Essential Elements in Successful Speaking

Chapter 5

The day these lines are written, January 5th, is the anniversary of the death of Sir Ernest Shackleton. He died while steaming southward on the good ship “Quest” to explore the Antarctic. The first thing that attracted one’s eyes on going aboard the

“Quest” were these lines engraved on a brass plate:
If you can dream and not make dreams your master;
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster;
And treat those two impostors just the same,
If you can force your heart, and nerve, and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone;
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the will which says to them, “Hold on,”
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it,
And, what is more, you’ll be a man, my son.

“The Spirit of the Quest,” Shackleton called those verses; and truly, they are the proper spirit with which a man should start out to reach the South Pole or to gain confidence in reach public speaking.
But that is not the spirit, I regard to add, in which all persons begin the study of public speaking. Years ago, when I first engaged in educational work, I was astounded to learn how large a percentage of students who enrolled in night schools of all sorts grew weary and fainted by the wayside: before their goals were attained. The number is both lamentable and amazing. It is a sad commentary on human nature.
This is nearing the middle of the book, and I know from experience that some who are reading are already growing disheartened because they have not conquered their fear of audiences and gained self-confidence. What a pity, for “how poor are they that have not patience. What wound did ever heal but by degrees?”

The Necessity of Persistence

When we start to learn any new thing, like French, or golf, or public speaking, we never advance steadily. We do not improve gradually. We do it by sudden jerks, by abrupt starts. Then we remain stationary a time, or we may even slip back and lose some of the ground we have previously gained. These periods of stagnation, or retrogression, are well known by all psychologists; and they have been named “plateaus in the curve of learning.” Students of public speaking will sometimes be stalled for weeks on one of these plateaus. Work as hard as they may, they cannot get off it. The weak ones give up in despair. Those with grit persist, and they find that suddenly, over­ night, without their knowing how or why it has happened, they have made great progress. They have lifted from the plateau like an aeroplane. Abruptly they have gotten the knack of the thing. Abruptly they have acquired naturalness and force and confidence in their speaking.
You may always, is we have noted elsewhere in these pages, experience some fleeting fear, some shock, some nervous anxiety the first few moments you face an audience. But if you will but persevere, you will soon eradicate everything but this initial fear; and that will be initial fear, and nothing more. After the first few sentences, you will have control of yourself. You will be speaking with positive pleasure.

Keeping Everlastingly at It

One time a young man who aspired to study law, wrote to Lincoln for advice, and Lincoln replied: “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already… Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
Lincoln knew. He had gone through it all. He had never, in his entire life, had more than a total of one year’s schooling. And books? Lincoln once said he had walked to borrow every book within fifty miles of his home. A log fire was usually kept going all night in the cabin. Sometimes he read by the light of that fire. There were cracks between the logs, and Lincoln often kept a book sticking in a crack. As soon as it was light enough to read in the morning, he rolled over on his bed of leaves, rubbed his eyes, pulled out the book and began devouring it.
He walked twenty and thirty miles to hear a speaker and, returning home, he practiced his talks everywhere—in the fields, in the woods, before the crowds gathered at Jones’ grocery at Greenville. He joined literary and debating societies in New Salem and Springfield, and practiced speaking on the topics of the day much as you are doing now.
A sense of inferiority always troubled him. In the presence of women he was shy and dumb. When he courted Mary Todd he used to sit in the parlour, bashful and silent, unable to find words, listening while she did the talking. Yet that was the man who, by practice and home study, made himself into the speaker who debated with the accomplished orator, Senator Douglas. That was the man who, at Gettysburg, and again in his second inaugural address, rose to heights of eloquence that have rarely been attained in all the annals of mankind.
Small wonder that in view of his own terrific handicaps and pitiful struggle, he wrote: “If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already.”
There was an excellent picture of Abraham Lincoln in the President’s office. “Often when I had some matter to decide,” said Theodore Roosevelt, “something involved and difficult to dispose of, something where there were conflicting rights and interests, I would look up at Lincoln, try to imagine him in my place, try to figure out what he would do in the same circumstances. It may sound odd to you, but, frankly, it seemed to make my troubles easier of solution.”
Why not try Roosevelt’s plan? Why not, if you are discouraged and feeling like giving up the fight to make a speaker of yourself, why not pull out of your pocket one of the five-dollar bills that bear a likeness of Lincoln, and ask yourself what he would do under the circumstances. You know what he would do. You know what he did do. After he had been beaten by Stephen A. Douglas in the race for the U.S. Senate, he admonished his followers not to “give up after one nor one hundred defeats.”

The Certainty of Reward

How I wish I could get you to prop this book open on your breakfast table every morning for a week until you had memorized these word from Professor William James, the famous Harvard psychologist:
Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keeps faithfully busy each hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can, with perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.
And now, with the renowned Professor James to fall back upon, I shall go so far as to say that if you pursue this self-study in speech faithfully and with enthusiasm, and keep right on practicing intelligently, you may confidently hope to wake up one fine morning and find yourself one of the competent speakers of your city or community.
Regardless of how fantastic that may sound to you now, it is true as a general principle. Exceptions, of course, there are. A man with an inferior mentality and person­ality, and with nothing to talk about, is not going to develop into a local Daniel Webster; but, within reason, the assertion is correct.
Let me illustrate by a concrete example:
Former Governor Stokes of New Jersey attended the closing banquet of a public speaking class at Trenton. He remarked that the talks he had heard the students make that evening were as good as the speeches he had heard in the House of Representatives and Senate at Washington. Those Trenton speeches were made by business men who had been tongue-tied with audience-fear a few months pre­viously. They were not incipient Ciceros, those New Jersey business men; they were typical of the business men one finds in any American city. Yet they woke up one fine morning to find themselves among the able speakers of their city.
The entire question of your success as a speaker hinges upon only two things—your native ability, and the depth and strength of your desires. “In almost any subject,” said Professor James, “your passion for the subject will save you. If you only care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be good. Only you must, then, really wish these things and wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.” And Professor James might have added, with equal truth, “If you want to be a confident public speaker, you will be a confident public speaker. But you must really wish it.”
I have known and carefully watched literally thousands of men and women trying to gain self-confidence and the ability to talk in public. Those who succeeded were, in only a few instances, people of unusual brilliancy. For the most part, they were the ordinary run of citizens that you will find in your own home town. But they kept on. Smarter men sometimes got discouraged or too deeply immersed in money making, and they did not get very far; but the ordinary individual with grit and singleness of purpose—at the end of the chapter, he was at the top.
That is only human and natural. Don’t you see the same thing occurring all the time in commerce and the professions? The eider Rockefeller said that the first essential for success in business was patience. It is likewise one of the first essentials for success here.
Marshal Foch led to victory one of the greatest armies the world has ever seen, and he declared that he had only one virtue: never despairing.
When the French had retreated to the Marne in 1914, General Joffre instructed the generals under him in charge of two million men to stop retreating and begin an offensive. This new battle, one of the most decisive in the world’s history, had raged for two days when General Foch, in command of Joffre’s center, sent him one of the most impressive messages in military records: “My center gives way. My right recedes. The situation is excellent. I shall attack.”
That attack saved Paris.
So, when the fight seems hardest and most hopeless, when your center gives way and your right recedes, “the situation is excellent.” Attack! Attack! Attack, and you will save the best part of your self—your courage and faith.

Climbing the “Wild Kaiser”

A number of summers ago,I started out to scale a peak in the Austrian Alps called the Wilder Kaiser. Baedeker said that the ascent was difficult, and a guide was essential for amateur climbers. We, a friend and I, had none, and we were certainly amateurs; so a third party asked us if we thought we were going to succeed. “Of course,” we replied.
“What makes you think so?” he inquired.
“Others have done it without guides,” I said, “so I know it is within reason, and I never undertake anything thinking defeat.”
As an Alpinist, I am the merest, bungling novice; but that is the proper psychology for anything from essaying public speaking to an assault on Mount Everest.
Think success. See yourself in your imagination talking in public with perfect self-control.
It is easily in your power to do this. Believe that you will succeed. Believe it firmly and you will then do what is necessary to bring success about.
Admiral Dupont gave half a dozen excellent reasons why he had not taken his gunboats into Charleston harbor. Admiral Farragut listened intently to the recital. But there was another reason that you have not mentioned,” he replied.
“What is that?” questioned Admiral Dupont.
The answer came: “You did not believe you could do it.”
The most valuable thing that most members acquire from training in public speaking is an increased confidence in themselves, an additional faith in their ability to achieve. And than that, what is more important for one’s success in almost any undertaking?

The Will to Win

Here is a bit of sage advice from the late Elbert Hubbard that I cannot refrain from quoting. If the average man or woman would only apply and live the wisdom contained in it, he or she would be happier, more pros­perous:
Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do, and then, without veering of direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding by, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire, just as the coral insect takes from the running tide the elements it needs. Picture in your mind the able, earnest, useful person you desire to be, and the thought you hold is hourly transforming you into that particular individ­ual… Thought is supreme. Preserve a right mental attitude-the attitude of courage, frankness and good cheer. To think rightly is to create. All things come through desire and every sincere prayer is answered. We become like that on which our hearts are fixed. Carry your chin in and the crown of your head high. We are gods in the chrysalis.
Napoleon, Wellington, Lee, Grant, Foch—all great military leaders have recognized that an army’s will to win and its confidence in its ability to win, do more than any other one thing to determine its success.
“Ninety thousand conquered men.” said Marshall Foch, “retire before ninety thousand conquering men only because they have had enough, because they no longer believe in victory, because they are demoralized—at the end of their moral resistance.”
In other words, the ninety thousand retiring men are not really whipped physically; but they are conquered because they are whipped mentally, because they have lost their courage and confidence. There is no hope for an army like that. There is no hope for a man like that.
Chaplain Frazier, a former ranking chaplain of the U.S. Navy, interviewed those who wished to enlist for the chaplaincy service during the First World War. When asked what qualities were essential for the success of a navy chaplain, he replied with four G’s: “Grace, gumption, grit, and guts.”
Those are also the requisites for success in speaking. Take them as your motto. Take this Robert Service poem as your battle song:

When you’re lost in the wild, and you’re scared as a child,
And death looks you bang in the eye.
And you’re sore as a boil, it’s according to Hoyle
To cock your revolver and… die.
But the code of a man, says: “Fight all you can,”
And self-dissolution is barred.
In hunger and woe, oh, it’s easy to blow…
It’s the hell-served-for-breakfast that’s hard.
You’re sick of the game! “Well, now, that’s a shame.”
You’re young and you’re brave and you’re bright.
“You’ve had a raw deal!” I know—but don’t squeal.
Buck up, do your damnedest, and fight.
It’s the plugging away that will win you the day,
So don’t be a piker, old pard!
Just draw on your grit; it’s so easy to quit:
It’s the keeping-your-chin-up that’s hard.
It’s easy to cry that you’re beaten—and die.
It’s easy to craw fish and crawl;
But to fight and to fight when hope’s out of sight,
Why, that’s the best game of them all!
And though you come out of each gruelling bout
All broken and beaten and scarred,
Just have one more try—it’s dead easy to die.
It’s the keeping–on–living that’s hard.

Summary

  1. We never learn anything—be it golf, French, or public speaking—by means of gradual improvement. We advance by sudden jerks and abrupt starts. Then we may remain stationary for a few weeks, or even lose some of the proficiency we have gained. Psychologists call these periods of stagnation “plateaus in the curve of learning.” We may strive hard for a long time and not be able to get off one of these “plateaus” and onto an upward ascent again. Some people, not realizing this curious fact about the way we progress, get discouraged on these plateaus and abandon all effort. That is extremely regrettable, for if they were to persist, if they were to keep on practicing, they would suddenly find that they had lifted like an aeroplane and made tremendous progress again overnight.
  2. You may never be able to speak without some nervous anxiety just before you begin. But, if you will persevere, you will soon eradicate everything but this initial fear; and, after you have spoken for a few seconds, that too will disappear.
  3. Professor James has pointed out that one need have no anxiety about the upshot of his education, that if he keeps faithfully busy, “he can, with perfect certainty, count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out.” This psychological truth that the famous sage of Harvard has enunciated, applies to you and your efforts in learning to speak. There can be no question about that. The men who have succeeded in this have not been, as a general rule, men of extraordinary ability. But they were endowed with persistence and dogged determination. They kept on. They arrived.
  4. Think success in your public speaking work. You will then do the things necessary to bring success about.
  5. If you get discouraged, try Teddy Roosevelt’s plan of looking at Lincoln’s picture and asking yourself what he would have done under similar circumstances.
  6. The ranking chaplain of the U.S. Navy during the First World War said that the qualities essential for the success of a chaplain in the service could be enumerated with four words commencing with G. What are they?

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