A friend sent me this idea about stress. I really think it is a super use of a prop and I would like to give credit to the source, but as of now, it is unknown to me. If anyone knows it please let me know.

All you need is a glass and some water.

Stress Management
A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked,

"How heavy is this glass of water?"

Answers called out ranged from 20g to 500g.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter.

It depends on how long you try to hold it.

If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem.

If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm.

If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance.

In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued,

"And that's the way it is with stress management.

If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later,

as the burden becomes increasingly heavy,

we won't be able to carry on. "

"As with the glass of water,

you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again.

When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

"So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down.

Don't carry it home.

You can pick it up tomorrow.

Whatever burdens you're carrying now,

let them down for a moment if you can."

So, my friend, why not take a while to just simply RELAX.

Put down anything that may be a burden to you right now.

Don't pick it up again until after you've rested a while.

Life is short.

Enjoy it!

Head for the Stars

A colleague was telling me about her ideas for opening up the minds of her teamworkers and I got to thinking. Sometimes we don't know how to get better, be a better business, grow, expand or get rich if we haven't had a good look at who and where we are today.

This goes for individuals, products and services. So I decided to try to open my brain up to look into the future to Head for the Stars.

I came up with four categories

Earth Star Superstar Spaceship

Earth is a realistic look at where I am today.

Star is where I want to be.

Superstar is what would put me on top.

Spaceship is how I hope to get there.

Let's try this out!

Imagine I am a small business who produces teacher resource guides.

Earth
-small
-diverse
-quick to turnaround
-relatively inexpensive
-creative but a bit scattered
-lots of great ideas

Star
-known for one idea/format (not scattered)
-strong on-line presence
-relevant to audience of teachers
-fun and practical for teachers
-good value

Superstar
-show teachers HOW
-teach teachers HOW
-make it fun to learn HOW


Spaceship
-video to show HOW
-newsletter format to focus on HOW
-seminars and on-line seminars to teach HOW
-name to reflect that you will learn HOW
-create client list of those who need to learn HOW (beginning teachers and teachers facing change)

So that's my attempt. Did this work for me? Yes in a way.
First off that word HOW came leaping out at me. I knew that was something I might want to think about, but hadn't given it much thought.
Once I saw the word HOW the spaceship ideas came pretty easily. Is this a final go-around? Not at all. This is just getting the percolator fired up.

Try this idea if you like with anything, a problem, a brainstorm. Let me know how it went.

Here is a brilliant learning idea that comes from England.

Students were given the task of working with their teachers to create films to teach other students about science ideas and principles.
See some of these films here: http://www.filmsforlearning.org/index.html

So let's take this idea and adapt it. Basically these students are making films of a good enough quality to be used in another lesson. Why not try the same thing with training. Open up your topics to your students and the best of the best will be shown at future training sessions.

Make take a bit of legwork and some forward planning, but what a way for students to make their marks.

Here is a shot of me at Sechelt in British Columbia. It's January and fairly cold, but the weather broke and was lovely.
Something I think is important for people who are trying to be creative is a place to getaway. This small coastal town is one of the places I go when I need to think about my ideas. I head for the beach and run over new ideas for presentations and then sit with my laptop and write them up.
No phone, no lights, (okay a motorcar), just a couple of luxuries. The big luxury is uninterrupted time to work on a project. Where do you go to really get thinking?

Burning Money

In his book, Never Buy a New Car
John L. White writes:

"If you're thinking about buying a new car, I want you to do something before you pull the trigger. Go out into your back yard right now and dig a deep hole. Then, take several thousand dollars in cash, drop it in and cover it up. Better yet, put the money on yourbarbecue grill, soak it with some lighter fluid and put a match to it. Maybe if the money was packed tight enough you could at least grill some hot dogs over it. That's what you're doing when you buy a new car. "

I just love this kind of imagery. This is what I believe works with presentations, strong, visual pictures to make the point and keep the mind amused.

Now in this story, John L. White is talking about a new car, but I could adapt the idea to choosing the wrong training, buying the wrong computer, not training your front end staff, investing in bad stocks and so on.

I was just so attracted to this idea and wanted to share it with you today.

SOS

Here is an idea someone told me about. I adapted it for my own workshops.

Use some large flip chart paper taped together and make the outline of a boat's hull. Tell everyone in your group (say 15 or under) that they have to get into the boat.

Now you let them know that the boat will sink in 1 minute 11 seconds (use a timer) or whatever time you want. Before the boat sinks they need to ABANDON SHIP and plunge into the water beside the boat to be rescued.

BUT they have to call out two things before they can leave the boat. For example:
-two reasons they have for coming to the workshop
-two ideas they hope to come away with
-two barriers to their success
-two places to network

At this point they can leap off the ship and sit down.
Play it up with a sense of urgency and any props that you can find, for a good, rollicking start to the day.


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Magazine Madness

Sometimes in my presentations I hold up magazines and read the titles of articles contained within. Of course, these are not really articles contained within... these are titles I have made up. Point is, it is pretty funny to hold up, say, a copy of Oprah and read a title from it.

The way it works is that you mickey up whatever title suits your topic. I was recently presenting a keynote, "Nobody Powerwalked When I Was a Kid" talking about the bombardment of self-improvement in our lives and I used some magazines to parody some self-improvement articles.

My favourite was "Create Your Entire Spring Wardrobe from Duct Tape" This got a big laugh. I had another part of the title, but I was holding it back so that I could judge whether it would be suitable for the particular audience. It was, they were largely a women's group who where in a very good mood... so I added the rest of the title "Free Thong Pattern Included" which got another laugh.

Magazines look like great props, help you remember what you wanted to say and generally enhance a humorous presentation.

What Did You Expect?

Here is an idea for a session in which you need your participants to focus on customer needs and expectations.

Analyse what the customer may already think about your business. Review their negative expectations.

Let me explain.

Sometimes when you think about the IRS or Revenue Canada you may have a particular expectation of what it would be like to deal with them. Your expectation may not be all positive. You might be surprised, though, how it would really turn out.

Another example: Let's say you had a negative experience when getting your hair cut. That might colour how you view all future haircuts.

So here is how we turn it into an activity.

Example: Your team works in customer service at a telephone company.
Put the participants into small groups. Have them come up with 6 lines that express some of the more negative expectations customers may have about them. You want the teams to record their ideas, then read them and act them out with all the expression they can muster.

"They never connect the phone when they say they will?"
"I never get to talk to a real person."
"I can't understand their bills at all."
"There's usually a long wait until you can get a phone."
"These guys are all the same, big or small they don't care about the customer."
"Their support people aren't available when I want them."

Now these may be true, they may be partially true or they may be the stuff that myths are made of. Whatever, this is an opportunity of examining where some of your customers are coming from. Can you turn some of them around? Where do you think you should make changes?

So just an idea I throw out to you to see if you can adapt to your own training. My thanks to Marnie Olson for this idea.