© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete text of Human Action, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's philosophy of human achievement.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Human Action Table of Contents
Previous Section - Next Section

Many life activities require constant adjustment. When you drive a car, unless your wheel alignment is perfect and the road perfectly straight, you will have to keep your hand on the wheel and make tiny corrections all the time. Much of learning to drive involves learning to make precise corrections. You also learn to brake without jerking the car, that is, with some subtlety.

Even the act of walking, or standing still, requires constant, precise adjustments of balance and motion. We are constantly poised, locking ourselves into one static mode after another in our daily fight with the earth's gravity. Poise seems automatic, but it is not instinct, rather a form of deeply ingrained habit. In addition to poise, we also pose. That means we make a conscious, non-habitual attempt to assume a certain position. When we stride down the street with confidence (or in a dejected slump for that matter), we do not fall or bump into mailboxes because of our poise; the confidence or dejection is a matter of the pose we consciously choose to assume. Both poise and pose begin as kinetic activities, but they run the risk of becoming static if they are not renewed and refreshed from time to time.

When we relate to other people, poise/pose is equally important. Body language is not one of the subjects of this book, but it exists in poise/pose form. Automatic body positioning or posturing can send the wrong message to a potential partner. It's no sense telling someone on a first date that you want to take it slow when your body, your eyes and the tone of your voice show that you want to ravish the other person right there in the coffee shop. Human desire for companionship, security, love and sex are so strong that you need to make constant adjustments to keep to the course you originally set. These strong desires, more than in any other area of life, lead you toward static behavior and thinking. Ever had the feeling that when you fell for someone you couldn't think straight? That's bad. If you want to have that feeling all of the time instead of just a minuscule fraction of the time, you must step back from the situation, make adjustments, and keep thinking straight.

There is no auto-pilot when it comes to love. The constant conscious adjustments you must make will reinforce the human person inside you so it is not inundated with the static, biological animal. If you feel you are love addicted or that you have bad love habits, don't think you're going to cure the addiction in a day. Knowledge alone is never enough to reverse such basic behavior patterns. You need to practice moving outside yourself, Shocking yourself, until your poise/pose behavior moves to another level through a personal Trope. It's like a dieter learning to push away a plate that still has some food on it. Change the pattern with a Positive Matrix Interrupt once, then again, then again, then again, and keep adjusting your course.

One practical example: you meet someone, first date. You don't seem to be on the same intellectual or spiritual level, and yet that spark of attraction is there. It seems they might be nice to you if you got involved. Your friends would approve. You think, even though you already perceive major differences in basic areas, you might as well see the person again rather than spend the next weekend alone. Maybe they'll change. Here's where the Shock comes in. You do spend the next weekend alone, realizing you wouldn't be happy with that person in the long run. Because you made a decision with integrity, you don't feel quite so lonely as you thought you would.

That was a first date situation, where you didn't hurt anybody's feelings. But now you've been seeing someone for a month. It took the whole month to really learn that you have basic compatibility differences. There is some attachment between you now. Feelings might be hurt or egos bruised. Your friends and family might not understand. But you walk away this time because you walked away the first time. Your first difficult Shock and Trope brought you to a higher poise/pose stature level. It made the decision easier to make and follow through on in the second case.

In other areas of life you can afford to stumble over and over again and learn by your mistakes. If you follow an unpromising career path, you can always have a long talk with yourself, throw out old assumptions, and move toward a new path. All you stand to loose by dragging your feet on making the adjustment is a little money. But in areas of love, you stand to lose everything you have.

Don't underestimate the power of love or your need to adjust yourself constantly. If you don't act purposefully, you risk choking off the fullness of your human spirit. The other extreme, joy, is yours for the taking if you teach yourself how to move toward it.

Kinesis doesn't end, of course, when you do find that special compatible someone. In some ways, it's only beginning. Yes, if both of you have used the principles we've just covered to find each other, you're going to have a much easier time of being together, all other things being equal. But all other things are never equal. The more kinetic two people are, the more purposeful and willing to adjust they have to be in order to get along. After all, one of the fine things you have in common is that you both embrace change. But the two of you can embrace different change and go in different directions.

Sometimes people who love each other move so far apart that you cannot bring them back together again. In some cases the division is inevitable. That's why it's important, as we discussed, to learn to value love as a process and not as a result. One year, ten years, of a loving relationship do not become worthless because one or both partners calls it quits any more that if one of the partners dies.

On the other hand, it is not useful or wise to enter into a relationship assuming it will come to a premature end. Many gulfs between partners can be lessened or closed entirely when both partners, with equal sincerity and energy, put their kinetic energy into the relationship. This doesn't happen automatically.

The cliché is that the two partners “work” at the relationship. It's not a cliché, simply an expression that the process of loving doesn't end at commitment. The kinetic process continues. Here are a few of its major features. They all involve moving from static animal to kinetic human attributes.

• The animal says defend your own position and territory; the human says live with the other person and share position and territory.

• The animal says mistrust and react; the human says trust and be vulnerable.

• The animal says gratify your sexual desires using the other person as an object. The human says you can have intimacy in addition to sex.

• The animal says the other person is an ornament to show to the outside world as a possession; the human says that person is an equal.

• The animal views the other person as a member of a particular gender, ethnic group, etc., while the human views the other person as another unique human.

• The animal speaks in order to get its own way and assure its survival; the human tries to truly listen in order to move the relationship to a higher level.

• The animal is often excited and stimulated by conflict; the human seeks to minimize or dissolve conflicts that tend to hurt the relationship.