So, I’m sitting in PF Chang’s at the Sherman Oaks Galleria in LA with my friend Robert Rabbin having lunch last week.
Robert is like no one I’ve ever met before. I could use normal descriptors and say he’s “really real” or “genuinely genuine” or “incredibly intelligent” or explain how he doesn’t give a rat’s fart what other’s think about him and thus is peculiarly free from artifice. But that doesn’t explain him.
Maybe he’s so stunningly present and engaged because he’s been meditating since he was eleven. Or (more likely) because he was handed a “you’ve got six months to live” cancer sentence in 2012 and has been thumbing his nose at the medical establishment AND the fuckwit way most humans go about living in this world ever since, choosing to show up differently, consciously working to uplift the deplorable state of the world by his mere presence on a daily basiss.
He does a good job of it. God knows he’s made a huge difference in my life—and I’ve only met him twice.
The first time was on the Virtual Light Broadcast in Las Vegas in early March. Both of us were being interviewed because both of us have new books out. Robert’s is about speaking truthfully … in public. He’s a globally-renowned speaking coach (the kind of guy who coaches the coaches) with a list of credentials that would have intimidated the crap out of me had I actually been un-self-absorbed enough to research him before the show (like he did me). http://www.robertrabbin.com/
As it was, he caught me flat-footed (even though I was wearing heels), charmed the hell out of me, gave me tremendous encouragement in terms of my own speaking and how I show up in the world—and advised me to totally trust my gut and allow my book and its message to unfold organically instead of trying to rush out and devise “heart-based entrepreneur” marketing strategies, developing sales-funnels and lead magnets and God knows what like everybody else in the world with products to sell (heart-based products!!!) in a frantic effort to make sales and money and BE somebody while saving the world.
He reminded me I already AM somebody just by my sheer existence. That my book is an extension of me. That if I do anything—no matter how seemingly realistic, pragmatic or rational—that goes against that “me” essence that I’m barking up the wrong tree. Or down the wrong alley. Or well. Or something.
As he put it in a recent blog on public speaking: “First, forget everything you may have learned. Remember only this: YOU are the message!
YOU are the message! Your whole, huge, immense, honest, transparent, radiant, magnificent, wild, free, creative, sassy, sexy, fierce, free, tender, loving . . . (complete the list on your own!) . . . self! … That is your talk, that is your presentation, that is your sales pitch, your fundraising plea, your indignant demand for social justice, your creative bursts . . . every time you speak publicly, that is your true message.” http://www.robertrabbin.com/2017/04/12/a-short-course-in-authentic-public-speaking/
YOU are the message.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.