Have you ever been this tired..?

This should help remind the fellas about their anniversaries….(click anniversaries to follow the link.)

“He’s never been very successful. When oppurtunity knocks, he complains about the noise..” – Unknown.

This video is like a VERY weird train wreck – strange….but you’ll find your foot tappping along anyway about three minutes in..LOL

Lady Gaga  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I

Jk: The children had all been photographed, and the teacher was trying to persuade them each to buy a copy of the group picture.

“Just think how nice it will be to look at it when you are all grown up and say, ‘There’s Jennifer, she’s a lawyer,’ or ‘That’s Michael, He’s a doctor.’ A small voice at the back of the room rang out, “And there’s the teacher, she’s dead.”

    …taking multitasking to a whole new level…

Jk. A guy walks out of a store and sees a traffic cop writing a parking ticket. He rushes over and says to the Officer,

“Come on mate, how about cutting a guy a break and tearing that up?” 

The officer ignores the man competely and finishes up by sticking the ticket under the windshield wiper.

The mad gets mad and starts insulting the cop.

“You’d think with a face like yours, you’d be a bit more forgiving of the rest of us! Even your Mother is probably hard pressed to love that disaster…”

The officer smiles and begins writing another ticket, this time for bald tires.

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere else eating a dozen donuts? It must have been at least ten minutes since your last snack, fatty!”

This infuriates the traffic cop and he starts writing another ticket for a cracked winshield.

“Even out here I can smell your breath – when was the last time you laid anything other farm animals?”

For the next twenty minutes the exchange continues, until there is at least 11 tickets under the windshield of the car.

 Then the man smiles, walks another fifty feet to his own car, and leaves….

Etrade is rocking it out with the “baby” commercials and this is a pretty good compilation of the “outtakes”… Watch long enough to hear the Wilderbeast reference… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHPg262Kr9c&feature=topvideos

Some funny quotes:

“My wife has a slight impediment in her speech. Every now and then she stops to breathe.”  
Jimmy Duran

“My luck is so bad that if I bought a cemetery, people would stop dying.”
Rodney Dangerfield

“We could certainly slow the aging process down if it had to work its way through Congress.”  
Will Rogers 

“Don’t worry about avoiding temptation. . as you grow older, it will avoid you.”  
Winston Churchill

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.” 
Groucho Marx

….of course I’m happy Dear..

I hadn’t heard about this festival in Japan until this morning, but these sculptures are amazing and well worth a look!  http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2009/02/05/8275886.html

True Story….  A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel plans. So, the husband left Minneapolis and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down the following day. The husband checked into the hotel. There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an email to his wife. However, he accidentally left out one letter in her email address, and without realizing his error, sent the email.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her husband’s funeral. He was a minister who was called home to glory following a heart attack. The widow decided to check her email expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the first message, she screamed and fainted. The widow’s son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and saw the computer screen which read:To: My loving wife

Subject: I’ve arrived     Date: April 6, 2006

I know you’re surprised to hear from me. They have computers here now and you are allowed to send emails to your loved ones. I’ve just arrived and have been checked in. I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing you then. Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.

P.S. sure is freaking hot down here!!!!! – The Fun Hunt.com

Cheers, Terry

 

 

 

P.S. “The average American is someone who deplores violence in the street and has seen High Noon five times…” – And I quote.  Thomas Dunn Books, ST. Martin’s Press.

http://www.break.com/index/how-to-report-the-news.html typically sarcastic English humor and it includes cursing, so make sure your kids or boss aren’t within earshot.

http://www.break.com/index/dog-poops-during-live-news-segment.html you can’t understand a word the news reporters are saying, but I don’t think you’ll need too…..

http://www.break.com/cute-girls/pogostick-girls.html not sure what type of insurance these girls are trying to sell, or in which country it was aired, but I’m thinking about changing my policy..

http://www.break.com/horror/horror-music-video.html I’m a horror movie nut and it was fun trying to guess which movie these clips are from.

http://www.break.com/horror/bedfellows—short-film.html – this one isn’t funny, turn your volume up and see if it makes you jump..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCqvnJFUUA&feature=rec-r2-2r-3-HM there’s no sound for this compilation of clips, but some of these really look like they hurt, so it’s worth a watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXsK5wyh3tA&feature=related some of these pictures are amazing. You’ve got to wonder WTH some of these folks were thinking to get into this kind of mess!

What he REALLY MEANS….

“That’s women’s work!” Really Means – It’s dirty, difficult and thankless, and I don’t want to do it.

“Can I help with dinner?”  Really Means – Why isn’t it already on the table?

“It would take too long to explain..” Really Means – I have no freaking clue how this works but I’m not admitting that to you.

“We’re going to be late because of you!” Really Means – Now I have a legitimate reason for driving like an asshole, testing the very limits of my car and reflexes, and I expect no screaming or drama from you.

…and you thought your life sucked…

 Taken from the incredibly funny Book F My Life by Maime Valette, Guillaume Passaglia, and Didier Guedj .

“Today I was volunteering at a nursing home, and I was calling bingo numbers. A woman suddenly stood up and started making noises. I assumed she had won, and began clapping. She fell on the floor and died of a heart attack. I applauded her death…”

“Today my Father asked me if he could borrow my electric razor because he wanted to surprise Mum later. Anxious to see him without his lifelong beard, I willingly agreed. Half an hour later he exited the bathroom, beard fully intact…”

“Today I was getting my teeth cleaned at the dentists office. Looking up at his nose, I saw runny snot dripping onto his lip. I tried to slowly move away. “STOP!” He ordered me. The movement of his lips cause the snot to fall right into my open mouth….”

“Today, while I was working, my ex-girlfriend came in to apply for a job. She had broken up with me for another guy, so I can’t stand to be in the same room with her. The manager hired her on the spot. I have to train her…”

Pearls of wisdom:

Don’t do for others what, given the chance, they wouldn’t do for themselves.

An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.

A retired husband is a wife’s full time job.

Even at a mensa convention, someone is the dumbest person in the room

One last joke:

The old man was critically ill. Feeling that death was near he caled for his lawyer.

“I want to become a Democrat. Get me change of registration form.”

Slightly surprised the lawyer asked him,

“But why? You’ll be dead soon, so why change now?” 

“That’s my business young man, just make it happen!”

A few days later the registration had been filed and the old man was now indeed a Democrat. The lawyer was once again at the old mans side as he closed in on death.

Suddenly the old man began coughing and gasping for air and it was obvious he was close to the end. Curiousity go the better of the lawyer and he attempted to once again get an answer to his question,

“Please, you are so close to death, tell me why you changed your affiliation?”

The old man took a deep raspy final breath and in a feint whisper replied,

“… now… there’s.. one less.. Democrat…”

Cheers, Terry

P.S. Instead of writing a famous “quote” today, as I do for most days, I wanted to draw your attention to something that occurred earlier this week – you might not have even heard anything about it on the news, which is why I deemed it essential to make mention of it myself. If, after reading the article it strikes a chord with you, please cut and paste the story and email to your friends – these men should not be forgotten:

You’re a 19 year old kid.

You’re critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley. November 11, 1965. LZ X-ray , Vietnam

Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You’re lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns and you know you’re not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you’ll never see them again. As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.

Then – over the machine gun noise – you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter. You look up to see an unarmed Huey. But … it doesn’t seem real because no Medi-Vac markings are on it.

Ed Freeman is coming for you.

He’s not Medi-Vac so it’s not his job, but he’s flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire anyway. Even after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come. He’s coming anyway. And he drops it in and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire to the doctors and nurses.

And, he kept coming back!! 13 more times!!

He took about 30 of you and your buddies out who would never have gotten out. Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise , Idaho . May God Rest His Soul. I bet you didn’t hear about this hero’s passing, but we’ve sure seen a whole bunch about Tiger Woods. . .

But nothing on the death of Medal of Honor Winner Ed Freeman.

Shame on the American media!!!

Now … YOU pass this along on YOUR mailing list.

Submitted by former Huey pilot Dick, Williamsport, Md.

Keep life in perspective mates:

•     At age four success is not peeing in your pants
•     At age twelve success is having friends
•     At age sixteen success is having a drivers license
•     At age twenty success is having sex
•     At age thirty five success is a corner office and money
•     At age fifty success is having more money
•     At age sixty success is having sex with or without the aid of a pill
•     At age seventy success is being able to find your driver’s license
•     At age eighty success is having friends and remembering their names
•     At age ninety success is not caring where you’ve peed, as long as it still works…most of the time

I’ll bet everyone knows someone that just gives off that “vibe” – you know the one, all perpetual doom and gloom. When you first meet them you do your best to try and lift their spirits.

Over time it becomes obvious to even you, they are right, they are doomed.. At least as far as their lives are concerned, these people are just unlucky! If there’s a bug going around they are going to catch it, twice.

If a tornado touches down somewhere, even if this person had no reason to be within fifty miles of the destruction zone, they somehow managed to be caught up right in it. It’s never bad enough to finish them off. It’s always just bad enough for you to get to hear about, at least until their next disastrous encounter.

These people literally seem to vibrate at the exact right frequency to constantly self-fulfill their own negative prophesies.  Eventually you start to wonder whether you should be within fifty miles of them because they really do attract problems!

I had friend like this while I was in the service. This guy was so bad he was once taken over by a poltergeist. Fortunately for him, the spirit left him after a couple of days because it was just too sad, lonely, and depressing inside his body…

Over the last few days we have talked about different scenarios in regards to what constitutes a bad day, how others may view a bad day of their own in comparison to yours, and whether optimists and pessimists fair best in the worst of circumstances – confinement in a POW camp.

We have been looking at this to see if we can uncover a way for us to improve our own emotional stability, and subsequently not let frustrating negative days get us down.

Contrary counterfactual thinking is one of my favorites to battle this phenomenon.

I remember a particularly harsh few days during Commando training, when, to be honest, I was ready to quit. We’d been beasted (harassed) for days, had little or no sleep, less food, and marched until I could sleep standing up.

The rain was pouring, I was freezing, two members of my four man team had lay down and stopped doing what it was they were supposed to be doing, and I was basically fed up.

The training team was camped out at the top of a small hill, drinking tea and eating bacon sandwiches – which, by-the-way, I could smell easily with the wind blowing the scent back to where I stood, less than a mile from them, dejectedly slumped over my entrenching tool.

The one guy on my team who didn’t seem to be fazed by anything, ever, was a short assed Yorkshire man who seemed impervious to any of it. He was making up for the lack of work the rest of us seemed to be incapable of doing, and performing with minimal complaints.

At that moment I hated him.

I hated the other two guys as well, because they weren’t even trying. At least I was standing up and quitting. They were asleep.

My Yorkshire friend said,

“Come on Terry. Let’s get this finished so we can grab a few hours shut eye, too.”

I must have looked at him as if he was crazy because I knew there wasn’t a hope in hell we could accomplish the task set us, with only two of us doing the work of four.

Actually at this time it was one doing the work of four because I might have been standing up, but I was about as much use as a chocolate fireguard….

Still, in my capacity as a man at least still on his feet, I felt I had some solid ground from which to start throwing my little temper tantrum.

I explained in not so many words that I was done with this crap. (I’m leaving out much of what I said as my language at the time could have made a drunken sailor blush).

The only thing from stopping me from going up to the training teams’ tent and quitting was the hill. I think I was too tired to walk up it. Pathetic I know.

Somewhere in the soft part of my brain where manliness and pride was supposed to reside, I heard only quiet whimpering and a desperate need to eat a bacon sandwich.

The Yorkshire man listened empathetically to my whining, as if he wasn’t actually going through the same thing as me, just with less drama, before beginning his pep talk. It went something like this,

“I know you’re tired Terry, me too. And we’re both freezing cold and wet. I know you can smell the food cooking and want something to eat, ‘cause I do too.

I know any minute now the training team are going to come back down here, tell us we’ve got it all wrong, and tell us to start again, and we’ll probably dig for another twelve hours.

But you know what. They can beast us, starve us, scream at us, beat us, punish us, and abuse us – but you know what?”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to know after he said all that. But I kept quiet to listen to what this tough little bugger had to say that kept him going when everyone else had quit.

“But, no matter what happens mate, no matter how bad it gets, they can’t get us pregnant…”

Now maybe it was because I was so tired. Maybe it was because he immediately went back to digging, again. Or maybe it was the fact that he found his own joke so funny. But whatever the reason, I laughed – long and hard.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the most concise example of contrary counterfactual thinking I’d ever heard. I went back to digging. We dug for a total of 37 hours, nonstop.

It rained the whole time. We failed every inspection. We ate boiled sweets only.

Every time the training team left us after chewing us out even more than the last time, he’d look at me and start smiling and we’d go back to it.

I never considered quitting training again. Every time it got tough, messy, or just plain unsocial, I’d remember what he’d said, I’d start to smile and then get back to work.

The guys we talked about yesterday, the ones that survived some of the most barbaric and inhumane treatment possible, did so not by being optimists, neither did they achieve it by being pessimists; they did it by being something in the middle.

They lived as much in the moment as they could

They measured victories in minor achievements – no matter how small

They did something every day to try and improve their lives and the lives of the men around them

They had little or no resources, so they became so resourceful they even extracted thiamin from rice polishings using battery acid

They focused much of their attention on alternative medical practices, starting with attitude

A good positive attitude meant the individual would make themselves get up and exercise – even if that was only walking a hundred yards each day

They lived to spite their captors – intense hatred existed for obvious reasons between captors and captives, they used this to fuel their will to live

The list of skills these men mastered in order to survive is both extensive and awe inspiring. As I said before, sometimes it takes reading about someone that has overcome such calamities, to highlight what really constitutes a bad day.

The comparison puts our own issues into proper perspective.

So here is my list of things, in order of importance, which I think you need to help stop yourself spiraling out of control emotionally, and losing sight of the big picture:

A good healthy positive attitude – bad things happen, not because it’s you, but because that’s life. No matter how bad they get, they can always be worse! Imagine a worse scenario than the one you face, and you’ll be facing down your current predicament with an upbeat attitude in no time.

If in doubt, crack a joke – nothing relieves the tension like making fun of yourself, or your predicament. Peter Ustinov said it best, “It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.”

Be resourceful – it’s not about what you don’t have at hand, it’s about using what you do have in ways you’ve never considered before.

Set long term goals by all means – just remember this, today is the most important day in your journey towards that goal.

Succeed to spite someone you hate – just like our prisoners of war, sometimes you can move mountains in order to survive or prove someone wrong. And sometimes, it’s just to be able to say, “I succeeded just to piss you off!”

 Cheers, Terry

http://www.highintensityteambuilding.com

P.S. “Nothing in life is so exhillarating as to be shot at without result.” - Winston Churchill

There are days when getting out of bed should result in your being awarded a medal of some kind. There are days when not punching that guy you see every morning in the face while he harasses you at the coffee store, or the office, should be similarly recognized…

Believe me, there are days when every person you know could be described as a hero, in some way or another.

We typically only award medals to war heroes – and in most cases they only accept them on behalf of the fallen that didn’t return with them. Even in these lofty categories there are those that stand head and shoulders above their peers.

Most of us could name a half dozen sports stars that we admire; the good ones amongst them would readily admit they are paid too much for what they do, which is why so many of them give so much of their free time in service to their communities. It helps to balance things out in the scheme of things. We can forgive the guy who lives in a 20,000 sq foot home with nine bedrooms and 8 bathrooms, because he uses some of that  notoriety for something other than just building mansions to honor himself with. 

How many people could answer this question: Who is Robert L. Howard? – please follow the link to the website honoring this guy, there are simply too many things that should be said about him and I can’t fit it all on todays Blog!   

In order to improve our own resiliency we sometimes must be shown what others are capable of. Measuring ourselves against others is perfectly normal. We think, if he can, then I can.

It might take us a little longer to realize our own potential, occasionally, but we get there.

One of the reasons I have chosen to use Robert L. Howard as an example, is not because he was the recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, or eight Purple Hearts and even the Congressional Medal Of Honor… I’m using him because he was actually nominated for the Congressional Medal Of honor three times in a thirteen month period!!! The first two nominations were downgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross (our nations second highest award for valor) and a Silver Star (our nations third highest award for valor) – and the last nomination was also downgraded to another Distinguished Service Cross, but was later upgraded again to the Medal of Honor.  

He was also wounded 14 times during his 54 months in Combat in Vietnam. I don’t believe for one second he did it all for the money…

So why did he do it?

Neither did he do it for the fame and fortune. This country was in turmoil with anti-war protests during his service in Vietnam and barely a word was spoken about this hero until many years after the war had concluded.

He did it for the men he served with. He would rather have died helping and fighting for them, than give up and let them down.

He would rather have died than let his men down.

Some of us will die without ever having really lived….

Too often these days it’s an easy choice to fall into the doom and gloom mindset – a place where if things can go wrong, they will. We use the economic climate as a scapegoat for being lethargic about our own well-being. And I don’t just mean fiscally, because although most of our happiness is woefully linked to this yard stick, we could be happy with a lot less material possessions than we currently own!

If we still had to share our home turf with Tyrannosaurus Rex, having a bad day might mean watching the over sized lizard run off with your best friend hanging from its jaws. Now that would be a bad day….

Most folks would be less than adequately equipped, or physically capable, of going out and actually hunting their dinners down. If it didn’t come pre-packaged and ready to gnaw on, we’d be lost.  

We tend to view a bad day through a very narrow field of view. We don’t have anything truly harsh with which to really compare it. For instance, let’s say today your boss chewed you out in front of everyone over something you didn’t do, but should have. And then while trying to correct the problem and redeem yourself your computer crashed losing the data needed to fulfill the task. Sounds like a pretty bad day, doesn’t it?

It sounds like a frustrating day – it doesn’t sound like a bad day. Which isn’t to say you couldn’t let it get the better of you emotionally. Lose perspective at this point, and it could deteriorate into a really horrible day. Why? Because it is at this point we begin to say things like, “isn’t this typical!” or, “the boss has always had it in for me..” Or even, “this past year has been nothing but one screw up after another and I’m never going to catch a break, ever!”

If you were to ask Robert Howard what a bad day might look like, he’d say something like, “I lost several men from my patrol today, KIA. It was my job to bring them home, and I couldn’t do it.”

Ask an Emergency room Doctor what a bad day looks like and she might say something like, “I lost two people today, one of them was a child cut from a car wreck.” Now, in both of these cases, Roberts and our fictional E.R. Doc, they may have saved multiple lives, all day, all week – even all month. But the negative emotions are the hardest to shake. They tend to be more impactful than the positive.

I believe this phenomenon is due in part to evolutionary growth and the survival of the smartest. As cavemen (and women ) I expect there wasn’t much to laugh about. What they did chuckle at held no threat. There was little to learn from the entertaining circumstances that got them laughing, certainly nothing that would enhance the long term survival prospects of the “clan”.  

Nowadays, the chances of a physically life threatening event has diminished considerably. This isn’t to say life is without any threats, but as we have already covered some of this topic in an earlier Blog, I will leave this topic alone for the time being. What we need to address is our ability to handle misfortune and take it in stride, so it doesn’t have long lasting emotional impact on our lives.

But how?

This is where your declining resiliency comes into play. The ability to master your own emotional time bomb and turn frustrating days into positive ones, depends upon your capacity to see things in perspective, and then compare it to something worse: this is what we will chat about tomorrow.

We will consider some ways for you to master your own emotional survival template and cultivate a new outlook on your bad days. We are all capable of improving how we manage our tendency to obsess over the negative emotions, and do so without falling back on modern pharmaceuticals; but it’s going to take a bit of practice!  

Cheers, see you tomorrow!

Terry.

P.S.  “Heroes may not be braver than anyone else. They’re just braver five minutes longer.” – Ronald Reagan

Today we are addressing points 5 & 6, starting with - 95% of the audience is on your side. The other 5% is already asleep and it has nothing to do with you.

I came across an article last week that has given me incredible insight into some of the more obscure details of effective public speaking. The author was Kevin Hogan, Psy.D., (click his name to follow a link to his website) and he explained why it is so important to use the “stage” as effectively as possible.

Before we get to that though, let me first say this, your audience is most definitely on your side! How do I know? Look at it this way, have you ever sat down for a presentation and hoped really, really, hard that the person speaking screws it up? Hopefully not! Hahaha. It’s more likely you’ve sat down hoping the presenter doesn’t:

A) Bore you to tears..

B) Have some strange lisp or other distracting characteristic..

C) Let audience members hog the limelight by asking stupid questions, just to hear themsleves talk..

Or at least that’s what most people have told me when I’ve asked them…LOL

At least this is where my head is about two minutes before the speaker begins.

There is one more thing that occurs to most people in your audience, if, that is, they have ever had to give a presentation to a group themselves:

D) Thank God it’s not me having to go up there and speak today..

This is for the obvious reason that most people fear public speaking more than death itself – as we have already covered this, I won’t flog a dead horse..

The audience as a whole already feels a small amount of tension on your behalf, especially if they know this isn’t what you do!

As part of your ritual before getting up to speak, and while you are being introduced, you can now add the following to your meditation (and Autogenic breathing),

“The audience wants me to succeed”.

Now, here comes the best tit-bit I’ve learned in a while about where to stand while you speak, courtesy of Kevin Hogan, Psy.D., and it’s this:

When a right handed person looks to their right, without turning their head, they experience feelings of calm, comfort and other neutral feelings. When the same person looks to their left, they experience feelings of fear, anxiety and/or panic. This washes across into how much the individual typically enjoys the speaker.

How crazy is that?!?!

We can deduce two main things from this; firstly, if you are going to be in the audience for a presentation and you are right handed, make the most of the speaker by trying to always sit on the left side of the room so you are looking right. If you are speaking, utilize more of the left side of the stage, (left side as you stand on it looking out) so your audience (which statistically speaking will be predominantly right handed) looks to their right.

This way, even if you happen to suck during your speech, you’ve given yourself the best chance, scientifically speaking, of still getting the most out of your audience. Of course, you will never suck again! I know this because you will be using the breathing techniques we’ve chatted about, the visualization exercises and the, practice, practice, practice, philosophy to get it dead on!

So, this accounts for the 95% of the audience that is on your side; what about the 5% that isn’t, or that has already fallen asleep? Everyone has their problems, how we deal with them differs from person to person; I choose to drink heavily at night… You might turn yourself into a pretsle practicing Yoga moves; or possibly throwing poison darts at pictures of your boss helps you deal with things. Whatever gets your boat floated, is fine with me. But, there are some people out there that are just happy being, unhappy. They are miserable, nothing is going to change that, so why even try. It’s certainly not your responsibility to “change” them.

Resign yourself to the fact that someone is going to dislike what you do, how you do it, or that you are using up their valuable air.

In light of this I say breath deeply and steal as much of it as you can, hopefully accomplishing a level of aggravation for them, yet before unfelt!

Which brings us to number Six: You are afraid of making an idiot of yourself; your audience is afraid you’ll be wasting their time.

One of the hardest things to take on board, at least it was for me, was that the speech isn’t about you. You are not the center of what is going on, even though technically, you actually are. I’m not trying to confuse, I promise.

The audience is there to hear what you have to say. They are listening for the message, your point, the take aways, or maybe the entertainment aspect of your speech. They are not there to ridicule you.

They are most likely much too busy for that.

They want to get something out of it. If you deliver a speech to them knowing up front exactly what it is you want them to take with them, you will all be there for the same reason: For their benefit.

I always ask the person booking me what is it exactly that you need your group to take away from the presentation.

If the person answers we need specific scientific knowledge about such-and-such, I will gently decline the booking and hopefully refer them to someone that can provide this type of presentation. This is not what I do. And this is where you can set yourself up for as much success as possible: By analyzing what it is you do, do.

If someone has entrusted you to make a presentation at work on a topic they believe you are the most qualified to speak on, but you aren’t a funny, humorous person, don’t start trying to be one now.

Jokes usually fall flat when told by someone without an aptitude for great timing.

Your presentation isn’t the time to start finding out if this aspect of your genetic make-up has changed.

Give the audience what they expect, a passionate speech, with enthusiastic reference to all the facts, figures and details they are hoping for.

If, however, you are a funny bugger (this should be verified by an independent source) then don’t try and be all stern and business-like for your presentation.

Be you.

A few entertaining anecdotes go a long way to easing an otherwise data heavy presentation. Which might be the exact reason you were tasked with delivering it!

My presentation style is one of self-deprecating humor. On stage, or off, you’re gonna get the same thing from me – as much comedy as I can possibly interject. If you are looking for a politically correct, straight laced presentation, you’ll be barking up the wrong tree talking to me. And I’ll tell you so from the start. 

In order for the audience to not feel like you wasted their time, they must leave feeling as if they were either entertained, enlightened, improved, motivated or amazed. If you can achieve two or more of these things during your speech, you will never have wasted their time, or made an idiot of yourself. In fact, when you do achieve two or more of these things, something strange will happen – they will invite you  back! That’s when you know you got it just right…    Good Luck!!!

Cheers, Terry

www.highintensityteambuilding.com