Heat waves and mindsets

Audience, Reading people

It has been very, very hot in my hometown over the past week. People are hiding in their basements, seeking out air conditioned venues, and generally doing as little as possible.  Men, women, children, and animals alike are sticky, sweaty, itchy, and irritable. This is affecting not only how people are saying their message, but…

Off the Introspective Cuff

Connecting

One of the keys to being able to ramble out a good, solid off-the-cuff or spontaneous speech is introspection – and lots of it. The purpose behind this introspection isn’t to indulge in endless navel-gazing.  That’s what Facebook and Instagram are for.  This self-reflection is to develop an acute awareness of your values, your personal drivers,…

Lost the groove

Creating

It is remarkably easy to get out of a solid groove.  The groove you lost may have been one centred around a good habit you had, or one for a skill you built up and were maintaining.  Either way, we can break out of these with surprising rapidity, losing the characteristic we worked so hard…

Conference Terror part 1: Permission

Presenting

Note: I haven’t decided how many instalments of this topic I’m going to do, but I do know that there’s a part 2 and 3 on the way… Finding a venue to broadcast your message is easy; what’s scary is actually doing it.  There are lots of ways you can practice speaking in front of groups or…

The wall

Connecting

When we feel under threat, misunderstood, ill-used, or otherwise hard done by, we tend to put up walls.  They are our mental defence mechanism, a way of deflecting conversations that might make us feel bad, or uncomfortable, or wrong. When we say that someone “put a wall up between us,” we usually refer to someone becoming quiet…

Freedom from updates

Time out

Communication is a boon, a blessing, the only way to get things done. Things that facilitate communication are boons, blessings, necessary to our daily life at work and play. If the above statements are true, why is burnout higher than ever? Why do we have to manage our communications and contact with so many different…

Daily Acts

Performance

Acting is part of life. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we spent a significant portion of our day in one performance or another. Life demands all of us to be a bit of an actor, and most people are remarkably adept at this. We perform in front of our spouses and friends. We act…