Passion Pays the Bills: Talking
You’ve decided, you’ve committed, now it’s time to start talking.
Yup. Out loud. Where people can hear you.
(Believe me, I understand that this can seem like a very good reason NOT to tell people what you’re working on. *smile*)
Talking about our passions is scary.
It’s scary because we’re vulnerable, exposed. Because it really, really matters. And we don’t want to mess it up.
When your passion or idea lives only in your head, it’s safe. Safe from criticism, safe from questions. Safe from … reality.
…
Talking about your passion helps remove the scary. It normalizes it. It’s not that your thing becomes ordinary or less special, it just gets less terrifying to tell people about it. And, you get better at talking about it. Clearer and more concise.
…
It’s like soloing in an improv.
I’ll get an idea (or just the seed of an idea) and I don’t know if it will work. In my perfect world, I could have my ideas all figured out before I shared them with anyone. That’s not all bad. There’s a time for letting thoughts ripen or percolate.
BUT … Keeping quiet makes working out the idea harder because other people can’t respond to what I’m doing. More important, they can’t support what I’m doing.
…
There’s another problem with working it all out ahead of time.
A lot of the time you can’t.
Sure, I can have a brilliant idea for a solo, but if I never give voice to the idea, I can’t really figure out how it goes. You have to sing it to hear it. You have to tell a story to find out how it ends.
Talking your idea through with someone else helps sort it out. Comments and questions from other people help you organize your thoughts or find solutions you couldn’t have come up with on your own.
Remember, you get decide how you want to talk about your thing. You can ask for feedback. You can tell people you’re not ready for feedback. You can meet one on one or organize a think tank. Start with safe people — family, friends — and then widen your talking circle to include peers, mentors and experts.
…
When people know what you’re doing, they can help you. They’ll send you ideas, contacts, and links to web sites. They’ll do some of the work for you. They’ll tell their friends about you.
And when the subject of your passion comes up, so will your name.
[…] on talking: “Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud.” — Hermann […]
22 Oct 2009 at 11:12 pm
welllll,,,,, i started talking with a new friend at the may day cafe about one of my loves. one of our first earlier connections there was singing together with a mutual friend at a table, and taking turns.
now she and i are talking about her work and my work as artists. she is a calligrapher in older european styles of writing english. i work with ancient hebrew, and canannite and phoenician (these being written alphabets from ancestors of the lebanese and syrian peoples’), so we were both discussing our cultural art and sharing what we do and love and why.
25 Oct 2009 at 8:58 pm
welllll,,,,, i started talking with a new friend at the may day cafe about one of my loves. one of our first earlier connections there was singing together with a mutual friend at a table, and taking turns.
now she and i are talking about her work and my work as visual artists. she is a calligrapher in older european styles of writing english. i work with ancient hebrew, and canannite and phoenician (these being written alphabets from ancestors of the lebanese and syrian peoples’), so we were both discussing our cultural art and sharing what we do and love and why.
25 Oct 2009 at 8:59 pm
[…] if you’ve been talking your talk (and walking your walk! *smile*), you’ve assembled a pool of people. Expert people, fan […]
15 Nov 2009 at 11:41 pm
[…] Start talking […]
07 Dec 2009 at 1:32 am
[…] has actually snuck into many of the previous posts. Talking about your thing is a way of sharing it. Thanking people for the ways in which they help involves […]
28 Dec 2009 at 12:48 am
[…] that they’re passionate about. And it might not be your thing. (S’ok, the reason you talk about your thing is to find the people who […]
10 Sep 2010 at 1:33 pm
[…] Saying things out loud and inviting feedback (and maybe even critics and critiques *wince*) […]
11 Mar 2012 at 8:45 pm