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Crash Through Your Shell of Self-Consciousness
As Marshal Foch says of the art of war, “it is simple enough in its conception, but unfortunately complicated in its execution.
You see why it is that people flock to the theater and the movies—because there they see their fellow human beings act with little or no inhibition, there they see people wearing their emotions prominently displayed on their sleeves.
Don’t Try to Imitate Others—Be Yourself
that everything depends upon the manner in which one speaks and not upon the matter.
“All Fords are exactly alike,” their maker used to say, but no two men are just alike. Every new life is a new thing under the sun; there has never been anything just like it before, and never will be again. A young man ought to get that idea about himself; he should look for the single spark of individuality that makes him different from other folks, and develop that for all he is worth. Society and schools may try to iron it out of him; their tendency is to put us all in the same mold but, I say, don’t let that spark be lost; it’s your only real claim to importance.
“It is your only real claim to importance.” Please, I beg you, do not attempt to force yourself in a mold and thereby lose your distinctiveness.
Converse with Your Audience
A good window does not call attention to itself. It merely lets in the light.
Put Your Heart into Your Speaking
Practice Making Your Voice Strong and Flexible
Best way to conquer stage fright is to know what you’re talking about.
There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it. – Dale Carnegie
Talk in Terms of Your Listeners’ Interests
In Mind in the Making, James Harvey Robinson describes reverie as “a spontaneous and favorite kind of thinking.” He goes on to say that, in reverie, we allow our ideas to take their own course, and this course is determined by our hopes and fears, our spontaneous desires, their fulfillment or frustration; by our likes and dislikes, our loves, hates, and resentments. There is nothing so interesting to ourselves as ourselves.
Give Honest, Sincere Appreciation
Identify Yourself with the Audience
Make Your Audience a Partner in Your Talk
Play Yourself Down
They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. – Carl W. Buechner
You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. – Dale Carnegie
What do we mean by the purpose of a talk? Just this: every talk, regardless of whether the speaker realizes it or not, has one of four major goals. What are they? * * * To persuade or get action. To inform. To impress and convince. To entertain.
What is the Magic Formula? Simply this: Start your talk by giving us the details of your Example, an incident that graphically illustrates the main idea you wish to get across. Second, in specific clearcut terms give your Point, tell exactly what you want your audience to do; and third, give your Reason, that is, highlight the advantage or benefit to be gained by the listener when he does what you ask him to do.
Give Your Example, an Incident from Your Life
Psychologists say we learn in two ways: one, by the Law of Exercise, in which a series of similar incidents leads to a change of our behavioral patterns; and two, by the Law of Effect, in which a single event may be so startling as to cause a change in our conduct.
BUILD YOUR EXAMPLE UPON A SINGLE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
START YOUR TALK WITH A DETAIL OF YOUR EXAMPLE
Take a tip from top-flight magazine and newspaper writers: begin right in your example and you will capture the attention of your audience immediately.
If you start your talk with phrases that answer one of the questions, Who? When? Where? What? How? or Why?, you will be using one of the oldest communication devices in the world to get attention—the story.
FILL YOUR EXAMPLE WITH RELEVANT DETAIL
After all, your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt.
RELIVE YOUR EXPERIENCE AS YOU RELATE IT
SECOND State Your Point, What You Want the Audience to Do
THIRD Give the Reason or Benefit the Audience May Expect
No one ever complains about a speech being too short! – Ira Hayes
Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you felt. Relevant detail, couched in concrete, colorful language, is the best way to recreate the incident as it happened and to picture it for the audience. – Dale Carnegie
The ability to speak clearly precedes the ability to move others to action.
“Everything that can be thought at all,” said Ludwig Wittgenstein, “can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said, can be said clearly.”
“Think as wise men do, but speak as the common people do.”
“One seeing,” says an old Japanese proverb, “is better than a hundred times telling about.”
He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. – Joseph Conrad
Applause is a receipt, not a bill. – Dale Carnegie
“The sincerity with which a man speaks,” said Alexander Woolcott, “imparts to his voice a color of truth no perjurer can feign.”
The skillful speaker gets at the outset a number of yes-responses. He has thereby set the psychological processes of his listeners moving in the affirmative direction. It is like the movement of a billiard ball. Propel it in one direction, and it takes some force to deflect it, far more force to send it back in the opposite direction. The psychological patterns here are quite clear.
“The human personality demands love and it also demands respect,” Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
“Every human being has an inner sense of worth, of importance, of dignity. Wound that and you have lost that person forever. So when you love and respect a person you build him up and, accordingly, he loves and esteems you.
An atheist once challenged William Paley to disprove his contention that there was no Supreme Being. Very quietly Paley took out his watch, opened the case, and said: “If I were to tell you that those levers and wheels and springs made themselves and fitted themselves together and started running on their own account, wouldn’t you question my intelligence? Of course, you would. But look up at the stars. Every one of them has its perfect appointed course and motion—the earth and planets around the sun, and the whole group pitching along at more than a million miles a day. Each star is another
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Our problem in making a talk to convince or impress others is just this: to plant the idea in their minds and to keep contradicting and opposing ideas from arising. He who is skilled in doing that has power in speaking and influencing others. Here is precisely where the rules in my book How to Win Friends and Influence People will be helpful.
Woodrow Wilson’s words, “If you come to me and say, ‘Let us sit down and take counsel together, and, if we differ from one another, understand why it is that we differ from one another, just what the points at issue are,’ we will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.”
The success of your presentation will be judged not by the knowledge you send but by what the listener receives. – Lilly Walters
