Ep. 205 – Going To Your Dark Place

Hey there, Mark Brown. Going to your dark place? What?

Yeah, you know, I tell you, it's going to be a pretty serious episode today, but I think it's important for our friends, our readers, our viewers and listeners to understand that as presenters, there are going to be times we want to tell stories that'll take us to a dark place. And how do we handle that? Let's talk about it.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown.

Mark Brown, your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation? Presentation. Ahas. Let's dive right in.

Yeah, buddy. As presenters, one of our best tools is our stories. You have always told our clients, our students that stories are to our speeches, as training, as. As activities is the training. But stories have been a staple for years. Decades, centuries and millennia, humans have told stories. And sometimes for us to be effective, for us to be poignant. We have experiences that are painful, but when they're told, they can be very impactful to the audience. But sometimes these stories take us to what I call the dark place. And I don't mean that in any mysterious way, but it's dark because the memory can be painful. And all of us have them at different times. Maybe for you, Darren, you talk about your subway story, but maybe there's a time in your life when that was a dark place for you. Now you can talk about and you can have fun with it. But when it first happened, what were you thinking?

Yeah, it was brutal. And I remember when I started studying comedy, which is where that came from, Judy Carter asking in the book stand up comedy, the book for. For your biggest failures, my Subway Shop. But I remember, I think it was. It's attributed to many different people that I've learned over the years. Ugh, it's gonna bug me. I'll remember by the end of the podcast. But the quote is, comedy equals tragedy plus time. Comedy equals tragedy plus time. So the tragedy that happens until you process it, until you he. Until you're on the other side, we don't want to leave the audience down. So there is a huge value there. And Mark, I just saw Rory Vaden this weekend, and I told him my favorite quote he's ever given of his, which is applicable as well, is we're uniquely qualified to help the person we used to be.

Right.

We're uniquely qualified to help that person who is in that dark place now. But we can't tell it. I was in this dark place. You're in this dark place. That's not the point of the stage. It's to uplift us, to give us a way out, to give us a perspective out, to give us a strategy or a process to get out of that dark place. So there's a power in it. But we've also given the advice and we'll give it again that we can't give it too soon. I love what Verity Price says. Until you can laugh about it, you're not ready to tell it from the stage. Until you can laugh about whatever happened, you're not ready to literally tell it from the stage to help other people, to bring them out.

Mark, I think it was Craig Valentine who says your message is a mess with age. And all these quotations tell us that real life does have pain, does have tragedy and does have hurt. But here's a concern I have, Darren. I know many of our painful stories will be dramatic. It'll wow the audience, it'll all the audience. And they may often wonder, how in the world did you get through that? I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who I met on LinkedIn, and her story was. Was really heavy. There was a cult involved and there was abuse involved, and I realized that she was easy talking about it now. And I guess the first main point I would make is one, to understand the value of the experience that you share. Many of us see the pain and we will never talk about it again. And that's fine. I will never push anyone to go to a dark place just to be dramatic, to shock the audience and to really get to feel sympathy for, you know. But there are also times when we see what we have gone through can be instructive, informative in some ways inspirational, comforting and encouraging to an audience whose members may be going through it or who may have a family member, a loved one, a relative who's going through a difficulty. And by sharing what we went through, they find our story inspirational. And that's wonderful. But we have to be careful about when we share that story. Now, I want to go back very Quickly, Darren, to 2010, to the Toastmasters International Speech Contest. The individual who won that contest is David Henderson, an attorney out of, I want to say, San Antonio, Texas. We became friends over the last 23 years. And in his presentation, the Aviators, he told an Emotional story. Now, Darren, we always tell our clients, our students, and our listeners the purpose of a story is.

To elicit emotion.

Exactly. And David Henderson told a touching story of a childhood friend, and he certainly began to elicit emotion. He was very effective. But something unusual happened that day on that stage. As we watched David tell the story and share from his heart, we could see the tears running down his face. He wasn't wailing or bawling uncontrollably, but he was clearly moved as he relived the experience he had with his childhood friend. From joy and play and jollification to tragedy and pain. And his tears, I did not believe for a second that they were manipulative. I did not believe for a second he was trying to gain tug the audience's heartstrings or gain favor with the judges because in the context of his presentation, what he was saying, when he was saying it, the arc of the story, the tears were genuine because they were. They fit in the context of the presentation and the point in the arc of the story. So I want to be clear, David Henderson was not manipulating the audience. And I talked to him about it, and he has since delivered interviews with Toastmasters on video that said. He said, look, I'm an attorney and I deal with prosecuting some of the toughest, most heinous crimes ever. And I joined Toastmasters to find a way to stop crying when I'm giving a speech. He actually joined Toastmasters to find a way to control his tears. And he said, well, that's not going to happen, so I might as well be really honest and understand why I'm crying, not that I'm crying. They'll see where the pain is coming from, and you'll understand why the message is important. And I need to put a caveat in there, because people think, well, if you cry and you're out of control, David Henderson did not lose control. So here's the key, Darren. If going to the dark place may cause you to lose control, is it wise to go to the dark place?

Definitely not. Definitely not. Because if you lose control, you're. You're giving the. The privilege of the platform. So why. Why would you do. Why would you abuse that privilege? For the sake of connecting. You know, we can't abuse the privilege, but some people aren't aware. Some people don't know. And I get it. And that's one of the reasons we're doing this. But we're also. I love. I believe it was Craig Valentine that I learned it from, that he was Told by his coach, Patricia Fripp. You need to go to that place that you don't want to go. Your value is in that dark place. That place that you don't want to go. And his brilliance, too, is his snake bite story. When his. I think it was his district winning speech, and it was a powerful, powerful story. And then people say, oh, I love that. Why don't you, like, tell that? And he said, I don't live there anymore. You know, so it's. Which, again, is brilliant. Sometimes we're going to grow out of those deep stories, but guess what? We've got other deep stories. We got other dark places. But sometimes our value is in that place we don't want to go. Just like the subway joke. I didn't want to go there, but I found a way through following a proven structure to turn it into a joke that got me. Laughs. But also, you helped me, Mark, turn it into a point of I financially fell on my face. Well, I'm known for that now. But it came from going to that dark place. And, you know, now I tell stories of, you know, my mom with Alzheimer's, the deep stories of Mark, when I go and speak at NSA chapters, the National Speakers Association. One day I was in Austin at the Austin chapter, and I was telling my story. But I. I'm not a fan of when big experts come in and they brag about how amazing they are and how awesome they are, but they neglect the dark places. They neglect to let us know because there's that person in front of you that thinks, I'm never gonna make it. I'm not cut out for that. So I, in the moment, told a story where I was out of money and I didn't know if I was gonna hit payroll next week and sitting down to tell my staff I screwed up. And I remember telling that story and letting people know that it's okay if they're in that place. It's okay. Keep going. Keep going. If this is your passion, if this is what you're meant to do, keep going. And I always remember a woman pulling me aside in the hallway in tears, thanking me for telling that story because she was ready to give up. She thought she just didn't have what it took. And so we. We and Mark. You know, when I Talk About 17 Minutes to youo Dream, I show a screenshot. This was around the same time I show a screenshot of what my bank account was, what my interest was, that I was paying, just trying to keep the business alive, and that I had to sell my motorcycle in order to pay my mortgage. And often people come up to me saying, thank you for telling that part of your story, because I needed to hear it. So often we want to show success. We want to talk about our successes and the people, the mentors who helped us get there. So who helped you get out of that dark place? Hold them up. Hold them up. Or what was the process you went through? Hold that process up.

Steve. There is value in going to the dark place. It may sound counterintuitive, but there can be value. And I must share a concern, friends, and it is this. We may see the value. We want so much to bless our audience, and we see the value of going to the dark place. But sometimes we are not ourselves emotionally prepared to go to that dark place. I love what Ed Tate often says. Please don't use the stage or don't use the platform for therapy. It may sound facetious, but sometimes unburdening ourselves feels good. But is it fair, given the privilege of the platform, is it fair for me to unburden my pain on an audience who is coming to get value from me? So I have to be aware of, and I had to check myself. I have to examine myself. I love what a writer named Billy Shakespeare. I'm being facetious. William Shakespeare said hundreds of years ago in the play, I believe it was Hamlet, where he was. He was told, to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man. I have to be true to myself. Am I really ready to share this? Or will I share it to unburden myself to the audience? Will I share it to get sympathy from the audience? Will I share it so they'll feel sorry for me? That may not be our ostensible motivation, but deep down, we may want that comfort. We may want that assurance. We may want the pat on the back. We want that hug. And if I tell the story, they will like me. That's quite possible. If we tempted to do that, I would beg you, I would implore you to think again. Because the impact on the audience may escape us, and it may escape us. Because in that frame of mind, we really are thinking more about ourselves than the people we are there to serve. Again, this may sound like a heavy episode, but this is important because if we all examined our own experiences, there may have been times where we sat in an audience and we felt uncomfortable because the speaker went to a place that was shocking to us. We didn't see it coming and we don't think they're ready for it. And we thought, oh, I'm scrubbing in my seat right now. I don't really want to know that. That's too much information. We have to consider all these factors before we dare to share from the Dark place. So I would ask you all to think you may have a Dark place story. Are you truly ready, prepared and able to sit to share it? Because when you are, it can be powerful. I went to a men's retreat some years ago, Darren, and one of the speakers, an older gentleman, talked to us as men over the weekend. We kind of got really honest, gut level, honest with each other. And he talked about abuse he suffered when he was younger. And he prefaced by saying, guys, understand. At my age now, I am very comfortable sharing this. It's my experience, and I can share it to help other people. I've gotten past the pain. Please, let's not share from the dark place before we've gotten past the pain. Because the other risk is this, Darren. We can bring the audience down, and if we can't find our way back, how will the audience ever find their way back? So ask yourself, am I capable of going there to that dark place? And can I find my way back? Because sometimes speakers go there, they think they can find their way back. They can't. It becomes messy, very uncomfortable, and the room is left deflated, and people are wondering, oh, my gosh. Oh, that's tragic, sad. Oh, my God. A sad story. Oh, no. I think perhaps listeners, viewers, perhaps you've been there, and if you have, I think you'll know what I mean.

And Mark, of course, my curiosity would not let me look it up in the background that quote, comedy equals tragedy plus time. Carol. It's attributed to Caliburnette. It's attributed to Mark Twain, which I think supersede all of them, if that's where it came from. I learned it from a book by Jack Benny, Sunday Nights at seven, when I studied that early on. So I'm not sure exactly where it came from, but it became commonplace and is attributed many different places. Mark. I also want to bring up Dave Fitzgerald, who was my comedy mentor and then became my speaking mentee and then my speaking mentor.

He.

I remember him going up on stage now. He had healed. He talked about his cancer, which back in the 90s, you didn't say the word cancer on a stage at a comedy club. It's one thing on a stage, it's another thing on a comedy club. And I watched him bomb Telling his story now, he had healed from it for sure. He was doing great. But when he brought up the word cancer again back in the 90s, things are different now. But the principle. I want you to hear the principle if you're going to tell a dark story. What he learned the hard way was how you set it up. Critical, because I saw him bomb a couple times, and I pulled him aside, I said, dave, what are you doing? You're bombing as soon as you say the word cancer. And he said, darren, I care more about how to make this story work to help people than I care how it goes today. So I care more about making this story work to help people than I care how it goes today. Now, again, super clear. He was out of that dark place. He was in remission. He was healed. He was doing great. However, as soon as he said the word cancer in the audience, it was like the last lecture. If you remember the professor that gave the last lecture because he had cancer, people immediately thought, oh, my gosh, this guy is going to die. This could be his last comedy set. And he couldn't bring them back from that because of exactly what we're talking about. So what he realized over time. Experimenting, Experimenting, experimenting. Is he had to cushion the setup. And so it turned into, hey, I need to tell you about something that happened to me last summer. Now, I am doing great. I'm the healthiest I've ever been in my life, But I need to tell you about what happened. And then he would go in it so they wouldn't have those thoughts. And, you know, Mark, we teach the thought process in the listener's mind. So if we give them the context that we know he's doing great now, the healthiest he's ever been. Now we can hear a story about going down because we know he came back. So I think that's an important insight to realize. Maybe you need to cushion it unless it's part of your story. Again, every story is a little different. We encourage you to talk to your coach if you don't have a coach, especially of a story like this. Find a coach. Find a. Find a coach. Find a coach.

I also want to share a principle that you've taught before, but it is on the opposite end of the spectrum. You told a story of one of your contest speeches where you used your humor from. Your humor from your routine, and you put it into a contest piece to make it better. And you talked about people who sucked the fun out of life, and you call them the fun suckers. But in the end, you did not continue to use that story. And the reason I recall you said was it was dominating the speech and people were focused more help me to understand what happened again. So I want to be sure to use the right context here.

Yeah, it was a very funny joke that applied. It actually connected to what I was saying, but the joke was so strong that that's what people were talking about after, not the message. They were talking about the joke. So I had to pull it out for the sake of my intention, which was to deliver that message. So it overshadowed, even though it was funny and got a laugh, it overshadowed the message.

Which leads to my question. You may have a valid Dark Place story. You have come from it. You are comfortable, you can share it, but you ask yourself the question, will my Dark Place story overshadow my intent and my message? This is a question I have to ask myself, and I submit it's a question we all need to ask ourselves. Because Dark Place stories can be powerful, poignant, dramatic and moving. But if the audience remembers only the Dark Place story and not why you told it, perhaps it's not the right time or place to tell that story. Darren, your thoughts.

Maybe a different presentation or. You need to find a way it works in this presentation. So again, you have to have healed from it. Love Verity's principle that you have to be able to laugh about it before you can talk about it from the stage doesn't mean talk about with your friends. That's fine. We're talking about when you have that privilege of the platform and being up there in front of everyone. So have you healed? Do you have a process? Do you have a perspective that you learned that lesson? Look, when you're a comedian, you're a comedian. When you're a speaker. Our goal is to inspire, give a new perspective, inspire them to have a way out, to. To have a principle to lean on to get them out of their Dark place.

That's great advice. There should be a powerful reason for the Dark Place story that leads to a conclusion that offers the audience something of value. And with a Dark Place story, I would think you also want to ask, is there hope at the end for those who hear the story, not just for the power of the story, but the value of the story. And please be very clear, there is a difference between the power of the story and the value of the story. When the value is more significant, then maybe it's a good time to share that story. But I echo Darren's advice. Talk to your coach, talk to your family. Talk to anybody who are maybe part of the story or who have gone through that story with you because you want to honor them as well. Not just to say I have the world's most dramatic story. You want to honor anybody involved in the story. And when you are, when you're sure you're ready, when you have the confidence of those who are advising you and when you are assured I am ready and I know I will leave value for the audience, that may be a good time to share it. I'm not saying don't. I'm saying do. When it's appropriate, when it's effective and when it is valuable, then it'll be a good idea to go to your dark place.

There's value in your dark place. It's got to reinforce your premise. It's got to be connected to your premise. It can't stand alone. If you stand alone, leave it alone.

I like that down. It's a good place to wind this thing up. Thank you so much.

Is it reinforcing your premise or. Or just like my joke about the fun suckers, it just has to go. Put it back in your story file. Maybe you'll use it. Maybe you'll find a way to resurrect it. Maybe there'll be another presentation or a way to use it. Or you'll have that idea to connect it to your premise. Then revisit it. Highly recommend though, get a coach when you're talking about your dark place because there's a It could be a slight adjustment one way or the other where it becomes gold. Or will it become something horrible for your audience?

A lump of coal or a bar of gold?

Oh boy. I think we better end right here. We'll see you next week. Join us at one of our events. Join us in stagetimeuniversity.com work with us in our weekly coaching calls. We want to help you be Mark Unforgettable.

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