the heart.
Lack of confidence and fear of failure are the top reasons why coworkers, friends and family members can’t find the strength to stand in front of people. Zig Ziggler, Dale Carnegie and a host of privately owned schools bank on your efforts to sit in a pool of sweat and spin tires.
Motivational speakers shout, “Envision your audience in their underwear!”
Whoa! The person doing the leading can only hope the invited guests listened their mothers and changed their shorts.
Lawyers, doctors, radio disc jockeys, GM’s, financial advisors, school teachers—every walk of life stands on a stage and not when just when there’s a full staff meeting but everyday. Even the dusty old man standing next to the stop sign near the freeway asking for an extra buck—his hard times are the bricks that make up a stage.
What keeps many points of view from reaching a place of acceptance isn’t necessarily a lack of showmanship on a stage but an honest to God bewilderment on what to do once you have someone’s attention.
I tend to use pregnant pauses and strong warmth to fish in a live listener. Instead of fumbling through words like a classic run-on sentence…the effort is made to create rhythms and paces—which is why I study the art of Hip Hop music. The makers of this modern sound have locked onto the key ingredients of delivering a message…make it musical, fill it with passion and experience and give it to the people who’ll pay money to hear it.
I scan all 5,000 television channel every Sunday morning looking for the preachers and ministers who’ve mastered the fine art of communicating. They take the gift you were given at birth and embroider it with eye contact. It’s as if the man, woman or musician is speaking directly to me, therefore common sense tells me to listen longer and better.
How many pick me up speakers have you come in contact with who tend to look over the sleep in your eyes. I always want to shout, “Booger check! Dude, think I got one…be a buddy and check for me.”
Or speakers who walk around the stage so much their back is to you, “I’m sure glad you didn’t attend my Daddy’s school of hard knock me downs!” I always assumed when you’re talking…you best be looking at whom you are speaking too.
I love the way John C Maxwell delivers a message…it’s casual, it’s informative and inviting and when it’s time to get all punchy and motivational he uses lifetime moments to seize control of that tiny muscle in your brain that’s constantly stuck on comparing your life with everyone else in the world. It must work…the dude sells a lot of books.
Because I write everyday, the ink in these veins has never let go of the dream to create the perfect sentence…
I dedicate myself daily to figure out a way to incorporate it into a thought verbally shared with one or hundreds. 98.6 percent of the time what’s been written is misunderstood. After awhile you get used it then get back on the trail to locating that one thought empowered by something more than viewing an audience wearing nothing more than their undies.
I live by a single quote: May the sun rise above you tears. To say it means nothing to a passerby, so I invited my writer self to locate a story to which I share as often as possible.
Last weekend at Daisy and Jeff’s wedding something fell out that sucked the air from my lungs…In front of their guests I said, “Please turn off your cell phones.” No!
These ink stained fingertips opened a little wider and softly blurted, “Two completely different people can share the same friends without knowing each other.”
Nicholas Sparks builds his books and movies around such visions—his cast of character’s live out their self guided chapters being friends with all who make up the small Carolina town and then one day…something brings into focus the perfect picture of the person who now owns your heart.
So…what does that have to do with stage fright? Everything! In every crowd we’re invited to speak with there’s always going to be someone we know. Take that knowledge and locate the missing piece of the puzzle you keep running from. Get to know who you are talking to.
Another one of my infamous sentences is: There’s no such thing as comedy. It is the single moment your body reacts to when someone has introduced a thought and or experience you can relate with. Therefore if we’d spend more time relating and or communicating, people would be happier.
Face Book, Twitter and the office email system…stages.
An old program director from the mid-80’s Bill Conway wasn’t a fan of letters, “The reader never picks up on the intended emotion.” So Bill made it a point to leave his office to share conversation with his staff. Eye to eye contact—which seems so lame during these modern times. Can’t you just LOL me or something?
Or…OODABOABBIOHL Oh oh did a bad on air break boss is ib the hot line. Anyone in radio understands…when the light in the studio is blinking, you better be thinking.
Maybe we need a little more of that…get your nose off this computer page and get your thoughts out in the open to be heard.
Oh! One more thing! In 1985 only...I ended every radio show with," Keep Smiling and Keep Loving Those Pets…" 25 years later, radio listeners still send that quote back to me. How far does an echo go before it tumbles to the ground in silence?
Create some noise with me.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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