I have an elderly black woman who lives inside me. She wears a plain print dress with faded pink flowers and blue-green stems set on a white background. She lives in the state of Georgia or Alabama (I’ve never tried to figure out which one), speaks with a heavy southern-America accent, is overweight, and is always sitting in a rocking chair on the creaky wooden porch that surrounds her wood-paneled house with the peeling paint.

She has been with me since my early 20s. She occasionally points her paper fan at something and tells me “Matt, honey, you need to go over there, take a look,” or “Matt, you need to check that out.” Sometimes, even though by now I should know better, I get headstrong and stop listening to her. I always regret it later. She has never steered me wrong. She is my True North.

I have written before about your genius zone. About how sometimes it is hard to find it, and even once you do find it, it is hard to stay in touch with it. That’s okay, don’t beat yourself up about it.

I have also written before that if you are looking for your genius zone, your areas of obsession are one fertile ground, a good place to start.

Another good place to go is the people and places that occupy your head. They are, after all, not other people, they are you, and you need to listen to them.

I call these things your “crazy.” They are the things you shut down in yourself when you go talk to your boss, or when you pull open those glass doors and walk into the workplace in the morning.

Here’s what this has to do with presentations, and I’ve written about this before, so it’s not news to most of you:

That crazy is what you need to tap into when you make your presentations. If you round off all the edges, if you move your hands just perfectly, if you don’t sweat, if you’re not at least a little bit nervous, you are probably being boring. You need to tap into your crazy. It is where you will find the voice that is only you, and that no one else has.

Sure, you don’t want to come across as a stark raving lunatic. But that crazy is what you need to give voice to. It supplies the words that the “pretty” you will need to speak.