up control and the constant attempt to look good.
I knew being suppressed and stewing in my mental cauldron of thoughts was not working. So, leaping into the unknown seemed like the only option to take. I raised my hand and the voices inside my head stopped.
As I raised my hand, Marcia saw me and immediately called my name. In the following two minutes, my experience of living life was forever altered. The microphone was passed to me. I leaped out of my chair and for fifteen seconds in a loud and fast voice I blurted out: “Good morning. My name is Alan Carroll and I have voices inside my head. One voice says to do this and the other voice says don’t do this. All I want you to know is it is Saturday morning and I am here. Thank you.”
So much for preparation, wanting to move the room and impress the women. The applause was polite. But what was transforming for me was that I experienced something I had never experienced before: I tasted the space of freedom from the suppressive inner voice of my mind. I had let go of wanting to look good and given up the need to be in control. I had risked annihilation. I had risked looking like a fool. I had risked not looking cool and not having my act together. And, in return for this risk, I was given a profound gift, an awareness of my true self, and the experience of my Being, which is beyond the ego. I woke up from a mental dream and became present to the space.
The trainer drew the attention of everyone, then pointed to me and said, “That is what it looks like when you break through.”
It was like being in an egg. You don’t come out of the egg as an eagle with a twelve-foot wingspan. You come out of the egg a tiny eaglet, very vulnerable and easily injured. By having the courage to give up wanting to look good, I had unknowingly climbed out of the hellhole of my unconscious mind and moved into a more open, lighter, and conscious space. I was no longer concerned about what the audience thought of me. I was willing just to be myself. It was wonderful and continues to this day to be wonderful, just being myself in front of the audience. The unconscious firewalls I had in place to protect myself dissolved and I escaped from a mental prison I hadn’t even known I was in.
To be an effective presenter, you must discover the psychological barriers and fears blocking your full self-expression. Find these blocks that stand in the way and, rather than move away from them, move toward them. There is an old Zen saying: “That which stands in the way is the way.” For example, if you are afraid of being silly, then do something silly. If you are afraid of looking like a fool, do something you think would be regarded as foolish. Silly and foolish is what you erroneously think the audience will think about you when you act a certain way. Therefore, you don’t act out of fear of how you think the audience will respond. You are being controlled by what you think the audience will think about you. You are not free just to be yourself.
Being controlled by how you think the audience will respond makes you a puppet or a doormat. You are being pulled around by the strings and stepped on by the feet of the audience. In chapter four, which is titled “Own the Room,” we will address this issue and begin to switch from being dominated to doing the domination. You will learn that by becoming more assertive, the audience, rather than being upset, becomes more respectful and interested in the conversation.
If you have the opportunity to watch yourself on videotape being silly and foolish, you will see it doesn’t look nearly as bad as you thought. In fact, it looks like a self-assured human being with power, confidence, and clarity. You’ll discover that you were basing your behavior on a mind-created delusion.
Now, let us explore the steps necessary to dismantle the firewalls and the benefits that you will accrue. To maximize the data throughput and increase your effectiveness, you need to create a presentation strategy that gives you access past the firewalls and into the private network of your audience.
The firewall is a psychological entity whose design function is survival. It is put in place by the mind to protect itself from harm. The firewall is analogous to a wall built of bricks. Every time you remove a brick from the wall, you create an opening through which data, communication, and energy can flow. The more bricks you remove, the greater will be your rapport, affinity, and throughput with the audience.
The future is broadband. It would be hard to find anybody who prefers a 56k dial-up connection. Broadband is a source of satisfaction on the Internet and is the source of satisfaction in your presentations.
Broadband means to be yourself without any firewalls between you and the audience. You are no longer inhibited by the audience. You no longer worry about what the audience thinks about you. You have achieved a state of consciousness in which you are open, present, vulnerable, and free from inhibition. You have now regained your power for full self-expression.
How do you dismantle the firewall?
If the firewall is in place to protect the I, me, ego from harm, then the presenter needs to create an environment in which all the participants feel safe. I call this environment a safe space. In a safe space, the audience feels no psychological need to protect itself. If there were no need for psychological protection, there would be no need for a firewall. And without a firewall, the speaker will be granted access into the private network of the audience.
This concept of a firewall helps explain why IT presentations are usually so ineffective. Without a safe environment, the mind tells the firewall to stay up. When the firewalls stay up, the transfer of data between the presenter and the audience flows through a smaller pipe. The smaller pipe means the connection shrinks down to a 56k level of throughput. The less throughput there is, the lower your effectiveness and your audience’s satisfaction will be.
The good news is that there is a simple formula, which, if followed, will grant you access through the firewalls of the audience. All you have to do is focus on removing as many bricks as possible between you and the audience. Bricks are removed through communication. The more communication that is exchanged in the space, the more bricks that are removed. You start the process by removing the bricks inside your reality. You open yourself up. You share yourself. You reach out, shake hands, and get into communication with the space.
Why? Because the audience’s firewalls are in place to protect them from harm. By opening yourself up, you are rendering yourself harmless. Once they see that you are open and harmless, it takes away the justification to keep the firewall in place. As it is reduced, the room becomes lighter and the throughput of communication increases.
Working for more than thirty years with hundreds of audiences, large and small, this response has proven itself true every single time. At the start of each presentation, firewalls are at their thickest; at the end of each presentation, firewalls are thinner. The space is lighter, the “Being” is more present, and the flow of communication is greater.
Think of this lighter space like a hot-air balloon. There are two ways to make a hot air balloon go up: put heat into the balloon and release ballast. As you remove bricks from the firewall, you are throwing off ballast and the space gets lighter. The opposite is also true. If you have withheld communication, it adds bricks to the wall and the space gets heavier.
Initially, sharing yourself and removing bricks is an act of courage because you are lowering your defenses and making yourself more vulnerable in front of the audience. But soon, you’ll discover that it doesn’t take any courage at all. In fact, you’ll begin to enjoy the process and look for every opportunity to share yourself, realizing that your ability to contribute and be of service to the audience is directly related to the number of bricks that have been removed from the firewalls in the space.
Another benefit is that, as you increase your vulnerability and openness, it moves you into the space of just being yourself in front of the audience. Often, after training sessions, the IT professionals
