|
YOU are the Message!
Robert Rabbin
I can’t tell you how many people who have gathered
significant understanding and insight — including holistic healers, teachers,
life coaches, counselors, business and corporate leaders — come to my RealTime
Speaking courses still afraid to stand in public and speak their truth. To speak
one’s truth means to show oneself, not one’s “knowing.” It means to be willing
to be seen by people without fear of their criticism and judgment, without
hiding, without defense or pretence. In my workshops, I tell people, “YOU are
the message.”
One of the most challenging exercises for participants in my workshops is when I
ask them to stand before the group, without saying anything! I ask them only to
see, and be seen; to connect with each of the audience, in turn, with their
eyes, with their heart. I ask them to notice any tendency to hide, to retreat,
to cover themselves. I ask them to notice any contraction or tension they feel.
I ask them to breathe, to open. Say nothing. Just be present with your self and
others. Just see the audience, and let the audience see you; let them in. Most
want to run away. People want to laugh, to joke, to hold their hands tightly, to
look away, to clench their jaws. One teacher kept turning around, wanting to
write something on an imaginary blackboard. Another kept shifting from one foot
to the other. It’s difficult.
The comedian Jerry Seinfeld once remarked, “According to most studies, people’s
number one fear is public speaking. Death is number two. This means that the
average person would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.” Take a poll
of your friends, and you’ll see just how terrified people are of public
speaking, of showing themselves to others without masks and roles, without
prepared texts or PowerPoint presentations. Until we can do this, we can’t
really live authentic lives. Our fear will rule us and run us from dawn to dusk
and all night long.
I had lunch with a woman whose facade was so cleverly constructed and painted,
it was nearly invisible. She is a successful leadership consultant and author.
She is bright, energetic, and articulate. She is convinced of her point of view,
and convincing in communicating it. She talked about her recent travels and
love-life escapades, and about her new book and the troubles she was having with
a couple of chapters. She asked about my life, and politely listened to my
sketch of some recent events. All in all, an unremarkable encounter, until … I
began to feel a discomfort growing within me. It was a quite subtle, intuitive
instinct. What? What is it? I didn’t know. Something was there to be noticed, I
knew, but I couldn’t bring it into focus. Then it came to me!
She was nowhere to be seen. She wasn’t there; “she” was only a facade with
window coverings. You could enter the front door and exit the back door at the
same time. There was no “there” there! She kept pushing crap at me, disconnected
stories and anecdotes that jumped from here to there, in order to hide behind it
all.
She was doing what so many people do: she was talking to conceal, not reveal,
herself. She was not making authentic connection, which I define as “intimacy
with self and vulnerability with others.” Without authentic connection, we can
not show who we are, we can not speak our truth. We can only broadcast crap. Get
real. Speak your truth, which means to show yourself without protection, without
explanation, without any hiding at all. YOU are the message.
Back to Reading-Room Insight page |
|
