Borrow Less. Believe More.

In 2018 I was preparing a five minute talk.

I was going to speak about the Chimp Paradox.

Y’know, that book by Prof Steven Peters.

Where he talks about chimps and brains.

I’d been doing a load of personal development work, really working out who the hell I was.

The chimp paradox made sense, and I’d even named my own chimp Colin, because he’s a little c**k who shows up from time to time.

A couple of weeks before something didn’t feel right.

And I realised I couldn’t talk about it.

Not because it wasn’t interesting or useful.

Or that I didn’t understand the material.

It was because it was someone else’s work.

His thoughts, his ideas, his revelations.

Standing up and delivering that felt it would be putting on someone else’s pants.

Instead I talked about something very personal to me - anger.

More specifically my experience of living with it and the effects it had on the people around me.

And what I had done to change my relationship with it.

I knew it was the right thing to do and yet it properly made my bum hole twitch.

Speaking from expertise is relatively safe.

You talk about something that you know, and as the knowledge changes you update your content.

But speaking from your experience? Well, that’s a different story entirely.

It feels far more risky.

A lot more vulnerable.

I did that talk in 2018 in front of an audience with my parents watching.

When I mentioned I had done it I said that I would share the video, despite massive concerns about how people would react to it.

Here I was sharing openly about something that very few people know about.

A thing that had been hidden for many years.

But when I did share it, nothing bad happened.

In fact, it was totally the opposite.

People thanked me and some even shared their experience of anger either in themselves or those close to them.

Perhaps that’s the difference.

Expertise informs, while experience transforms.

In rhetoric we hear about pathos, logos and ethos.

But there are others that don’t get discussed often.

One of those is telos, which roughly translates to purpose.

Why is this thing I speak about important?

Why does it matter?

And why am I speaking about it?

When you start to answer these questions about what you speak about, a lot changes.

That connection between your expertise and your experience leads to a totally different outcome.

You connect with your audience a lot more.

You stop delivering information and start delivering from belief and conviction.

Because when they see you connected to your work, it gives them permission to connect to their’s.

That talk back in 2018 was the beginning of many of the things I speak about now.

Talking about happiness.

My TEDx.

How I approach my speaker coaching.

I’m not saying that you should always share your experience at full volume, in fact I believe you should share it with absolute intention.

Not too much. Not too little. Just right.

That will take time, but if you start by asking “why is that thing you speak about so important to you?” then you can’t go far wrong.

If you want to explore that with someone then give me a shout.