Master Your Message

The Guide to Finding Your Voice in any Situation

Vernon Ross

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781683502487
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Communication & Public Speaking

Many people have been in those awkward situations in which they're the center of attention with no idea what to say or how to say it. Vernon shares on how he, Chris Brogan, and Patrice Washington were able to overcome the challenges to finding their voices and delivering masterful messages. No matter if someone is on stage, behind the microphone, on a podcast, or sitting in front of a camera, they will learn key strategies to keeping their cool and finding their voice in Master Your Message.

Chapter 1

EMERGENCE

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

—Marianne Williams

WHO ARE YOU TO BE BRILLIANT?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Haven’t we all?

When stepping out of any darkness, our natural reaction is to shield ourselves from the light and to almost retreat back to where we came from. We’ve adjusted to it, just being able to see and make our way around in it, but we know we have to eventually step into the light.

In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls it going pro. That’s when you’ve gotten to the point of an activity in which you have to make a choice: continue to play a small game and keep the activity as a hobby or a side thing, or really jump in with both feet into the pool of whatever it is you’ve chosen.

Perhaps you think I’m going to talk about entrepreneurship, and that’s partly true, but you can jump in with both feet into any number of things. Playing a bigger game could be as simple as going back to school to finish a degree, but you’re fearful of becoming a student again because of your non-traditional status. Life isn’t about business all the time, but life is about making choices that either move you forward or keep you right where you are.

So what’s that got to do with asking yourself, “Who am I to be brilliant?” Who are you to want more, do more, or demand more? I think that’s the real struggle we have to get past—the negative thoughts that keep us from stepping up to the idea of a unique message. As we move forward together, I’m going to talk more about how mastering your message will change your life.

Breaking the Mold

Often it’s difficult to really express yourself outside of what’s considered to be the conventional wisdom; the things you should or shouldn’t do; the constructs of the expectations of the masses.

We tend to base what we do, who we are, and ultimately, what our message is, on the expectations around us.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

—Marianne Williamson

Think about this fully. Are your feelings of inadequacy really keeping you from expressing who you are, or is it that you fear what you will become once you take a step toward your true self? I’ve experienced both. It’s challenging to deal with and accept that fear can grip us, pulling us back into the darkness and telling us our refusal to conform is going to hurt our family or our career. These feelings can paralyze you and keep you stuck right where you are.

The other side I struggle with is when I absorb these words and envision how awesome life will be on the other side of this entire process. However, success often means realizing not everyone in your world is going to make the journey with you.

Understand those expectations actually serve as a way to protect you. I know it may seem counter to what everyone else may be saying about ignoring the haters and “You-do-you” people, but that’s not really the space I’m writing about. You can and should fight convention, but that only gets you so far. Understanding what the motivation is might help you move past the judgmental behaviors and attitudes you’re bound to run into as you embark on your mission to master your message.

It often starts with your friends and family telling you from a very early point what you can’t do. Let’s think tree climbing for a sec if, like me, you’ve ever tried to climb a tree just to have an adult tell you to get down because trees aren’t made for climbing. Yes, I had someone tell me that, and I actually remember getting down and for a while I thought believed them. It wasn’t because I was convinced they were right; it had more to do with this person being in a position of authority and I felt obligated to comply. It’s a silly thought, really, that trees aren’t made for climbing. I think that’s why I ended up back in that same tree several times after that initial climb.

It’s likely your first detractors will be family, then friends, and ultimately even people you don’t know. Recently I had an interesting conversation with a friend about building her LinkedIn profile to better align with her goals and her business. She was afraid to remove her current job from her profile, which is one of the tactics I recommend. She was afraid because she thought her connections would wonder why she removed her current job and proceed to ask too many questions about her business. She was afraid it would look unprofessional and it was possible her boss might see what she had done.

My response to her was this. It’s not easy to break the mold and step outside of convention. You have to ask what your current job has to do with your business and whether having it on your profile aids in communicating your unique message to your audience. LinkedIn isn’t a site for you to showcase things that aren’t aligned with your values, goals, dreams, or your message. It’s to showcase your professional experience to your peers and clients. Of course it’s great for displaying your current experience and past employers to give others an idea of how you’ve gotten to where you are and where you want to go, but it’s not for promoting content that doesn’t serve you. So the conversation in my mind wasn’t really about LinkedIn.

When it comes to mastering anything in life, it takes 10,000 hours to be good enough at anything to be considered an expert, as Malcolm Gladwell states in Outliers, The Story of Success.

I agree with that theory entirely. However, I think it may take that long or even longer to accept your own mastery and to start living it. For me it only took thirty years to accept my calling to help other people master their message. It’s funny how things you think don’t matter or didn’t have an influence over you at one point in time turn out to have a profound influence when reflecting back over your life.

When reviewing material for this book I decided to include a letter a friend from my past sent after a youth retreat in the summer of 1986.

Pretty interesting, right? What struck me while reading this letter was how he noticed how shy I was at first before I began speaking. This is one of the nicest letters I’ve ever received and one that I’ve often gone back to when I feel like I’m losing my way or not being true to myself.

They don’t know you until they know you, so you may as well show them the person you want to be.

—Vernon Ross

So let’s take a quick trip back to retreat weekend. My priest, Father Bob, invited me and one of the altar boys to a youth retreat. It was my first real time away from home, so I was a little afraid, especially when we arrived and I realized everyone there was white. I didn’t (and still don’t) have a problem being around white people, but that was the first time I would be spending the night with a group of total strangers.

I was already a pretty shy kid to begin with, so I didn’t have much to say and only did what was required to not be a total hermit. The other kids were really great and did everything they could to make my friend Alex and me feel like part of the group. Alex took right to it and really participated. I, on the other hand, did a little so as not to be rude, but I didn’t really get involved until the very last night.

We were split into groups to act out a play or scene of something that reflected on the Bible lessons we’d studied that weekend. I don’t recall what the subject was, but I do recall that since I’d been so distant I felt once again that I was on the outside looking in at my life happening. Either way, I was chosen to be the host of a mock talk show concept we came up with. It was the first time I was ever in front of a group of people talking, other than reading something aloud at school.

Getting up off the floor in the huddle we were in, I was terrified, but that only lasted the first ten seconds or so as I walked to the front of the room, all eyes on me. As I walked up, all of a sudden it hit me and I thought of the movie Risky Business. Yes, the Tom Cruise flick that I watched on a bootleg recording at a friend’s house a few weeks prior. We probably watched it three or four times that weekend.

I identified with Cruise’s character, even though his life and world were pure fantasy to me. I was poor, living in the inner city, and attending a private school my priest was helping to pay for. I supplemented this charity, or grant, by working at the church every Saturday while my mother worked the rummage sales and food pantry. Nothing could have made me more different from Joel Goodsen, Cruise’s character, but for some reason I connected with him.

I’m not sure what exactly hit me, but I remember thinking to myself, “What the Heck [F-Bomb],” just like in the movie. I decided to be who I wanted to be in that moment, and it wasn’t a shy, black kid from the inner city who didn’t belong with this group of white kids who had nothing in common with me, or so I thought. I wasn’t going to be someone who was so afraid of being judged or laughed at by others that he wouldn’t speak up. Instead, in that moment I was going to be an outrageous and over-the-top talk show host everyone would love.

I walked up, took a deep breath, turned around, and for the first time ever I was myself. I wasn’t up on stage running around and riling everyone up for my sake; it was for them. My performance was funny and made everyone, including my group, laugh as I showcased everything we’d learned and experienced throughout that weekend. It was my montage moment—and I crushed it!

What I discovered from that experience is that at every turn in your life and every time you meet a new group of people, you have an opportunity to be exactly who you want to be and how you want to be.

If you want to be outgoing, then be outgoing. If you want to be confident, be confident. There’s nothing to hold you back from being the person you want to be, even in the midst of strangers.

The incredible part is that as soon as you do this and have an experience in which you step into your greatness, it’s really difficult to go back to being someone you really aren’t. The people who have preconceived notions about you or have tucked you away into a neat little box will begin to notice the changes in you.

Mastering your message isn’t about learning to deliver a talk or any other one-time experience; it’s about mastering who you want to be in life and how amazing that experience is when you truly embrace it.

I learned so much that weekend about myself and what I was capable of by deciding to be the person I wanted to be and not just what people perceived me to be.

What People Think You Are, You’re Not

Would you agree that most of us expect someone to sound a certain way based on how they look? I think it’s safe to say we all make assumptions, right?

One of the first times I experienced an assumption of this kind, I directly influenced someone else’s perception and expectations of me and my intent. It was fascinating to experience and to look back on that situation with the benefit of hindsight.

When I was young, I became an exercise enthusiast at an early age, thanks to my mom for buying a subscription to Muscles and Fitness magazine. Reading about working out lead to working out, which lead to hanging out in gyms. When I wasn’t in the gym I would wander through the sporting goods stores, planning out my next purchase.

On this particular day, I decided to shop first for the motivation for what I wished I could buy. At seventeen, I was pretty light in the disposable income department, and my mother was using my social security benefit from losing my father when I was five to pay my thirty-five-dollar-a-month gym membership. She believed it was more important for me to be in an affluent area, working out and meeting new people, than to have that extra money each month. She knew my exposure to the world of affluence would shape how I looked at the real world based on the contrast between it and the world I lived in.

So, I was in the store looking at full leather workout belts and picturing Arnold (yes, that Arnold) advising me on which one to buy. I heard the heel on the door clang as a cop walked in. I glanced over at him then turned back around to continue my fantasy when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see the cop standing ov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Thank You
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Emergence
• Chapter 2 Get Your Mind Right
• Chapter 3 Fear
• Chapter 4 The Sirens of Shiny Things
• Chapter 5 Holding on to Your Dreams
• Chapter 6 I Can’t Stand How I Sound
• Chapter 7 Why I Resisted the Niche
• Chapter 8 Intentional Conversations
• Chapter 9 Mastering Your Message on Social Media
• Chapter 10 Masters of Their Message—How my Mentors and Friends Found Their Voices
• Chapter 11 Understanding Your Importance
• Chapter 12 Bringing the Message Home
• About the Author
• Bibliography