Time for a Colorful Metaphor

"Just come out and say it."

"But I don't, know what it is ? Its too big, or too small or just too hard to say."

"Well what's it like?

"It's like the first day at school. Being excited, scared, and lost all at the same time."

The first day of school, an event all readers have had, different but with more sameness than difference.

The first day of preschool is different than the first day of grad school, but it resonates with the emotional center of the brain, Limbic something or other, that connects us all, and that's what a colorful metaphor can do, connect the speaker to the audience.

Even connect the speaker to the inner world of meaningful moments, synchronicity, epiphanies.

Finding how This can be like That energizes the brain to find more connection, more of the rapport speakers are working toward.

Knowing we are all climbing that mountain searching for the treasure of insights, joy, wonder and good questions that only a metaphor can solve.

A good metaphor open doors to rooms we didn't know existed.

A powerful metaphor changes life's.

A metaphor can sound like something we have 'met before', familiar and new all at once.

Speaking metaphorically creates space for the listener imagination to create, to become like the palette upon which Disney's' artist awaken us with Sleeping Beauty.

Make a house fly with Dumbo, and Hippo's dance in Fantasia.

What's a useful metaphor for your life, your love your adventures?

Namaste

Gary

LIghten up & Laugh

Angel fly because they take themselves lightly.
Laughter heals, and healers laugh.

Being successful in front of a group requires a lightness of being. As in, “he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.” He, being the audience.

I remember in 1968 when ‘heavy metal music’ made an impact. Jimi Hendrix, Grand Funk Road, Led Zeppelin, as in ‘lead,’ a heavy metal. It was followed up in 1969 with the sound of mellow. Country rock from the Byrd’s, CSN, Pentangle * the English troubadour bands.

But it is the lightness, the non-fixated attention that the lifts us above the average, above the norm to float, as if by magic, because it is the magic of lightness that holds an audiences attention.

The psychology of laughter runs a gauntlet from the physiology of the chuckle to the incongruity of the slapstick physical humor of the slip, slap and painful fall as the clown or anyone, accidentally, gets hurt and I twitch into the ‘nervous reaction’ of the inappropriate laugh.

“I just can’t help from laughing.”

“Ouch, that’s gotta hurt,” Seinfield mutters, as Kramer smashes into the door.

Does the humor come from a mind that needs to react?

Do we laugh to release the incongruity, I mean someone has hurt himself or herself and I am laughing. It doesn’t make sense. AHA, nonsense (No sense), an occasionally laughable subject.

Am I an inconsiderate sadist asshole?

Does it give me pleasure to see others pain?

It does give me fits of laughter when Chevy Chase takes a fall, the Stooges whack each other, Wiley Coyote goes off the cliff or when the Bart & Lisa Simpson favorite characters Itchy & Scratchy perform diabolical deeds of destruction on each other.

Cartoons may set the laughter gauge from a young age, but to laugh at the pain of another continues into old age. Perhaps the laughing at another’s pain is a lesson for us to learn how to handle our own pain. Taking it all lightly maybe a key to entering heaven.

The reasons for the slapstick laugh is not what a speaker is after, but the fact that it triggers one of speakers favorite responses is a curiosity worthy of a speaker’s attention.

Understanding the physiology of how breathing changes, the shortening and gasping of breath, the blood rushing to certain extremities, belly bouncing even in the leanest. It is a fact that that the physiology of laughter creates the stimulus for the laughter. You can experience humor and laugh or equally successfully you can laugh and create humor.

Ask the Masters in Laughing Yoga classes. If you don’t know how to spontaneously laugh it time to learn. To stop the reading of this serious tome and begin the tee hees, haha, hee-haws, belly rocking, snorting, head nodding, eye closed, belly shaking laughing. Its healthy, stress releasing and adds another tool to your speakers tool box.

To be able to laugh on cue, to lead an audience to laugh where you want them, is part of the magic of Oratory Lessons.

Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.
Speakers laugh because they know how.

Learn to laugh, especially with your-selves in duet-

Gary C Smith Public Speaking & Trainings

510-722-3212

The Power of Exaggeration

Putting lipstick on the pig.
Eye shadow on the crow.
Metaphors of exaggeration.

Exaggeration can be a tool that relieves sensitivity and expands possibilities.
Exaggeration builds the imagination muscle.

I can hear Steve Martin on Saturday Night Live, saying “Well excuse me!”
He powered down the threat, powered up his own creativity, and got a laugh.
If you can laugh, make others laugh, or see the humor you are speaking fearlessly.

Many memory tools are based on exaggeration, I wonder how many people remembered me with a beard as hairy Gary?

Now there is a exaggeration safety net for those who worry by asking-
'What’s the worse that could happen?’
Or my favorite question I attribute to Voltaire, “In the best of all worlds, how would it be?"

Want to have an adventure into the Land of Exaggeration,
How bad could the economy go?
How deep the depression?
BUT REMEMBER that to delve to the depths of depression the Laws of Consciousness require the sane (those who remember being source) to ascend to the best of all worlds.
How prosperous can the economy be?

To speak fearlessly one needs to have a sense of the extremes, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Being prepared for The Audiences of Withhold. The stern clapless.
The Audiences of Appreciation. The enthusiastic clappers.
The Audience of Vegetable Tossers.

Exaggeration can move us out our comfort zone into areas of possibilities.

Exaggerate emotionally usually flattens sensitive feelings.

Exaggeration of thoughts often stops them entirely and leaves moments of clarity and room for feedback.

Physical exaggeration can create humorous new movements, and improved self-confidence and self esteem.

Exaggeration as a speaking tool builds gestures, improves postures, grows metaphors, excites beginnings, expands the body of a presentation and captures an audience.

Don’t worry about being extreme, if you can stay at the extremes you’ll probably become famous look from Voltaire to Steve Martin.

It take a coach to get past our fear of embarrassment to get to the Land of Exaggeration, call Gary C Smith for help. 510-722-3212