© 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
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We can draw the process like this: First there is a danger or a threat. The mind, as Dr. Johnson suggests, is concentrated. The concentrated mind understands that existing norms and structures are useless and limiting. This knowledge motivates people to do whatever is necessary to break through the walls that limit them at this moment.

This reaction, of course, depends on the core of the person involved, what I call their “Core Reaction Reality.” Human core individualities vary. Any leader of soldiers in battle can attest to the fact that some men, many of them outwardly mild, rise to the challenge of difficult circumstances, while others, tough though they may seem, turn to jelly. The core would not be the core if it were easy to analyze. It is hidden deep within us.

Some people try to quit smoking again and again without getting anywhere. Others snap out of the habit in an instant if they get sufficiently disgusted with it or if the doctor gives them some worrisome news. The pull of the nicotine is the same in both cases. It is the pull of the human core that differs. A smoker quits when quitting the habit becomes important enough to create true motivation.

Motivation conquers all. Ultimately, the technique you use to make the change doesn't matter. Techniques for change can help us in our mental conditioning, but motivation, based on a true knowledge of our core humanity, is most of the game.

Crisis—like the battle situation or even the smoker's health situation—is often a great motivator. Many humans discover hidden strength when challenged. But the true challenge is to find hidden strength when not challenged. Most of us exist in an environment of comfort and security. Our outside environment is not likely to challenge us. So if the mind is to be concentrated toward a worthwhile purpose, we've got to do the concentrating. Through knowledge, moved through emotion, we have to come to the realization that staying in the same comfortable place, going nowhere, is just as threatening as the hangman's noose Samuel Johnson wrote about.

Most of us live in that limbo, that in-between, that land of small challenges, quiet desperation and nagging frustration. The only exit to the land beyond these walls is for us to shock ourselves, repeatedly, to create what amount to artificial life-challenges. The shock (covered more fully in Chapter Six) tells you, “I am this human, I can do this, and I can do that, and watch out, here I come!”

Walls give us no true comfort. Walls agitate us.

It's easy enough to tell you to resist outside programming and think for yourself. And it's not difficult to resist programming once you identify it. But programming—that biological imperative out there, that need to put our thoughts and feelings into neat little boxes with burnished walls—is often very subtle and very difficult to recognize. So what we must do is pump intellectual iron. We have to learn to think, learn to analyze, and when we think freely, we maintain that connection to the central core of our humanity.

We're going to be in touch with human greatness. We're going to understand it. We're going to join with it. We're going to iconize it. And we are going to become one with it. We're going to learn to recognize it in all its facets, we're going to dig into the process of its creation, its development and evolution, and we are going to learn to appreciate it and bring it out in ourselves.

Great human beings have been talking to each other over the ages. We want to tap into that conversation. It's open to all. If we model ourselves on great men and women, we indeed might begin to stand taller, act more decisively, exercise better judgment. That's valuable. But that's the tip of the iceberg. The real reason we model ourselves on great people is not to take on any of their characteristics, but to use their experience to reach into our human core, to know it better, to use it more effectively.

Exercise: Great Minds and Your Own Mind

Most of us feel some affinity with some of the great achievers of history (or of the present day).

• Who among this group do you admire? In a few words for each, why?

• What, in your view, do these people have in common that makes them great?

• What do you have in common with them? What qualities do you wish to expand so as to be more like them (in your own way, of course)?