| Two case studies from my conference organising days that show why it is vital to research your audience’s needs:
A speaker at the conference was a well-known celebrity. He is a very good speaker with valuable information to share. His signature style is very direct and to the point. Most audiences tolerate this style as part of his character and authority. Indeed some people find his style intoxicating. He was addressing an audience of Consumer Relations Managers; people who spend their working days dealing with volatile customers and their complaints. In his session he did not temper his manner of delivery, but was just as forthright and bombastic as normal. The audience found his style inflexible and arrogant. A large majority of the audience hated his presentation and documented this freely in their comments afterwards.
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Gone Fishin!
I set myself a 10 minute exercise today.My mission, if I chose to accept it, was to write a piece using my intuition as a prompt. With nary a hesitation, subconscious the hub of my life –trout fishing it is.
I grew up seeing my father’s coterie of small and not so small bronzed angler trophies gain more and more room on the dining room mantel shelf. He was a champion angler and with a special love of trout fishing and it struck me that there is a synergy between fishing techniques and any wide casting ego that is determined to take you down into the murky depths.
Trout fishing requires the right tackle, sinker and a hook.
Ego: The right tackle is a taken– a range of limiting beliefs coupled with a hook and a sinker that will work every time given the opportunity.
Trout fishing – requires a bait use either garden worms or a lure.
Ego: any pretty sly lure will do the trick
Trout fishing: The back eddies and quiet deep water are the best spots to catch your fish.
Ego: definitely the back eddies and seemingly innocent looking situations will often give the most rewarding catch.
Trout fishing: Make your own colouful lures to skim across the surface to attract your prize.
Ego: It can create the ultimate lure, where the barb is hidden so well that it can hook you before you even are aware of it’s presence.
Trout fish: Before cooking you need to gut, skin and wash the fish.
Ego: Gut, skin and rub in salt for best effect.
Friday Tips – Speakers Notes
I much prefer speakers to use memory prompts as speakers who read their speech frequently lose the life force of delivering an audience grabbing presentation. Why, because they are tied to their printed word, often fearful of losing their place which invariably means they do leading to more discomfort behind the lectern. Eye-contact is patchy as they try to keep on track. The speech controls them instead of them controlling the speech. But if you feel you must here are some tips for managing your speaking papers.
Type the speech with double space – use only the top half of A4 paper – (if you continue the text to the bottom of the page guess where your eyes go as you read it) It is important to maintain eye contact – read a sentence, use your finger to keep on track and look up at the audience come back to your place, read a sentence…….. Use a highlighter to score beginning of fresh point being made. Number each page clearly at the top right hand corner. Practice moving the presented page smoothly across to one side or place behind the other notes. Don’t forget to rehearse it, time it, pace it.
I recommend Memory Prompts – one liners that take you from point to point. Write the speech in its entirety and then rehearse it using a highlighter to indicate each point, not complete sentences, just the nuts and bolts of the point. Retype the points in double spacing. Number the prompts clearly. Rehearse using the prompts and checking with the speech notes. File the speech. Rehearse using the prompts only. Rehearse using the prompts only until it runs smooth, reviewing any stumbling blocks and rewording in language you are comfortable with. Rehearse and time it. Ready to go get em!
Changing thoughts on being a 2
I know that I’m pure energy and that the thoughts that I generate have complete dominion over my reality. So I set myself the task of diligently observing my thinking and I am beginning to understand how much brain activity I invest into negative or victim thoughts.
To give you an understanding of the canvas I am working with, I am a number 2 on the Enneagram profiling scale. This personality profile is defined as the ‘Helper’ or ‘Giver’
You would recognise the type as some one who has a natural empathy, is there in a crisis, or intuitively works out in a flash how to help/please/make you feel good. Nice people yes because there is a deep caring there but the dark side is that we 2’s have a pathological need for your approval. We suppress our own needs as we give, understand and help but if this is not given the right approbation, recognition or level of appreciation God help you as the sweetness transforms into a shrew. I’m in conflict as I write these words wanting to say unfair, unfair. Not me I’m evolved, my consciousness is awake. I do things for the purest motives. I’m lovely! Really Mary?
But with a detached observation, I notice that those poor little me, dark thoughts – Nigredo – will give me a dull achy type pain in my sinus area. I am sure if I was scanned while indulging in this putrefying nastiness, neurologists would identify exactly where the activity was happening in my brain. Thoughts of love, laughter and creativity – Albedo – conversely pulsate a blissful rainbow of colour and peace rising up, so it seems to me from my heart and suffusing my brain to match the vibration of the universe. These are the same feelings that I get when I meditate.
With the Nigredo thoughts comes pain that pulls down a heaviness, a darkness into my body but with the Albedo there is a feeling of nurture, like the warmth of a loved one’s arms about you or the gentlest kiss. It is all about softness whereas the mean manipulative thoughts are harsh, gritty like flint in a wound.
I’m trying to train myself to identify that pain associated with the negative thought the instant it occurs, to act like a warning klaxon to stop the victim/the world has done me wrong thoughts worming in, waiting for any opportunity to take me down.
Awareness of course, being in the present is route to consciousness. The path of being in the present for me is identify the pain or the joy that a thought gives me. Then I can use my will, to change the pain of the negative thought into a vibration of joy.
By transforming a dense leaden contemplation into golden bliss choices – that is true alchemy. ‘How clever I am,’ I think, ‘I could start something here.’ But Mary you know this is not new, wise men, the holy men have been saying this throughout the ages. So why has it taken me so long when I knew it intellectually? The truth is I, like you, needed to be ready to embrace this wisdom – to make it my own. Frank Sinatra nailed it –To think I did all that, And may I say, not in a shy way, Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way.
You simply need to get out of your own way.
There are thousands of published authors longing for people to read their literary masterpiece. It must be the same with any artistic work. Artists hanging on the moment when their work resonates with a buyer. Musicians who compose soul connecting music and lyrics waiting for the disc jockeys of the world to play their tracks over and over again.
Losing You, my second book, is a story of a woman trying to make sense of her husband’s death. It is a story that shows the power of the human spirit in overcoming adversity and one that I know that will touch and help others in an authentic way. Each chapter, each paragraph is stamped with my creative soul that longs to connect with others. I have 5 star reviews on Amazon. So why isn’t it flying off the E-Book shelves?
Is it the quality of the writing? Maybe but what constitutes good writing? Isn’t that in the eye of the reader? From all the books I have read and creative writing courses I have completed, I hear over and over that a good story will overcome any paucity of literary capabilities.
We have all heard of the first book soaring up the sales chart, some of which have distinct critical merit (as appraised by respected and known literary critics) and some that are disdained by the critics and seen as a ‘would-be wordsmiths’ who have managed to nail a gap in the market.
As writers we take these successful writers as our yardstick. With chagrin we accept they’re intellectually better writers than ourselves or writers who are cleverer than us not because they have any greater talent but simply because we see them as reader smart. We tell ourselves that these writers are better, cleverer, more worthy than ourselves.
But this is all rubbish. The truth is that we frequently, strike frequently, we regularly sabotage our own success. We say we want success and then bask in a slip steam of self-doubt – not good enough, not worthy, not capable, not deserving and the numero uno fearfulness.
Is it any wonder our books don’t sell?
What we think we create – cause and effect. This principle is no longer lightweight, it is quantum physics proven. The universe does not judge and discount self-abusive thoughts. It simply provides what we consistently give energy to. So how do we clean up these negative thoughts to visualise our book racing off the shelves. It is simple, first you need to define why you want it to be a bestseller and to be consciously aware of those myriad of niggling, juggling negative thoughts that invade our neurons minute by minute.
From what I understand the universe rewards clarity of thought so with your definition unsullied by negative beliefs you simply need to get out of your own way and focus on what you desire. Feel it, live it, breathe it and claim it. It’s yours.
Okay move over doubt. Okay already here I go:
I am the author of the best-selling novel Losing You. Losing You is not only is a great read, it inspires, uplifts and connects at a spiritual level with my readers.
What’s Not to Worship?
We moved from the white-hot of midday sun into the cool dimness of the Basilica of San Frediano in Lucca. Our Italian tour guide was a young woman, who knew far too much history for her own good and wanted desperately to share it with the world. Her voice now barely a whisper detailed the faded frescos and the 12 century marble baptismal font as we quietly wound our way through the side chapels.
She waited patiently in the side chapel of St. Zita until all the group were present. There was renewed determination as she spoke of the artifacts and paintings. We had been walking and ingesting Lucca for over three hours. The majority of were simply pleased to sit, pushing shoes off our sore feet as we sought the coolness of the marble floor. Our guide’s history lesson was overwhelming, ticking off the centuries while our thoughts fantasized on a coffee and shopping break. She sensed she had lost us but then she played her Saint Zita trump card. Deliberately she stepped away from the front of the altar, with a cliché gesture of game show host she indicated the brightly lit glass sarcophagus behind her. Where the rest of the church was dim illuminated only by rose-red pools of light or iron stand banks of flickering candles, the glass case was rudely lit, neon bright like a cheap side show. There on a bed of brocade was the mummified remains of an ancient, once, woman, now only a leather black corpse dressed in white with a circlet of dusty plastic flowers in her thin wispy red hair. The guide had our attention. And with that my weakened enthusiasm for absorbing yet another church or monument was dealt a fatal blow.
The only iconic place of worship – that I have experienced – that I found uplifting and gave a sense of spiritual freedom was Gaudi’s Cathedral Sagrada Familia. Is it because of Gaudi’s imaginative architecture compared to predictable medieval or gothic buttressed church naves? Those darkened hallows have a heaviness that dampens my spirits whereas Gaudi’s cathedral is a lightness of towering space that triggers the imagination to explore it with the spiritual innocence of a child. May be Gaudi paid heed to the biblical quote ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’
I love history but sleuthing around a church attempting to retain a potted knowledge of patrons, saints and bishops while viewing the stained glass windows, a hand-carved lectern from a single oak tree, an alabaster madonna and child is not for me and irrefutably not some horror movie mummified relic in a glass case.
To me the natural elements of earth, sea and sky provide my altar for a conversation with a higher source. What about you?
Friday – Writing Tips from Successful Authors
With thanks to Time Out New York for publishing great tips from successful authors. My pick of the bountiful crop.
Reza Aslan (rezaaslan.com) Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (Random House, $27) “The best advice I can give an aspiring writer is the one I received years ago: Nobody cares about you or your work like you do. Your agent, your publisher and your publicist are all wonderful people who work their hardest for you to succeed. But in the end, your success as a writer depends almost wholly upon your own tireless efforts to promote your book and make sure it gets the attention it deserves.”
Edwidge Danticat (facebook.com/edwidgedanticat) Claire of the Sea Light (Knopf, $25.95) “It might sound corny but listen to your heart. Let that inner voice guide you, the one closest to your truest self. The story you are most afraid to tell might be your truest one, your deepest one. Don’t let neither success nor failure deter you. Remember the excitement of those first days, those first words, those first sentences—and keep going.”
Ben Dolnick (bendolnick.com) At the Bottom of Everything (Pantheon, $24.95) “Get a kitchen timer. Writers are ingenious at redefining what qualifies as doing work (‘If I just spend this morning cleaning my desk…’). A kitchen timer tolerates no such nonsense. Set yourself a daily writing quota (as little as a half hour is fine at first), set the clock and get to work.”
Anthony Marra (@anthonyfmarra) A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth, $26) “Read widely. Write for three hours a day, six days a week. Throw out the red pens and retype your work. When the frustrations accumulate and you want to give up, keep in mind that your solitary struggles to shape language into meaning will become the most profound moments of your creative life. Enjoy yourself.”
Holy Grail Your Truth
I have always been on a quest for the truth. My truth. Cut to the bone, dyed in the wool, so help me God Truth. Ever since I can remember I wanted to know why I was what I was. I believed totally the axiom – that truth will set you free.
Now I’m a septuagenarian I realise there is no such thing as Truth. Let me explain, I see truth as purely subjective. My truth is not your truth and equally your truth is not mine.
Truth is truth I hear you say there can be no argument with the truth. Like the sky is blue and grass is green. We can’t argue with that, unless of course we are colour blind.
We can’t argue with scientific facts can we? After all it is proven. But I have been around long enough to see how often scientific dogma has had to back flip.
For example, as a home economist by profession,I have seen the dietary guidelines change from carbs’ being the villain in our diet to carbs’ being the hero and onto present day when carbs’ are once more on the downward spiral. Of course we could say that is just the evolution of scientific learning.
And like science our own search for our holy grail of our inner Truth will evolve. Some will never search for the truth, it may be that they are happy with their particular status quo or it is simply too painful to explore. But a search for the authentic you – may simply be a wild guru chase unless fundamental changes are accepted and accommodated.
Our Truth is shaped by our ingrained beliefs. Just like the evolution of a crystal. Molecules gather together in a uniform and repeating pattern. The shape and characteristic of each crystal is always the same. Similarly our Truth will always be subject to our beliefs. So unless we are conscious of this and willing to test our truths with others, our take on our own truth will always be one-eyed.
Over the years I have been fortunate to work with William Whitecloud who wrote Magician’s Way and The Last Shaman. Two of the most powerful books you could ever read. If you are on a path to consciousness reading these will give you the tools to find your inner TRUTH.
Friday Tips for Speakers – Praise of the Pause
The Pause, a second or two without speaking, is one of the most powerful elements you can use in speech delivery.
The Pause is to public speaking as a verbal underline or CAPS’ are to writing. Use it to emphasise your point or to add drama to your words.
The Pause will quiet a noisy audience. Remember the school teacher who could quell a noisy class with a long cool look at the students. An over enthusiastic question time can rattle a speaker and it can get uncomfortable at the podium. Maintain quality eye contact while employing an extended pause and you will be able to take back control. Bonus of the mute seconds is that it gives you time to think of a diplomatic or courteous answer.
The Pause is an effective tool when you are presenting a workshop. In your introduction to the workshop explain that when you need to recapture the group’s attention, following an interactive session, you will stop talking and raise your arm. They in turn should stop speaking and raise their arm until the whole room becomes quiet. Works like magic.
At the lectern, just before you speak, Pause, make eye contact and smile. Try it – you will find the audience will reward you with a boost of pure welcoming energy.
Left brain Right brain
Neuroscientists found that when they dumbed down the analytical side of the left-brain hemisphere – the right brain, which provides us with insight or intuitive responses, was clearer sharper and demonstrated enhanced creativity and innovation.
It seems that simple steps like brushing your teeth with your weak hand, travelling a new and different route home or eating foods that you have never tried before will stimulate and improve our overall brain development.
But can we improve our insightful thinking (what I would call creative intuition) without an attendant neuroscientist zapping half of our brain with electrical impulses to temporarily still our left-brain’s predictive course of thinking?
Can we grow our well-spring of creativity?
When I write, I’m single-minded, totally focused, in the zone. If I was in an MRI scanner I’m sure it could be seen that both sides of my brain would be contributing.
But the most valuable moments of creativity for me frequently occur after I have had time out. After I meditate, take a walk along the beach focusing on the ocean, reflect on a good movie, or take an adventure break by going somewhere new. Seeing things as though I was seeing them for the first time. The light bulb moments come when my brain is not busy with the grey chatter of the day or my treadmill thinking. They come when my neurons are having a break from firing along their well trod pathways.
For a few years now I have deliberately practiced developing my intuitive ability. At first I found it hard not to indulge the analytical side as it could and still can be extremely persuasive in the case it presents. But over time and many personal development courses I have found ways to disengage the finger wagging left brain and increase the ‘yeh baby’ creative moments.
This is where this picture on the left plays its part. Meet little Me, aged four’ish. My inner child. I see her shy but triumphant smile as she tries to ride her older sister’s bike. I identify with her trusting quality of innocence; she simply does not recognise that she is not big enough to fully reach the peddles to make the wheels turn. She is in the moment of loving being able to ride the bike unconcerned that the bike will remain stationary.
My inner child image is my express route to my intuition. I visualise her proudly sitting on her two sizes too large tricycle and this curbs my busy left-brain. In this quiet well of connection I set my intention to receive whatever guidance I need, may be its a plot snag or a character’s flaws. As I continue to focus on this specific image of my inner child I find I experience once again her moment of elation and feel her joyful innocence. It creates the same mind flora as the aftermath of time out but with more purpose. I find my intuition gives up guidance and answers like slices of golden toast in a pop-up toaster.
A mental image does not have to be a picture of you as a young child that is just my way of leaving the wallpaper behind and soaring to different places. For you it could be something from nature, a loved pet or any image that allows you to identify with a joyful experience and importantly captures that feeling of innocence – seeing things as though you are seeing them for the first time.
It is a simple technique but so effective. Similar to developing any part of our muscular system it requires regular practice to access it at will and determination to trust what you receive.
Try it I think you will be amazed.
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MARY ATKINS AUTHOR 