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The Passionate Speaker
"Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire."
- Reggie LeachA Newsletter for Speakers By Michael Landrum June 9, 2003 — Number 54 Energy "Imagine yourself floating in a void. Nothing but you in a vast empty universe." One of my teachers in a sociology class in college posed this thought experiment for us. Then she asked simply, "now, try to determine how big you are." Her point was simple and powerful. We are who we are only in relationship to the world and the people around us. Our relationships are the source and conduit of life's energy. Energy. That's the secret of success. Energy is what drives the universe and what drives powerful communication. Because energy only exists in the present instant, the ability to direct our energy is the basis of presentation skills. I once met an actor named Louie Fant. He was a hearing man with deaf parents, and he wrote a book on American sign language titled Say it with Hands. He took me to a party of fifty or sixty deaf people which was held in a large church basement in Los Angeles. The people did not mill around in the middle of the floor, as a hearing crowd would; they stayed close to the walls, forming a large open circle. This allowed each of them to communicate with almost everyone else in the room. These conversations in sign language across fifty feet or more of open space, all in an eerie silence, were conducted with enormous energy. Fingers flew through the alphabet; facial expressions and expansive gestures told all the adventures of life – by turns hilarious, terrifying, exciting or mundane. I had never seen anyone communicate with such force and commitment. Actors are often asked to "give it more energy!" especially when working on stage in the live theatre. A Broadway musical can be a more taxing physical effort than a marathon. The marathoner can at least zone out, go into a mental trance; the rhythmic pumping legs and lungs can hypnotize the miles away. A dancer on Broadway might have to perform elaborate and varied routines for three hours a night, twice on matinee days, eight shows a week, no matter how she feels. Physical energy is obvious to all of us, but mental, vocal and spiritual energy may not be. These are the forms of energy we use in speaking, acting and communicating. Mental energy is concentration. Thinking is work, and presenting takes alert and focused thinking. Actor and teacher Jeremy Brett once said "the audience must realize your mind is working faster than your words." Furthermore, this energetic thought must be directed toward the future. Presenters concentrate on what to say or do next. Vocal energy is easy to recognize but more difficult for some to achieve. Many of us suffer from blocks and tensions that sap our vocal power. We need to dispel these tensions in order to release the full power of our voices, either to fill a vast auditorium or to reach a microphone an inch away. Vocal power is not simply a matter of volume, but rather the full expression of our life force. Our voice carries a reflection of our whole emotional, spiritual, mental and physical energy. To free our voice we must learn to relax and trust that energy. Spiritual energy is beyond our direct control. It is what we detect in others through our intuition; we get a sense, a feeling about a person and their relation to life and the world. This is what we mean by charisma or personal magnetism. There are some people who attract us just by their aura of good will and centeredness. It's tempting to say that our spiritual energy rises from our integrity and our accomplishments, but it also draws from our shortcomings and vulnerabilities. Come to think of it, one of the accomplishments that marks a person of integrity is the willingness to acknowledge one's shortcomings and vulnerabilities. Perhaps we are most familiar with our emotional energy. It lights the broad way of communication between humans. Empathy, sympathy, apathy, antipathy are the strings that make up the web of relationship. We literally feel our way around that network that enmeshes us in the human condition. The power of these energies arises from their presentness; they are life expressing itself in the living fleeting, evanescent moment. The New York Times Science Section says that seven billion years ago a mysterious energy created an acceleration in the expansion of the universe. It is still exerting its powerful force on all matter. Life evolved on our planet for the first time about seven billion years ago - give or take a billion. Coincidence? I wonder. What is life if not a spontaneous, self-perpetuating energy-generating system? Certainly by energizing our own web of relationships we can expand our personal universe. A Thought to Ponder "Nobody grows old by mere living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the face, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-interest, fear, despair - these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust." - Watterson Lowe ©2001-2003 Michael F. Landrum |
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