“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
