1st: Start with a Strong & Persistent Desire
This is of far more importance than you probably realize. If an instructor could look into your mind and heart now and ascertain the depth of your desires, he could foretell, most with certainty, the swiftness of the progress you will make. If your desire is pale and flabby, your achievements will also take on that hue and consistency. But if you go after your subject with persistence and with the energy of a bulldog after a cat, nothing underneath the Milky Way will defeat you.
Therefore, arouse your enthusiasm for this self-study. Enumerate its benefits. Think of what additional self-confidence and the ability to talk more convincingly in the public will mean to you. Think of what it may mean and what it ought to mean, in dollars and cents. Think of what it may mean to you socially; of the friends it will bring, of the increase of your personal influence, of the leadership it will give you. And it will give you leadership more rapidly than almost any other activity you can think of or imagine.
“There is no other accomplishment,” stated Chauncey M. Depew, “which any man can have that will so quickly make for him a career and secure recognition as the ability to speak acceptably.”
Philip D. Armour, after he had amassed millions, said: “I would rather have been a great speaker than a great capitalist.”
It is an attainment that almost every person of education longs for. After Andrew Carnegis’s death there was found, among his papers, a plan for his life drawn up when he was thirty-three years of age. He then felt that in two more years he could so arrange his business as to have an annual income of fifty thousand; so he proposed to retire at thirty-five, go to oxford and get a through education, and “pay special attention to speaking in public.”
Think of the glow of satisfaction and pleasure that will accrue from the exercise of this new power. The author has traveled around over no small part of the world; and has had many and varied experiences; but for downright and lasting inward satisfaction, he knows of few things that will compare to standing before an audience and making men think your thoughts after you. It will give you a sense of strength, a feeling of power. It will appeal to your pride of personal accomplishment. It will set you off from and raise you above your fellow men. There is magic in it and a never-to-be-forgotten thrill. “Two minutes before I begin,” a speaker confessed, “I would rather be whipped than start; but two minutes before finish, I would rather be shot than stop.”
In every effort, some men grow faint-hearted and fall by the wayside; so you should keep thinking of what this skill will mean to you until your desire is white hot. You should start this program with an enthusiasm that will carry you through triumphant to the end. Set aside one certain night of the week for the reading of these chapters. In short, make it as easy as possible to go ahead. Make it as difficult as possible to retreat.
When Julius Caesar sailed over the channel from Gaul and landed with his legions on what is now England, what did he do to insure the success of his arms? A very clever thing: he halted his soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover, and, looking down over the waves two hundred feet below, they saw red tongues of fire consume every ship in which they had crossed. In the enemy’s country, with the last link with the Continent gone, the last means of retreating burned, there was but one thing left for them to do: to advance, to conquer. That is precisely what they did.
Such was the spirit of the immortal Caesar. Why not make it yours, too, in this war to exterminate any foolish fear of audiences?
2nd: Know Thoroughly What You Are Going To Talk About
Unless a person has thought out and planned his talk and knows what he is going to say, he can’t feel very comfortable when he faces his auditors. He is like the blind leading the blind. Under such circumstances, your speaker ought to be self-conscious, ought to feel repentant, and ought to be ashamed of his negligence.
“I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881,” Teddy Roosevelt wrote in his Autobioghraphy, “and found myself the youngest man in that body. Like all young men inexperienced members, I had considerable difficulty in teaching myselft to speak. I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed old countryman-who was unconsciously paraphrasing the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody else. The advice ran: “Don’t speak until you are sure you have something to say, and know just what it is; then say it and sit down.’”
This “hard-headed old countryman” ought to have told Roosevelt of another aid in overcoming nervousness. He ought to have added: “ It will help you to throw off embarrassment if you can find something to do before an audience – if you can exhibit something, write a word on the blackboard, or point out a spot on the map, or move a table, or throw open a window, or shift some books and papers – any physical action with a purpose behind it may help you to feel more at home.”
True, it is not always easy to find an excuse for doing such things; but there is the suggestion. Use it if you can; but use it the first few times only. A baby does not cling to chairs after it once learns to walk.
3rd: Act Confident
One of the famous psychologists that America has produced, Professor William James, wrote as follows:
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheer-fully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
Apply Professor James’ advice. To develop courage when you are facing an audience, act as if you already had it. Of course, unless you are prepared, all the acting in the world will avail but little. But granted that you know what you are going to talk about, step out briskly and take a deep breath. In fact, breathe deeply for thirty seconds before you ever face your audience. The increased supply of oxygen will buoy you up and give you courage. The great tenor, Jean de Reszke, used to say that when you had your breath so you “could sit on it” nervousness vanished.
In every age, in every clime, men have always admired courage; so no matter how your heart may be pounding inside, stride forth bravely, stop, stand still and act as if you loved it.
Draw yourself up to your full height, look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as confidently as if every one of them owed you money. Imagine that they do. Imagine that they have assembled there to beg you for an extension of credit. The psychological effect on you will be beneficial.
Do not nervously button and unbutton your coat, play with your beads or fumble with your hands. If you must make nervous movements, place your hand behind your back and twist your fingers there where no one can see the performance - or wiggle your toes.
As a general rule, it is bad for a speaker to hide behind furniture; but it may give you a little courage the first few times to stand behind a table or chair and to grip them tightly – or hold a coin firmly in the palm of your hand.
How did Teddy Roosevelt develop his characteristic courage and self-reliance? Was he endowed by a nature with a venturesome and daring spirit? Not at all. “Having brrn a rather sickly and awkward boy,” he confesses in his Autobiography, “I was, as a young man, at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to train myselft painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit.”
Fortunately, he has told us how how he achieved the transformation: “When a boy,” he writes, “I read a passage in one of Marryat’s books which always impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he were not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretence to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat’s).
“This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.”
You can have that very experience, too, if you wish. “In war,” said Marshal Foch, “the best defensive is an offensive.” So take the offensive against your fears. Go out to meet them, battle them, conquer them by sheer boldness at every opportunity.
Have a message, and then think of yourself as a western Union boy instructed to deliver it. We pay slight attention to the boy.
AN ORGANIZE WAY OF THINKING
Edward Debono – 6 Thinking Hats
1. White Hat – Purely Fact & figures/data
2. Red Hat – Emosions (how feel about that Particular issue)
3. Black Hat – Cautios (being critical & pointing out errors)
4. Yellow Hat – Positive (positive superlation Assesment &
constructive thinking)
5. Green Hat - Growth Creative (how to eliminate risk /high changes
6. Blue Hat – Overview, Control (Thinking about thinking,control, dimension, focus)
This is of far more importance than you probably realize. If an instructor could look into your mind and heart now and ascertain the depth of your desires, he could foretell, most with certainty, the swiftness of the progress you will make. If your desire is pale and flabby, your achievements will also take on that hue and consistency. But if you go after your subject with persistence and with the energy of a bulldog after a cat, nothing underneath the Milky Way will defeat you.
Therefore, arouse your enthusiasm for this self-study. Enumerate its benefits. Think of what additional self-confidence and the ability to talk more convincingly in the public will mean to you. Think of what it may mean and what it ought to mean, in dollars and cents. Think of what it may mean to you socially; of the friends it will bring, of the increase of your personal influence, of the leadership it will give you. And it will give you leadership more rapidly than almost any other activity you can think of or imagine.
“There is no other accomplishment,” stated Chauncey M. Depew, “which any man can have that will so quickly make for him a career and secure recognition as the ability to speak acceptably.”
Philip D. Armour, after he had amassed millions, said: “I would rather have been a great speaker than a great capitalist.”
It is an attainment that almost every person of education longs for. After Andrew Carnegis’s death there was found, among his papers, a plan for his life drawn up when he was thirty-three years of age. He then felt that in two more years he could so arrange his business as to have an annual income of fifty thousand; so he proposed to retire at thirty-five, go to oxford and get a through education, and “pay special attention to speaking in public.”
Think of the glow of satisfaction and pleasure that will accrue from the exercise of this new power. The author has traveled around over no small part of the world; and has had many and varied experiences; but for downright and lasting inward satisfaction, he knows of few things that will compare to standing before an audience and making men think your thoughts after you. It will give you a sense of strength, a feeling of power. It will appeal to your pride of personal accomplishment. It will set you off from and raise you above your fellow men. There is magic in it and a never-to-be-forgotten thrill. “Two minutes before I begin,” a speaker confessed, “I would rather be whipped than start; but two minutes before finish, I would rather be shot than stop.”
In every effort, some men grow faint-hearted and fall by the wayside; so you should keep thinking of what this skill will mean to you until your desire is white hot. You should start this program with an enthusiasm that will carry you through triumphant to the end. Set aside one certain night of the week for the reading of these chapters. In short, make it as easy as possible to go ahead. Make it as difficult as possible to retreat.
When Julius Caesar sailed over the channel from Gaul and landed with his legions on what is now England, what did he do to insure the success of his arms? A very clever thing: he halted his soldiers on the chalk cliffs of Dover, and, looking down over the waves two hundred feet below, they saw red tongues of fire consume every ship in which they had crossed. In the enemy’s country, with the last link with the Continent gone, the last means of retreating burned, there was but one thing left for them to do: to advance, to conquer. That is precisely what they did.
Such was the spirit of the immortal Caesar. Why not make it yours, too, in this war to exterminate any foolish fear of audiences?
2nd: Know Thoroughly What You Are Going To Talk About
Unless a person has thought out and planned his talk and knows what he is going to say, he can’t feel very comfortable when he faces his auditors. He is like the blind leading the blind. Under such circumstances, your speaker ought to be self-conscious, ought to feel repentant, and ought to be ashamed of his negligence.
“I was elected to the Legislature in the fall of 1881,” Teddy Roosevelt wrote in his Autobioghraphy, “and found myself the youngest man in that body. Like all young men inexperienced members, I had considerable difficulty in teaching myselft to speak. I profited much by the advice of a hard-headed old countryman-who was unconsciously paraphrasing the Duke of Wellington, who was himself doubtless paraphrasing somebody else. The advice ran: “Don’t speak until you are sure you have something to say, and know just what it is; then say it and sit down.’”
This “hard-headed old countryman” ought to have told Roosevelt of another aid in overcoming nervousness. He ought to have added: “ It will help you to throw off embarrassment if you can find something to do before an audience – if you can exhibit something, write a word on the blackboard, or point out a spot on the map, or move a table, or throw open a window, or shift some books and papers – any physical action with a purpose behind it may help you to feel more at home.”
True, it is not always easy to find an excuse for doing such things; but there is the suggestion. Use it if you can; but use it the first few times only. A baby does not cling to chairs after it once learns to walk.
3rd: Act Confident
One of the famous psychologists that America has produced, Professor William James, wrote as follows:
Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheer-fully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can.
So, to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all of our will to that end, and a courage fit will very likely replace the fit of fear.
Apply Professor James’ advice. To develop courage when you are facing an audience, act as if you already had it. Of course, unless you are prepared, all the acting in the world will avail but little. But granted that you know what you are going to talk about, step out briskly and take a deep breath. In fact, breathe deeply for thirty seconds before you ever face your audience. The increased supply of oxygen will buoy you up and give you courage. The great tenor, Jean de Reszke, used to say that when you had your breath so you “could sit on it” nervousness vanished.
In every age, in every clime, men have always admired courage; so no matter how your heart may be pounding inside, stride forth bravely, stop, stand still and act as if you loved it.
Draw yourself up to your full height, look your audience straight in the eyes, and begin to talk as confidently as if every one of them owed you money. Imagine that they do. Imagine that they have assembled there to beg you for an extension of credit. The psychological effect on you will be beneficial.
Do not nervously button and unbutton your coat, play with your beads or fumble with your hands. If you must make nervous movements, place your hand behind your back and twist your fingers there where no one can see the performance - or wiggle your toes.
As a general rule, it is bad for a speaker to hide behind furniture; but it may give you a little courage the first few times to stand behind a table or chair and to grip them tightly – or hold a coin firmly in the palm of your hand.
How did Teddy Roosevelt develop his characteristic courage and self-reliance? Was he endowed by a nature with a venturesome and daring spirit? Not at all. “Having brrn a rather sickly and awkward boy,” he confesses in his Autobiography, “I was, as a young man, at first both nervous and distrustful of my own prowess. I had to train myselft painfully and laboriously not merely as regards my body but as regards my soul and spirit.”
Fortunately, he has told us how how he achieved the transformation: “When a boy,” he writes, “I read a passage in one of Marryat’s books which always impressed me. In this passage the captain of some small British man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to acquire the quality of fearlessness. He says that at the outset almost every man is frightened when he goes into action, but that the course to follow is for the man to keep such a grip on himself that he can act just as if he were not frightened. After this is kept up long enough, it changes from pretence to reality, and the man does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat’s).
“This was the theory upon which I went. There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.”
You can have that very experience, too, if you wish. “In war,” said Marshal Foch, “the best defensive is an offensive.” So take the offensive against your fears. Go out to meet them, battle them, conquer them by sheer boldness at every opportunity.
Have a message, and then think of yourself as a western Union boy instructed to deliver it. We pay slight attention to the boy.
AN ORGANIZE WAY OF THINKING
Edward Debono – 6 Thinking Hats
1. White Hat – Purely Fact & figures/data
2. Red Hat – Emosions (how feel about that Particular issue)
3. Black Hat – Cautios (being critical & pointing out errors)
4. Yellow Hat – Positive (positive superlation Assesment &
constructive thinking)
5. Green Hat - Growth Creative (how to eliminate risk /high changes
6. Blue Hat – Overview, Control (Thinking about thinking,control, dimension, focus)
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