Speaking From The Heart

Nothing will convey your conviction and your enthusiasm like opening your heart to others and telling them how you really feel about something that is important to you.

Martin Luther King knew this and he inspired a crowd of 250,000 civil rights marchers in Washington D.C., when he departed from his prepared text and said, "I have a dream..." In that moment when he began speaking from the heart, it was if a lightening bolt shot through the crowd, and King did not stop speaking as he was scheduled to do.

Instead, he launched into the stirring speech that became the conscience of an entire movement.
King later said that he had used the phrase, "I have a dream" before but at that moment it felt right to use it again. The people who were there that day, however, say it was more than just a right feeling.

Walter Fauntroy, then director of the Washington Southern Christian Leadership Council, told the Chicago Tribune in August 1993 that he believed King was moved by the Spirit. In fact, before King stepped to the microphone, Fauntroy told King, "Do what the Spirit tells you."

Rev. Benjamin Hooks, former head of the NAACP, was also there that day and he simply calls the moment "Divine inspiration."

"King came at the end of a long hard and hot day and the people were waiting for him and he was lifted up," Hooks said.

Coretta Scott King, his wife, later said, "It was as if the Kingdom of God appeared."

In the business world, we're taught to restrain our emotions and to maintain almost clinical detachment, but it has been proven again and again that while people use logic to justify their actions, they make decisions based on emotion.

When you speak passionately about your dreams and ambitions, and your products and services, people respond favorably. There's no substitute for emotion and inspiration that results when you follow your heart.