The simulated click of the camera captured my attention. Sitting in a conference room, a middle aged man in front of me was snapping pictures of the lecture slides. My attention on the presentation was snapped and I was slack jawed. My thoughts were racing, “What is this person doing? Last time I checked, that is not allowed without permission.”

As a blogger and a speaker I was annoyed, because the content in your presentations is your livelihood. When I am presenting at a conference, I am presenting work that is delivered in articles, books, videos, and other mediums. The content presented can take years to develop, and I was shocked that this person was sitting there snapping pictures of the slides without a care for asking permission. How rude!

The effect of this person taking pictures was that others started to do the same. It would seem that one person taking pictures of the lecture slides meant others could do the same. I don’t think that is the case. If the presenter wanted the slides to be public domain, then they would say that they are public domain and make them available, if they do not, then you will have to ask permission before recording anything. That is not only good manners, but in some cases might be legally required.

When you are considering using other’s content; whether it is in print, web, or other medium. Be smart about how you use other’s work. If you are scanning flickr for blog photos, make sure you are checking the copyrights. If you have to give credit, then give credit. If you want to take pictures or want copies of the slides, then ask. You might be surprised when they say no, but respect that.

Content is king in today’s information market. Respect the content and don’t be rude if you don’t get permission. Take that as a bump to produce your own content. Then see if you want other people copying your materials.

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Background:

You might be asking yourself why I got a copy of Steve Pavlina’s new book, Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth to review and why am I reviewing it on a blog about public speaking and Toastmasters?

Over three years ago, I read the blog post “Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking” by Steve Pavlina. Steve’s blog post got me going to Toastmasters meetings, attending Darren LaCroix boot camps, and working on developing myself as a more thoughtful person. Luckily I got a copy a few weeks ago, and after getting back from a number of business and personal trips, have the time to sit down and write my review of the book.

Review:

Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth, by Steve Pavlina is not a manual. Unlike many self help books, it does not give you what the author thinks are step by step instructions to make money, be happy, or be healthy. What I found the book offered was a very practical foundation in a philosophy of personal development and practical guidance into how to apply that philosophy to your personal life.

The book is broken down into two parts:
1. Fundamental Principles or what I found to be the Philosophy of Personal Development.
2. Practical Application or how to apply the Fundamental Principles to your life.

In Part 1, Steve lays out the fundamentals about truth, power, love, authority, oneness, and intelligence. The descriptions of what each one of these contains are thoughtfully interlaced with personal stories from the author’s life. I was pleasantly surprised by the readability of the first part. When I first read the introduction, I was worried because sometimes Steve’s blog posts are so content rich that it takes me a long time to read and digest the material. This was not the case, and I found the fundamentals enlightening and it gave me some purpose to make changes in how I think about personal development.

Part 2 is the instructive portion of the book. What I found in part 2 was a very good description of how the elements described in part 1 can be applied to the topics of habits, career, money, health, relationships, and spirituality. What was enjoyable about the practical application was that it was not, “you have to do X to get Y.” It was more of a description of what steps you can take to make yourself a more congruent and conscious person in the different topic areas. Becoming more congruent and conscious will then allow you to advance in the different topic areas. Definitely a much different approach then other self help authors have taken.

Overall I really enjoyed reading the book. I did not find myself chucking it aside like many other self help books I have read recently. Honestly, I can say that I gained a lot out of this book and know that it will lend itself to be a great reference in my future development. There are a lot of new ways of approaching self development contained within the pages of the book and I hope to apply more of them everyday.

As with all of Steve’s writing, the most important thing to take a away is to try it out yourself. If you don’t get results after a month, then stop doing it, but you won’t know until you try. That goes with speaking, exercise, diet, and anything you can do to develop yourself as a person. So if you want, give Personal Development for Smart People: The Conscious Pursuit of Personal Growth a try and hopefully you will get as much out of it as I have.

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I have spoken to 5 difference audiences in a week. In that time I have noticed something about my presentation. I am not connecting with the audience or communicating as well as I have in the past. Then it hit me, and it is a problem I see in many accomplished Toastmasters and speakers.

You are too comfortable with speaking

In my case, I have become too comfortable with my speaking so I don’t put as much nervous energy into my speeches. I used to get up and hit the audience with a burst of energy and that alone was enough to capture people’s attention. Now, I am able to stand and speak for some length and it bores the heck out of some people that I am not moving around a little.

You rest on your laurels

I have given a lot of speeches the past few years, so I find myself not spending as much time preparing speeches as I once had. Because of that, I will go in front of audiences with only a few notes or even with nothing if it is a free speech. I have usually thought about what I am going to say, but haven’t written anything down. I have rested on my ability to come up with something appropriate and that is not going to allow me to connect with the audience and deliver a speech that motivates and connect with people.

You stop practicing

This is your and my biggest problem. When I first started speaking, I would practice my speeches for hours. This allowed me to see where I had issues, rewrite, and fully integrate my message into my material. Many of us have stopped practicing as much and we have relied on our experience to get us by in our speeches. This does not allow us to connect, to have a well defined message, and to be ready to motivate people who want to be motivated. We need to practice to get better and without it, it falls flat. I have seen many Toastmasters get up and “wing it.” The flattening of their development speaks to the results of not practicing.

Conclusion

So are you getting worse as a speaker? I am guessing that if you have stopped practicing as much, been resting on your laurels, and are getting to comfortable then you are getting worse. So get back to practicing, writing new material, and getting nervous about speaking. It will get you back into the swing of things and interested in speaking again.

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My readers, it has been a few weeks since I last posted. I know, that is not good for a blogger, but I have needed to take a break from blogging to refresh my perspective and get some ideas for blog posts.

Hopefully not many of you have abandoned me, but I just needed to get away for awhile and renew and refresh myself. Also, I have made $0 from blogging. Since I am not making money from doing this, I have had to focus my energies at work and on projects that do allow me to make money. This is causing me to have less time and energy for this blog.

I will be back to posting soon. Until then, check out the archives. There is some great stuff there.

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In Toastmasters we announce and track use of a “Word of the Day.” Doing so allows us to practice words that we might not use in our everyday speech to expand our vocabulary. It is a great way to make your speech more eloquent.

Today’s word: gewgaw
gewgaw \G(Y)OO-gaw\, noun:
A showy trifle; a trinket; a bauble.

Bidders paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for worthless gewgaws–fake pearls, ashtrays, golf clubs–merely, one supposes, because they were touched by the hand of this celebrity of celebrities.
– Lawrence M. Friedman, The Horizontal Society

From: Dictionary.com

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