What is one of your favorite songs? The song that you know every word. The song you could sing along to at the top of your lungs in your car? You could even do it at karaoke without the screen showing the words. Singing it over and over and over again has helped you memorize the words.
It probably happens with music more than anything else but if you’re an actor, perhaps you have memorized lines for the character you’re playing. It could be a speech you memorized or some information for a quiz or test you had to take in school. Passwords? People’s names? What else has been etched into your brain’s memory?
Before you know it, it’s more than memorization. It becomes internalized. You don’t even need to think about it. It happens subconsciously.
Can you even imagine needing written directions or following a GPS to help you get from your house to your office? Do you have any favorite movie lines etched into your vocabulary? If you’re like me, you probably remember your home phone number where you grew up. Heck, I’ll bet you know the three-digit security code off the back of your credit card, don’t you?
Fire & Rain & Margaritas
We went to see a tribute concert this past weekend. You might even call it a “tribute tribute” because The James Taylor Experience is a band that plays concerts that feature songs from the Hall of Fame singer/songwriter such as Carolina In My Mind, Country Road, and Fire & Rain, but for this concert, the James Taylor Experience’s second set was a tribute to the late Jimmy Buffett. From the moment the band took the stage and played the first chord of Taylor’s “You Can Close Your Eyes” to the last notes of Buffett’s “Pencil Thin Mustache,” the band sang every word. The neat thing was the audience sang almost every word too.
The words had been more than memorized. They had been internalized. To steal an album title by the recently deceased Buffett, they were the “Songs You Know By Heart.”
What Are Your Internalized Lyrics?
What part of your business have you not only memorized but truly internalized? As new agents, we learn lead-generating scripts and dialogues. The longer we work in the business, we start to develop objection-handling words and phrases that help us close more deals. We start learning Exactly What to Say and become better at knowing when and how to say it. The words, reactions, comebacks, and questions just become part of who we are.
What words are in your mental Rolodex? What are your “go-to” statements or phrases that you can spit out without even thinking? What would be on your Greatest Hits album?
First, you memorize.
Then you internalize.
Over time, when the words just work over and over again, you just might get immortalized.