Telling Your Compelling Story: Bringing to Life Performance Substance and Style

My instinct tells me to break up my recently posted, larger essay into more bite-size components. Begin to lay the groundwork for connecting "Compelling" and "Substance" as a performer. Will also link "Captivating" and Style."

Three Definitions Each for “Compelling” and for “Substance”

Basic definitions of “Compelling” and “Substance” are provided for comparison purposes:

The Three Basic Definitions of “Substance”:

1. essence or essential nature; a fundamental or characteristic part or quality

2.  ultimate reality underlying all outward manifestations and change; synergistic potential of part/whole relationship or system interaction

3. practical importance, that is, meaning, usefulness, and significance

Three Brief Ways of Looking at Substance: A Personal Perspective

As prologue, let me put some of my own flesh on the definitional “substance” skeleton:

1. essence or essential nature; a fundamental or characteristic part or quality: three personal fundamental or essential qualities for being a “Psychohumorist” – knowledgeable, authentic, and comedic (especially using self-effacing humor). Actually, as has been previously highlighted and will be explored later in this series, when performing I try to bring a “Five ‘P’ Passion Power” essence – being Purposeful-Provocative-Passionate-Playful-Philosophical. And as the Five “P”s intimate, this essence is both substance and style!

2. ultimate reality underlying all outward manifestations and change; part/whole relationship or system interaction: sharing some of my own personal family history, as well as behind the scenes fears, flaws, and foibles. I’m presenting both the out-front confident performer and the underlying vulnerable person; that is, I’m secure enough to own and share my “Intimate FOE – Fear of Exposure!”

3. practical importance, that is, meaning, usefulness, and significance: sharing the value and potential of the concepts, tools, and techniques as they have been developed and applied in: a) my own life, and b) the lives of former clients and workshop participants; also, c) presenting the learning opportunities and possibilities for the personal and professional lives of the current “hybrid” attendees.

 Three Basic Definitions of “Compelling”:

1.  very interesting: able to capture and hold your attention

2.  capable of causing someone to believe or agree

3.  strong and forceful: causing you to feel that you must do something

In particular, the third definition of “compelling” – strong and forceful – reveals the link with substantial, as in the solid, vital, or significant aspects of “substance.” Though “capturing and holding attention” and “causing belief or agreement” also touch on substance’s three keys – essential nature, underlying or non-obvious reality, practical importance.

Illustration of Compelling-Substance Link

My popular article, “The Four Stages of Burnout” – 1) Physical, Mental, & Emotional Exhaustion, 2) Shame & Doubt, 3) Cynicism & Callousness, and 4) Failure, Helplessness & Crisis – has “substance”: it captures both the essential and underlying nature of the “erosive spiral.”  (See link: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/potpourri-combat-strategies-burnout-battlefront-webinar-mark-gorkin/ ). It also engages with the meaning-laden “why,” as in “why was I compelled to pursue a doctoral dissertation that was destined to devolve into when academic flashdancing whirled to a burnout tango.” I had to drop out of the doctoral program for good. But there was a silver lining: I turned an academic lemon into professional lemonade!

Tell Your Compelling Story

Actually, the entire process was compelling.  At the onset, a mystical-like experience in psychoanalysis, then four months creating a universal, spiritual/meditative symbol or mandala (for me, initially, an unknown concept) – The Octagonal Vision: Creation of a Pathway and the Pathway of Creation. Then several years trying to turn my spiritual epiphany/artistic creation into a traditional doctoral dissertation. I was using the model to erase a lifetime of feeling like a cowardly underachiever, especially in grade school and college. Perhaps as sad was my decades long need to deny my mostly hidden yet, thankfully, only hibernating artistic nature.

The Subterranean Rise and Fall… and then Rise Again

I intuited (and then understood) that some unprecedented primal/passionate/artistic energy and archetypal (Jung’s collective unconscious) creature was emerging from my psychic depths. However, it could not be framed in or tamed for traditional academia. I was holding on to this model, this experience, as I would a lover with whom infatuated, alas, more likely obsessed. Hence, to give up on the doctoral quest not only confirmed the stigmatic label of “failure” but also left me empty, staring into that existential void. This void is a dark hole mirror in which no remnants of any enduring self-identity are reflected back. (However, it would a Mandala Mirror, allowing me to discover an unexpected path beyond academia.)

In a very meaningful way, burning out was a necessity when lacking the courage to “fail” in this arena, that is, to consciously choose to let go of formal academia as my path of direction and affirmation. Though immediately floundering in a feeling of helplessness, hope did emerge from this Academic Pandora’s Box. Yes, there was the initial burnout-dropout shock, shame, and collapse. However, after more than a decade of growing-pain-skill-building in different arenas – from Army basic training and professional social work and doctoral level study – the perceived burnout void itself was an illusion. Cognitive and, especially, emotional muscles developed proved resilient. Over the course of three months, having sufficiently grieved my doctoral demise, a Psychic Phoenix was on the rise: a part-time clinical practice would help launch full-time imaginative pursuit.  I would now be compelled, once again, to “fly boldly (if not a bit wildly) out of the creative closet.”

Creative Burnout

Perhaps some mix of historical worthlessness as well as a hypomanic-like energy or force, along with a determination to prove my identity as a “word artist,” increased my readiness for novel undertakings.  Life was now a blank canvas: the emptiness and uncertainty are scary; the emptiness and openness are exciting!  I was determined to find and express my idiosyncratic voice (for example, by writing and delivering short and witty educational “Stress Brake” segments for radio and TV. The ground was being laid for my future “Motivational Psychohumorist ? style). The real foundation:  a gripping drive to prove myself a “Creative Type.” Maybe a more accurate description would be having the courage to finally release and evolve my “Inner Creative Self.” Either way, you might say an academic lemon transformed into professional lemonade. I soon was generating a new identity as the multimedia – radio, TV, speaking/workshops, university teaching, article writing, even a brief stint at stand-up comedy – “Stress Doc” ?.

As I once penned:

For the Phoenix to rise from the ashes

One must know the pain

To transform the fire to burning desire!

Become A Provocative Role/Model

And others, too, find my burnout experience and the burnout model (and, perhaps, my passionate manner of delivery) compelling. While living in New Orleans, during a break in a Stress Workshop, a gentleman approached. I had just completed outlining “The Four Stages of Burnout.” He suddenly asked, “Have you been travelin in North Louisiana?” I was perplexed and shook my head, “No.” His immediate reply, “Cause you’ve been lookin in my window!” Clearly, the man was startled that someone somehow had understood his painful condition. This gentleman experienced the stages as compelling (able to capture and hold one’s attention; capable of causing someone to believe or agree) and, in turn, felt compelled to approach me. As the third definition of “compelling” avers: causing you to feel that you must do something!

 Closing

"Substance" and "Style" have a yin/yang relationship – each can spawn and spur the other. And the distinctions and interrelations of “substance” and “style” will continue to be viewed through the analogous “compelling” and “captivating” frames.

Mark Gorkin, MSW, LICSW, "The Stress Doc" ?, a nationally acclaimed speaker, popular webinar educator, writer, and "Motivational Psychohumorist" ?. Mark is a founding partner and Stress Resilience and Trauma Debriefing Consultant for the Nepali Diaspora Behavioral Health & Wellness Initiative and is a Cross-Cultural Diversity Training Speaker & Consultant for numerous Federal Agencies. The Doc is also a Leadership and Life Coach as well as a Clinical Therapist for Inner City Family Services, Washington, DC. A former Stress and Violence Prevention Consultant for the US Postal Service, he has led numerous Pre-Deployment Stress Resilience-Humor-Team Building Retreats for the US Army. Presently, Mark does Cross Cultural Facilitation and Presentations for organizational/corporate clients of HR Consulting Firm PRM. The Doc is the author of Practice Safe Stress, The Four Faces of Anger, and Preserving Human Touch in a High-Tech World. Mark’s award-winning, USA Today Online "HotSite" – www.stressdoc.com – was called a "workplace resource" by National Public Radio (NPR). For more info, email: [email protected].