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21. Learn to lose your cool
You can create a self that doesn’t care that much about
what people think. You can motivate yourself by leaving
the painful self-consciousness of high school behind.
Because our tendency is to go so far in the timid,
non-assertive direction, it might be a profitable over-
correction to adopt these internal commands: Look bad.
Take a risk. Lose face. Be yourself. Share yourself with
someone. Open up. Be vulnerable. Be human. Leave your
comfort zone. Get honest. Experience the fear. Do it
anyway.
“Show me a guy who’s afraid to look bad,” said actor
Rene Auberjonois, “and I’ll show you a guy you can beat
every time.”
The first time that I ever spoke to author and psy-
chotherapist Devers Branden it was over the telephone,
and she agreed to work with me on building my own
self-confidence and personal growth. It wasn’t long into
the phone conversation before she asked me about my
voice.
“I am very interested in your voice,” she said, with a
tone of curiosity.
Hoping she might be ready to give me a compliment
I asked her to explain.
“Well,” she said. “It’s so lifeless. A real monotone. I
wonder why that is.”
Embarrassed, I had no explanation. This conversa-
tion took place long before I had become a professional
speaker, and it was also long before I ever took any act-
ing lessons. It was long before I learned to sing in my
car, too. Yet I was completely unaware and very sur-
prised that it seemed to her that I was coming across
with a voice like someone out of Night of the Living Dead.