This is the third of three articles inspired by The Marginalian.

One of the glories of the Internet is Maria Popova’s The Marginalian.  If you don’t know it, click on the link, sign up, and start having your soul fed every week in unexpected, thought-provoking, and beautiful ways.  Recently, she wrote about the sixteen things she has learned from sixteen years of doing her blog.  I was inspired by her wise list and thought how much of it – with a twist – was useful for public speakers.  So here, in no particular order, are the final set of public speaking insights I’ve gleaned from her brilliant work.

Forgive.  And forgive some more.  I’m talking in this case about yourself.  Like any performance art, public speaking is an imperfect combination of message, audience, and sender – AKA you.  On any given day, each of those three elements can misfire, or be misunderstood, or can fall flat for a myriad of reasons, and despite your best efforts.  And, on any given day, magic can happen because the audience is special, the message lands particularly well with that group of people, or you are on fire.  I’ve given speeches running a fever, running late, and running on empty after the loss of a loved one.  The art and the science of public speaking can combine in mysterious ways and create something incandescent – or not.  For all of that, forgiveness is in order.  You will get up the next day, having forgiven yourself, your audience, and any mismatches, ready to do it again, even better the next time.

Don’t do it for the money.  Public speaking can be a very lucrative business, and many people get into it lured by the promise of a big paycheck.  This is the kind of thinking that looks at a $35K fee for an hour’s worth of work and fails to see the many, many hours that go into achieving that hour on the stage.  If anything, Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours for mastery is a low-end estimate.  The best speakers I know are motivated by passion for their subject, whether it is a martial art, neuroscience, or storytelling.  It’s that passion that leads you to do the work required to develop your original voice, and then craft your story, and then perfect your stagecraft.  When people ask me, “Do I have what it takes to succeed, the talent, I mean?”  I always respond, “Drive is more important than talent in the long run.  The winners are the ones who show up day after day and keep working.  That takes drive.  Everyone else gives up somewhere on the road.”

Finally, choose to be joyful.  When you walk out on that stage to deliver your 40th keynote of the year, you are going to be thinking about a lot of things – your nerves, your audience, your message, what the A/V person just said in your ear, how the introducer mispronounced your name, how you wish you’d worn the other jacket because the set backdrop is black and you are disappearing into it in your black jacket and now the video you were hoping to get is going to suck.  You’re going to be thinking about a lot of things, but one of them had better be, “I am so psyched that I get to do this!  What a gift to be standing in front of this audience here right now!”  Because if it isn’t, you will have gone to a whole lot of trouble to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Love your topic, love your devotion to it and your craft, and love your moment.

Thank you, Maria Popova, for sixteen wonder-filled years and a thousand splendid insights that I will carry with me henceforth.