Ninth in the extraordinary series.
So far we’ve talked mostly about how to differentiate yourself from the crowd.
This is a crucial part of the strategy; you can’t stand out if you’re like everyone else.
But it’s only half the strategy.
The other half has to do with impact.
Not only must you stand out from the rest, your delivery must be so startling, so powerful, it creates an immediate impact on whoever’s witnessing it.
They must come away captivated, excited, uplifted, even feeling a sense of awe.
There’re a few ways you can inspire this excitement.
The first is to speak and play from the heart.
There’s nothing that matches the excitement that comes from personal conviction. Delivery then is not just a matter of rote repetition but of expressing your innermost feelings.
Here, directness of expression is key.
Let nothing stand in the way of your expression.
No rules (again).
No thoughts of properness.
No self-consciousness.
No academic considerations of what is right or wrong.
It must a complete and unabashed giving of yourself.
Think of Bruce Lee, giving one of his blood-curdling howls as he goes in for a kill. There’s no thought of propriety, no self-consciousness in that moment of complete self-expression. It’s the ultimate primal scream prompted by only one thing, the need to let it all out in a moment of self preservation.
Or Glenn Gould humming and gesticulating. Complete and unabashed self-expression. No thought of whether it’s appropriate, driven only by one thing, to make the music sing in all its glory.
We come back to rules again.
When it comes to expressing yourself, the only rule is to have no rules.
The expression is everything.
Nothing else doesn’t matter.
To paraphrase Beethoven, what do I care about your wretched rules when the spirit takes hold of me?
Source:
http://philiphii.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/create-an-impact/