“Motivation is like bathing it is best to do it daily.”
– Zig Ziglar

Have you ever had the pleasure of listening to a great motivational speaker?  In the presence of such eloquent energy you can feel the best within yourself.  It is as if they have found a switch within you and magically turned it on.  So why is it so hard to find your own switch?  Perhaps you pop in a DVD or CD to recapture the feelings you felt when you purchased their program, remembering the beads of inspired sweat dripping from your brow.  The super charged concepts and sublime stories trigger that unstoppable feeling and Voila! you’re motivated, for a little while.  Why? To motivate your audience you must discover what motivates you, translate your energy into your listener’s emotions, and invite their senses to come alive.

Image a lemon.  See the bright yellow rind. Cut it in half.  Hear the sound of the knife cutting through the flesh.  Feel the sprinkle of juice leak onto your fingers.  Now cut it again.  Notice the spray of the juice.  Watch out, so none gets in your eyes.  Now take a section of the lemon and bring it to your lips. Feel the fresh citrus fragrance fill your nose.  Now open your mouth and take a bite.  Taste the sour juice as the acidic flavor bursts on to your tongue. Now, or in a few moments, you will notice your lips puckering and your mouth watering.  You didn’t actually chomp down on a lemon, did you?  But, you had the experience, didn’t you?  A vivid description invites your listener’s senses to come alive.  Use your words to touch as many senses as possible.  Even if you are talking about abstract concepts make them concrete through sensual metaphors.  Ideas are like butter flies resting on your nose, their tiny feet tickling your skin and forcing you to cross your eyes just to see them. Any sudden movement and they flutter away.  Whether it’s the wings of a butterfly or the tang of a lemon, once you awaken the senses you start motivating the emotions.

Your audience listens beyond your words.  In fact, they listen even when they ignore your words. They listen emotionally.  Their feelings instantly filter out what’s worthless and focus in on what’s worthwhile.   Excited senses are easily guided.  Stories, touching or tugging at the heart, create a common feeling in your audience which is then attributed to you, the story teller.  The energy you infuse into your presentation is your fundamental connection to your audience.  By pacing the level of your intensity you increase listener engagement.    Your energy level guides the emotional experience of your listeners. How much they pay attention depends on their emotional motivation.

So what motivates you to raise your energy, to step up and speak out, to engage and enliven?   It is often such an intimate part of you, you can’t even see it.  Why? Because you are so accustomed to looking through your motives, you rarely look at them.  What motivates you is simply what fills you with energy.  Ineffective speakers tell other people’s stories which they found motivational. This rarely works because you are not connected to the story.  It is not your story.  Your great speeches will flow out of discovering why a story or an idea touches you.  When you share the story of your discovery, you recapture the energy and convey your emotions naturally.  When you stop trying to motivate your listeners and simply present what motivates you, to your surprise and your audience’s delight, everyone feels motivated.

Motivational speaking is a function of personal dynamism, not content.   The force of your dynamism flows from the wellspring of your motives, quenching your listener’s senses and bathing them in emotionally enlivening energy.