Presentation Zen [11]
Once you realize that the preparation of a presentation is an act requiring creativity, not merely the assembling of facts and data in a linear fashion, you’ll see that preparing a presentation is a “whole-minded” activity that requires as much right-brain thinking as it does left-brain thinking. In fact, while your research and background work may have required much logical analysis, calculation, and careful evidence gathering or so-called left-brain thinking, the transformation of your content into presentation form will require that you exercise much more of your so-called right brain.
Start With the Beginner’s Mind
Zen teachings often speak of the “beginner’s mind” or “child’s mind.” Like a child, one who approaches life with a beginner’s mind is fresh, enthusiastic, and open to the vast possibilities of ideas and solutions before them. A child does not know what is not possible and so is open to exploration, discovery, and experimentation. If you approach creative tasks with the beginner’s mind, you can see things more clearly as they are, unburdened by your fixed view, habits, or what conventional wisdom says it is (or should be). One who possesses a beginner’s mind is not burdened by old habits or obsessed about “the way things are done around here” or with the way things could have or should have been done. A beginner is open and receptive and is more inclined to say “why not?” or “let’s give it a shot,” rather than “it’s never been done” or “that’s not common.”
When you approach a new challenge as a true beginner (even if you are a seasoned adult), you need not be saddled with fear of failure or of making mistakes. If you approach problems with the “expert’s mind,” you are often blind to the possibilities. Your expert’s mind is bound by the past and is not interested in the new and different and un-tried. Your expert’s mind will say it can’t be done (or shouldn’t be done). Your beginner’s mind will say, “I wonder if this can be done?”
If you approach a task with the beginner’s mind, you are not afraid of being wrong. The fear of making a mistake, of risking an error, or of being told you are wrong is constantly with us. And that’s a shame. Making mistakes is not the same thing as being creative, but if you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is impossible to be truly creative. If your state of mind is coming from a place of fear and risk avoidance, then you will always settle for the safe solutions—the solutions already applied many times before. Sometimes, the “path already taken” is the best solution. But you should not follow the path automatically without first seeing it for what it really is. When you are open to possibilities, you may find that the common way is the best way for your particular case. However, this will be a choice you made not by habit, but by reflection and in the spirit of a fresh beginner with fresh eyes and a new perspective.
Children are naturally creative, playful, and experimental. If you ask me, we were the most human when we were young kids. We “worked” on our art, sometimes for hours at a time without a break, because it was in us, though we didn’t intellectualize it. As we got older, fears crept in, and doubts, and self-censoring, and over-thinking. The creative spirit is in us now; it’s who we are. We just need to look at the kids around us to be reminded of that. And whether you are 28 or 88 today, it’s never too late, because the child is still in you.
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” —Shunryu Suzuki
You