There will come a morning when you wake up and realize that the thing that you carried as currency — your pride, resentment, bitterness — no longer has any purchasing power.
These old coins — chips that have fallen off your shoulder — have become like so much clutter in the home of your mind.
Clutter — both tangible clutter and emotional clutter (and it’s hard to separate the two, anyway) — acts as an emotional and spiritual black hole, sapping your energy… a black hole from the a collapsed star that once burned too bright. Clutter is what prevents you from making progress, from improving things and moving forward.
Once you de-clutter, once you get deal with the old stuff that’s taking up your space, your time and your attention, you will be amazed how good you will feel.
Hyper-inflated emotions eventually lose their value.
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Danny Silverman writes,
Success = Ambition * Selling Skills.
Discuss…
Okay, let’s discuss. What do you mean, Danny?
I know people with (competency and determination) but they can’t sell it… and so they fail. That’s my thought of the day. “Everyone lives by selling something.” — Robert Louis Stevenson
Yes… and..?
For any career, whether you craft violins, collect garbage, write law or heal people, if you can’t sell yourself and your craft, the rest doesn’t matter.
I like this guy, Danny S… and he’s articulating an idea that I have to sell to clients constantly, especially those clients who insist that they ”aren’t salespeople.”
Yes. Yes you are salespeople. All of you. What’s more, sales is the oldest and most noble professional. Sales is what makes the world go around.
Let’s throw away the models and open up the question of how to build-out the components of Danny’s success formula, by making a list of attributes, going from A to Z. (Learning Consultant Jargon version: We can generate an ad hoc sales competency framework using the English alphabet as a convenient brainstorming scaffold.)
Yes Danny, to be successful you have to be able to sell your ideas and your talents…. and to do that, it helps tremendously if you can develop the following:
Ambition
Belief
Confidence
Determination
Experience
…and with that, I and turn the discussion over to the Facebook Peanut Gallery: What are theattributes of a successful performer?
Selfless; Smarts; Sobriety; Style (especial attention to the tie)
T
Talent (optional, but nice to have); Tyrannical; Teeth (make them gleam); ‘Tention t’ det’l
U
Unbridled; User-friendliness; Utilizing the restroom facilities prior to performing; U, the fans
V
Vibrant; Viciousness; Validation of romantic relationships; Value (from the point of view of the promotors and investors)
W
Willing; Wakefulness; Winsomeness (aka appeal to the audience); Wages (it’s best to get any money up front in case things go awry)
X
X-treme; XXX (like moonshine, not the other type of performance), XRay vision; X-rated gossip about them to raise their profile
Y
Young; Youthful; Yoda-like; Yesmanliness
Z
Zeal; Zealous; Zen; Zero tolerance for failure
(ht Lev, Ben, Avi, Aliza… apologizes for partially sanitizing your submissions, especially yours Ben… hey, this is a somewhat family-friendly operation here…)
Tellingly, by changing one term in this exercise — generalizing competency in “sales” as a “performance” — it opened up an interesting analogy between sales and the entertainment industry, which of course was unintentional.
Ultimately, it’s the serendipitous connections that make an exercise like this so valuable.
Various entries were given for each letter…. but what is the X-factor?
Xenophilia, I think…. the embracing of that which is unknown and different, especially the different perspectives you can get if you ask a question to a few friends in an safe learning environment…. yes?
Yes, I just called Facebook a safe learning environment. For whatever reason, some people open up on Facebook personal status update comment threads in a way that’s different than what you see in blogs, public forums, Twitter, or even email and instant messages. Perhaps the mid-size semi-private conversations on sites like Facebook and Google+ are the Internet’s equivalent of a small group discussion…. not as intimate as a 1:1 conversation and yet not as open as a large group discussion. In terms of places to generate online conversation, a circle of friends-of-friends seems to be a uniquely interesting zone.
Zeroing in on the lesson learned: It’s more interesting and fun to learn/sell when you let other people do the teaching/selling. Thank you Danny and friends for your excellent, LOL (Learning Out Loud) input!
This video was posted onto YouTube seven days ago by the folks at Growing Leaders:
Within a mere seven days this “Every Presentation Ever: Communication FAIL” video has garnered over 178,000 views — that’s good publicity for an organization that does good work. It’s easy to understand why people like this video… what’s a bit harder to understand is why two of my friends have already tagged me with it (HT DavidC and GilY). It may mean that my friends know what I do for a living… and/or it may mean they know that I sometimes preface my prefaces with a preface.
What I like about this video, apart from its painfully-true-to-life humor, is its high level of craft in the details. Not every gag is pointed out, not every joke verbalized… it invites you to take a closer look and discover things on your own… and that’s exactly what makes for a good presentation. Am I over-thinking it? Sure, why not. The video wins because it calls out the bad behavior without modeling it.
Looking for something simpler but also funny? (Oh you weren’t? Well here it is anyway.) Here’s a classic bit by Don McMillan called “Life After Death by PowerPoint:”
In my dream last night, I was in a meeting with my former business partner and our lead investor. The lead investor had decided that he and his group wanted to buy back in to our venture, which we had sold off years ago. My partner was very excited to restart our business and he asked me to lead the negotiations with the investor.
The investor took a stick and drew a number into sand on the ground – the sand had concentric circle ripples in it like a Zen garden — and the number he drew was 295. He said “$295 million.” My partner was getting very excited and I was starting to get anxious: What about my new career? What about my Masters degree? How could I take this venture back on? I didn’t really want to go back to doing the dot com thing… but then, $295 million is a whole lot of money…
I asked the investor if the 295 was the pre-money valuation or the post-money valuation and I immediately sensed that the investor was annoyed with my question and analytical tone of voice. Just like they used be in the old days. I wanted to change my question to something better but — and here the dream started to crumble away as I was waking up — I realized that in addition to the expense of re-purchasing the business and its key assets, the $295 million of value would be mostly divided up between the lead investor and my former business partner… the $295 million was not for me, it was for themselves… and I had no interest in being partners with them, especially as a minority shareholder. My anxiety lifted away as I realized how easy it would be to say “no” to them… and how unrealistic this dream was.
I sat up, removed my sweat-soaked t-shirt, lay back down again and relaxed.
Ah yes… where journalism and seasonal linkbait collide.
Obligatory weight/health/fitness/diet-related graphic for seasonally appropriate blog entry. (NOTE: Unless the clipart person is less than 5 feet tall and/or unless the scale units are metric (kilos) and not pounds, this clipart person is probably not overweight... oh wait, is this one of those wrap-around scale dials?)
Ok, I’ll bite.
Yes, it’s now that time of year where all the non-regulars (irregulars?) are at the gym, working their way through their 30 day free trial memberships… and where the impoverished news media posts inane articles about weight loss, diet and exercise.
The question seen a few weeks ago, “What’s your New Year’s resolution?” is now replaced by “How can you stick to your New Year’s resolution?”..and will soon be replaced by “Who is advertising at the SuperBowl this year?” So let’s hold onto this moment… let’s see what we can do right now, to keep our resolve to do whatever it was we said we’d do.
(NOTE: Although I have a resolution to blog more often, in the 3-4 times that I’ve sat down to finish up this particular post I’ve found myself heading out to the gym instead. Apparently, the irony of sitting down to write about fitness was too much for my mind to handle.)
Let’s summarize the “breakthrough aha-news” findings in the aforementioned article on maintaining weight loss, J. Graham Thomas’ Seven Habits of Successful Weight Loss Maintainers…. and perhaps we can uncover a larger pattern and wider meaning:
Work out 30 minutes a day
Limit TV watching
Limit caloric intake
Maintain consistency
Eat breakfast
Avoid emotional eating
Monitor yourself
I’ll rebrand these Seven Habits for Highly Effective Living in a Society of Abundant Decadence, where success comes from what you don’t do and what you don’t have. Three of the above items (#2, 3 & 6 )are “negative commandments” and four of them (#1, 4, 5 & 7) are “positive commandments” designed to help replace bad habits with good habits. #7 is also a bit of a meta-discipline… the part that keeps all the other pieces in check.
To boil it down a bit further: Replacing bad habits with good habits is about frequent implementation of slight behavioral changes.
Which leads us to some questions: How slight can the behavioral change be? How frequently does one need to implement it? For how long? Finally, when is the best time to begin implementing a new habit?
How Slight?
The behavioral change can be as slight as a person wants… but just enough to establish a new pattern, to start replacing old habits. A habit is like a rut in the road… a self-reinforcing behavioral trough. So to overcome a bad habit, you have to steer down to a new path.
Item #1 in the above-mentioned list has some well-validated research behind it. Here is the concept presented a somewhat addictive video:
One of the main advantages of implementing a slight change (vs. a more radical or systematic change) is the likelihood that it will get done… and just getting it done seems to be the main obstacle for most resolutions. However, to follow from the rut-in-the-road analogy, sometimes a bad habit is so deep that the only way out is by taking a radical new course.
Determining the depth of a habit comes down to understanding what triggers the habit — these are sometimes called behavioral anchors — and gauging how pervasive or irresistible the anchors are. A behavioral anchor can be anything — it could be a word, a sight, a sound, a sensation, a smell, a person, a thought, a situation, a chemical reward system within the brain. When a person decides to replace one habit with another, their strategy should take into account the existing behavioral anchors and seek to establish newer, more salient anchors.
Once a person knows the change they’re looking to implement, they can start.
How Frequently?
The unit of measure of frequency for most positive-habit-building advice seems to be a 24 hour period.
For many habits, weekly is too weakly…. but there are some positive habits that can be implemented using a 7 day period of frequency. Think of those ingrained weekend habits you have and how it messes with your mind when there’s a holiday or long weekend.
Fewer still are the habits that are anchored to a bi-weekly or monthly schedule…. and as for bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annually or annual cycles, I don’t consider those as being timeframes for “habits” as much as being timeframes for “traditions,” “milestones,” or “scheduled activities” which aren’t quite automatic behaviors… mind you, the changing of seasons can serve as powerful behavioral anchors, too.
So yes, it’s possible to build a “habit” over any timeframe… but to build a new habit, you’re probably going to want to start within a frequency of hours or days, the latter being in the single digits.
For How Long?
There is a popular myth about the “21 Day Rule” i.e. that if you do something at least once per day for three weeks, the behavior will become automatic. This is supposedly based on the time that it takes for neural connections to become permanent in a person’s brain, a theory devised by a plastic surgeon who dealt with amputees. There is no credible research to support this claim, and intuitively we know that some habits take longer to form than others.
If a person is lucky (or if they’ve set it up right), a new positive habit can push all kinds of brain triggers after a very small number of repetitions. On the other end of the spectrum, it may take months or years of concentrated power of will to realign their habits onto a new pathway.
A study done in 2009 found a range of 18 to 254 days as the time it took to members of a sample population to establish a set of pre-selected “good habits,” with an overall average of 66 days for all the different habits measured.
As they say very quickly at the end of TV and radio commercials: Actual habits may vary.
So no easy answers here… I’d say just do it once… and keeping “doing it once” until it becomes a habit.
Which brings us to the final question…
When to Start?
Make a calendar appointment, blocking out the time required to execute the new habit, starting in the next 24 hours.
Time for the year-end wrap-up / navel contemplation… let’s start with some general statistics and then move to a more behind-the-scenes / things-to-do perspective:
Sum it up
According to WordPress, enough people visited this blog this year to fill up Madison Square Garden three times… but most of them did not come to read about filling Yankee Stadium… rather, they were interested in the very large number of people pairings that exist in the world.
Here are this blog’s Top 10 visited pages in 2011, starting with the most popular…
I’m glad that the “Metaphors are like, everywhere“ post has been scoring well over the longer term…. it’s one of my favorites for a bunch of reasons… but then, if the people want stamps, statistics and steaks, well then, let them eat steak…
(I expect the Forever Stamp investment value analysis to continue to trail off in popularity, especially as the USPS continues to shrink the scope of its First Class service… hmmm… if what I’m looking for is site traffic, perhaps I should find a new alternative investment vehicle to analyze… perhaps a depreciation table for Apple products? How much will your iPod/iPad/iPhone be worth in 12 months? Compared to the standard GAAP straight-line depreciation schedule for computer equipment? Tempting… tempting…)
Moving in the realm of things I can control/influence more directly….
Clean it up
There are 40+ comments awaiting moderation, most of them spam filter refugees consisting of statements such as this:
I honey your stories very much because they are written in an understandable perspicuous. So I can read them although I come from Austria and get some problems to interpret English stories.
I’ve got to do a better job staying on top of the comments and giving thoughtful replies to those who bother to do the same… and purging the spam/cruft as it accumulates.
Okay, done. Only 3 of those were real comments awaiting approval/reply.
There are 90+ draft posts, some of which will never, ever, see the light of day…posts such as…
Energy Drinks are the Young Man’s Bottled Water
Well, maybe I will get around to it, as there are some topics (Green Style, Uncommon Comestibles) that I haven’t touched as often as I would like. A friend commented on how this blog has become more focused on topics related to my profession (learning, business performance and personal effectiveness). Those who know me know that I consider that trend both a good thing and a not-so-good thing.
There are also some nearly-complete drafts… in some cases, literally just 1 or 2 key strokes shy of publication. Hey, why am I writing about writing? I’ll just wrap up one of those posts right here, right now.
Amazingly enough, I didn’t have to edit or add a single word in that post… I guess I was shy about making it public since I (fortunately) decided against adopting that blog title… and probably just as soon as I finished typing the post. It sits right next to a similar early-stage entry, How to Name Your Blogwhich in turn got superceded by Blog Title Revision.
Pick it up
Lastly, WordPress tells me that I posted 47 times this year, not including this one. This means I did not reach my post-atleast-once-per-week goal, never mind a higher goal. How did this happen? Ah, I see why… the month of May was a bit of a black hole… final projects for school, a ton of travel for work and a very demanding, thankless client project (both the client and the project were thankless and demanding)… which yielded the Plate Too Full post on June 1st… okay, I just re-red that and wow, I’m so positive… let me say now that the aforementioned client/project situation in May really, really, really, truly sucked.
We’re coming up to the end of the calendar year 2011 and many of us are closing our books.
In two more days it will be the end of the financial cycle for most individuals… and many corporations and partnerships, too. Whatever quantity of income we’ve earned — whether in the form of salaries, benefits, disbursements, fees, commissions, bonuses, tips, rents, interest, dividends — that quantity will get recorded somewhere on our tax returns in a few month’s time… that is, for those of us who pay taxes… or for that matter, for those of us who had income (can’t assume anything anymore, these days).
Also, since it is now December 29, many of us (statistically speaking) have recently spent a portion of the above-mentioned quantity of money (and hopefully a relatively small portion thereof) on discretionary purchases for ourselves and the ones we love (assuming we are not alone this holiday season) … possibly in the name of some culturally sensitive, politically correct, socially appropriate seasonal celebration (enough disclaimers yet?).
So, given the reality of our mainstream tax cycle and given the widespread seasonal affective spending that our culture has ordered for us, it’s no surprise that this is also the time of year where we see many requests from not-for-profit organizations to give tax-deductible charitable contributions.
That guy in the red velvet hat and white pom-pom may not be ringing a handbell outside the supermarket anymore, but there’s still 48 hours left to give in 2011.
So here are some end-of-year questions to consider…
1. How much of your gross/net income goes charitable contributions?
We’ve earned it… we’re spending some of it… but it doesn’t all belong to us.
The concept of tithing – giving back one-tenth of what we make — goes back as far as recorded human history. If you’re a modern adherent to the 10% rule (or some variant, e.g. 5%… or maybe 20%) you’ve probably thought about where to put government taxes into the equation.
Do you give 10% of your gross income, or your net income after taxes? What about itemized deductions? Should you consider a portion of your taxes paid to the government — ie, the percentage of the government budget that goes to provide direct support to the needy — as a form of charity? The answer to these questions may be influenced by a person’s cultural, religious, national or political background. For example, if a person lives in a European welfare state with a high individual taxation rate, statistically speaking they will give less in direct charitable contributions as compared to a person who lives in a jurisdiction with lower taxation rate. A similar statistical discrepancy appears between people with liberal versus conservative political leanings within the same tax jurisdiction. Perhaps our view of the government’s role and efficacy in supporting the needy affects our own desire to give back? (Ah, the old individual responsibility vs. collective responsibility debate… a false dichotomy if there ever was one.)
Layer on top of this our individual financial situation — our income, our expenses, our assets, our debts — and it’s quickly apparent how difficult it is to apply a single “standard” of charitable giving for all people.. and we haven’t even touched the subject of what is considered a “worthy cause.”
Yes, giving charity can be complicated.
The best way to deal with this complexity is to establish a household budget for charitable giving… aka, a “Giving-Back Budget.”
Why Establish a Giving-Back Budget?
Most importantly, by budgeting for charitable giving, it actually gets done.
Also, by establishing a budget, we can prioritize the causes we wish to support.
This allows us to more easily say “no” to the things that fall outside our budget.
Finally, it also gives us something to measure by, when we decide to say ”yes” andstretch our budget.
Some people go as far as establishing a separate bank account for themselves, designated for charitable giving. They regularly move funds into that account, so that those reserved funds won’t have a chance of getting spent on non-charitable expenses… just like payroll withholding. Hey, the government figured out a long time ago that it was easier to transfer funds at the source, rather than send out a big guy carrying an axe to do their collections. (Thankfully, we still have the phrase, “Hey dude, that’s totally in my bailiwick.” ) I haven’t gone that far myself, but for the past few years I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet on my past/current/future charitable gifts and it’s been quite helpful in keeping myself organized, giving-wise.
2. Have you reviewed your Giving-Back Budget lately?
Each one of us, at whatever scale we operate, is a philanthropist.
To be sure, there are also non-monetary ways to increase our net social worth… no, I’m not talking about that “gently used” clothing that we dumped into a steel bin next to a parking lot… I’m talking about doing things, such as volunteering our precious time to help a worthwhile organization. That’s a whole other Giving-Back calculus, which overlaps with the concept of Life Balance… and as the previously cited Charity Navigator link describes it; the giving of time and the giving of money to charitable causes are two highly correlated behaviors.
Giving-Back Budget Review Questions:
How much of what I earn will go towards my Giving-Back Budget this year?
What is the shape of my Giving-Back Budget for this year? i.e., What types of charities/causes are I supporting… and in what proportion?
How well am I doing towards this year’s Giving-Back Budget? Do I need to make any end-of-year contributions, to balance it?
What does my target Giving-Back Budget look like for next year?
The nice thing about these questions is that, even if we can’t answer them satisfactorily in the next 48 hours, these questions can become part of another great seasonal tradition: The New Year’s Resolution.
(all right, Mr. Big Shot here is going back to the spreadsheet now…)
Imagine a crowd of people is suddenly looking at you… in silence.
They are watching… waiting… listening for what you are going to say next.
The appearance (or imagined appearance) of so many eyes gazing at you… little dark circles on white orbs which, despite the minute angles involved, you can tell are pointed in your direction…. these black-on-white dots are processed by your brain and set off a chain reaction of signals to the body: Release more adrenaline! Increase the heart rate! Reduce blood flow to the cerebral cortex! Tighten the skin and muscles! Circulate blood to the interior of the body! Fight! Flee!
The problem here is that you are about to deliver a public speech, but your body thinks you’re about to have an encounter with a sabertoothed tiger.
Many people “choke” when they are asked to stand up and deliver a formal presentation or speech. The adrenaline spike is too much for them and they just freeze. This is normal biological functioning which requires practice to overcome.
A smaller number of people — usually, the more experienced speakers and presenters – have it a bit easier… but they too are subject to the adrenaline rush of having many eyes pointed at them. For them, the adrenaline spike makes them “excited” instead of “scared,” and that can be a problem if the excitement means “losing control” instead of “radiating enthusiasm.” Hence the occurrence of trained (aka “natural”) speakers rambling — getting ahead of themselves and their audience — when they first stand up to deliver a formal presentation or speech.
Whether you are a newbie speaker or a master presenter, you’ve got about 30 to 60 seconds of this to get through… if you’re lucky. During that time, for the sake of yourself and your audience, you don’t want to get derailed.
Here are some things that you can do about it:
Well before performing: Practice the Opening
Immediately before performing: Alter Your State
At the outset of performing: Set the Tone
1) Practice the Opening
During your first minute of speaking in public, the adrenaline spike that you experience will likely reduce your cognitive functioning. We don’t think well under stress… particularly if it’s the kind of stress we experience when facing a group that we consider unfamiliar (e.g. large new audience) or judgmental (e.g. audience of experts… and for some people, peers). The opening of a presentation is not a time to be thinking… or improvising.
So the key here is to always rehearse your opening 60 seconds of any presentation, out loud, multiple times, until it enters your “muscle memory” and becomes “fluid” or “natural.”
What is “fluid” speech? Try saying your mobile phone number out loud, right now. Assuming you’re a mobile phone user and haven’t recently changed your number, you probably said it very fluidly. Now try saying your phone number a few times while placing some extra emphasis or emotion on different particular numbers. Notice how easy it is to control the tone and tenor of your voice when the content is flowing.
Got a little extra time? Great… practice the rest of the presentation too… especially the ending. Oh, you don’t have extra time? Too bad. Make time. Practice.
Rehearsal is important for building “muscle memory” …but that happens well before the time of presenting. I know many experienced presenters who refuse to rehearse in the time leading up to the performance, because the rehearsal makes them more apprehensive. I don’t disagree with them. In fact, immediately before presenting – as the stress of presenting starts to build – is, for many people, not a good time to be learning things or trying to commit them to memory. Instead, immediately before performing, it’s a good for a presenter de-stress and bring themselves into a more relaxed, focused, resourceful state.
How to alter your state? It’s a mind-body thing.
Mind:
Try laughing. Read something that will make you laugh, right before you present, in order to give yourself an endorphin rush. Nothing modifies the brain chemistry better than a good ‘ol soak in humor-driven endorphins.
Sometimes before a big presentation I think about something funny that recently happened or that I saw… even reliving a favorite movie/video clip… or simply listening to a favorite song. If I can induce in myself a belly laugh or an ear-to-ear grin, I’m good to go.
Related to this: There’s an old public speaking “tip” that says, “imagine your audience naked.” At first, I couldn’t figure out the intent behind that concept… and figured it was just a mythical piece of advice. I mean, seriously. why the heck would you want to imagine your audience naked?? To be aroused or repelled?? To “knock them down a peg,” in some weird insecure way? Well, I think I now understand… it’s a humor thing. For some people, the imagined disrobing of their audience will lead to great amusement. Okay. If that’s what floats your boat… go for it.
That said, by the time you’re facing the audience, you’re probably already being observed and therefore already in “performance mode.” Therefore, all au naturel audiences aside, better to begin modifying your mood even earlier on.
Body:
Breathe, my friend… BREATHE, my pasty friend, just like in the old Halls commercial…. in through the nose, out through the mouth… exhale and feel the stress melt away… this relaxation signal is what your brain needs to counter the alarm of all-those eyeballs-staring-at-you.
Good breathing technique also helps give your better vocal energy… a deeper, projecting voice that conveys confidence to the audience.
What’s even better than breathing well? Breathe well while standing in powerful posture. Do this in a private space if you must, in the minutes leading up to the performance. Stand straight with your head high, your feet apart and your hands on your hips. Walk around. Sit in a way that says, “This is my space and I own it.” There is some very compelling research that shows how changing your posture to a so-called “power pose,” for as little as 120 seconds, can significantly alter your brain chemistry.
Here’s an excellent talk by Amy Cuddy about this…. seventeen minutes and well worth watching:
(HT DRZ)
Finally, pay attention to what you do and what you eat – if you don’t already do that all the time – in the period of time leading up to the presentation. Did you get some cardiovascular exercise in the last 12 hours? What about food? How about your blood-sugar levels? Blood-caffeine levels? Blood-alcohol… um, if you’re presenting, let’s keep that at a zero. I try to manage these things as best as I can, though admittedly my schedule sometimes does not permit it. I’ve presented under conditions of having no sleep, no food, no caffeine, too much sleep, too much food, too much caffeine, you name it… even still, I try to manage my physiology as best I can, since it makes the whole experience more enjoyable for everyone if I can get myself into a really good state of “flow.”
3) Set the Tone
The presentation is starting now. You’ve rehearsed, you’ve gotten yourself into a good resourceful state and now you want to get things going on the right foot… you don’t want to succumb to the “OMG THEY’RE ALL LOOKING AT ME” panic.
Here’s the key: Make it not about you.
As you’re opening the presentation, the thing to do is to get out of your own head and achieve some external focus and interest – as opposed to internal focus and anxiety. Place all your attention on the audience and your message. That’s what you’re here to do. As Peter Ustinov once said,
“It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”
One common way to do this is to get some dialogue going from the outset. “How is everyone doing today?” is the overused and only-sometimes-effective approach taken by speakers… there are any number of good audience-prompts that you can develop. A simple approach in highly formal presentations where you are given an introduction by someone — usually to a very large audience – is to engage in banter with the person who introduced you to the audience, e.g. a quick thank you and maybe some very brief back-and-forth conversation. A short dialogue will put everyone at ease in those crucial initial moments of the presentation, get you out of your own head and bring your focus to the audience and the moment.
If possible, try to mingle with the crowd prior to the presentation, get to know them as people instead of mere spectators with eyes looking to scrutinize. The people are participants in your public conversation… they are on your side and want to partake in an enjoyable experience. Get to know them that way.
Another thing to do, just as you’re kicking things off, is to adopt an attitude of gratitude. Find something to be grateful for — the audience, the place, the topic — and find a way to authentically express that gratitude. Gratitude is an excellent way to get over yourself…. and besides, people prefer listening to grateful people… and you will prefer being a grateful person, too.
In summary:
1) Well before performing: Practice the Opening
2) Immediately before performing: Alter Your State
After the announcement today of Kim Jong Il’s death, North Korea’s state media released the following disturbing footage of people demonstrating grief in Pyongyang:
As New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch describes it, this “mandatory public crying” perfectly summarizes the cruel methodology used by the North Korean regime to torture and enslave their people completely, body and mind. While the video may seem initially absurd and even comical, the scene quickly becomes chilling as the people in this video force their physiology to point of inducing their brains to feel anguish.
The good news is that the crowd in this particular video seems to require a lot of effort to bring themselves into a state of authentic emotional distress. Perhaps their underlying joy at Kim Jong Il’s death is making this such a big effort… and/or perhaps they are the cozy members of North Korea’s ruling class who have less of a reference point of despair to draw from. Regardless, the very act of participating in this spectacle has got to be pretty damaging to their psyches.
This video reminds us that the mind-body connection is a powerful tool… and can be a way for us to inflict punishment on ourselves, in big ways and small ways.
The flip side of this is that we can harness this phenomenon in more positively and choose to do things with our bodies that induce mental health andhappiness in ourselves:
Comparing this video of people engaging in Laughter Therapy (or “Laughing Yoga”), versus the video of North Koreans self-inflicting emotional pain, I’m struck with how the laughing folks seem to require much less effort to induce a change in their internal brain chemistry… and how it’s achieving a much more profound result. Of course, in the laughter video, the participants are attending the mood-modification exercise by choice.
Sit up straight, smile and choose happiness… because if you’re able to access the Internet and can read this, that’s gotta be worth something.
Being effective is largely a matter of being able to handle paradoxes — or at least balance two opposing thoughts and hold them in an appropriate tension.
In other words, part of being effective involves having a high threshold for cognitive dissonance; allowing for interruptions to default thinking patterns; allowing for bouts of agnosticism and unlearning.
Or, as novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald once pithied it…
“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
(yes, I just verbed pithy… if they can verb architect, i can verb pithy)
Some questions to consider, then:
What are some of the ways to develop and refine this ability?
How could you measure this ability?
How could you know if this ability had become over-developed?
There will come a morning when you wake up and realize that the thing that you carried as currency — your pride, resentment, bitterness — no longer has any purchasing power.
To be sure, there are also non-monetary ways to increase our net social worth… no, I’m not talking about that “gently used” clothing that we dumped into a steel bin next to a parking lot… I’m talking about doing things, such as volunteering our precious time to help a worthwhile organization. That’s a whole other Giving-Back calculus, which overlaps with the concept of Life Balance… and as the previously cited 
A smaller number of people — usually, the more experienced speakers and presenters – have it a bit easier… but they too are subject to the adrenaline rush of having many eyes pointed at them. For them, the adrenaline spike makes them “excited” instead of “scared,” and that can be a problem if the excitement means “losing control” instead of “radiating enthusiasm.” Hence the occurrence of trained (aka “natural”) speakers rambling — getting ahead of themselves and their audience — when they first stand up to deliver a formal presentation or speech.
During your first minute of speaking in public, the adrenaline spike that you experience will likely reduce your cognitive functioning. We don’t think well under stress… particularly if it’s the kind of stress we experience when facing a group that we consider unfamiliar (e.g. large new audience) or judgmental (e.g. audience of experts… and for some people, peers). The opening of a presentation is not a time to be thinking… or improvising. 
Instead, immediately before performing, it’s a good for a presenter de-stress and bring themselves into a more relaxed, focused, resourceful state.
Breathe, my friend… BREATHE, my pasty friend, just like in the old Halls commercial…. in through the nose, out through the mouth… exhale and feel the stress melt away… this relaxation signal is what your brain needs to counter the alarm of all-those eyeballs-staring-at-you.
In summary:
