Archive for the ‘Raves’ Category

Can you learn confidence?

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Posted 20 Jan 2011 — by Harry
Category Confidence, How to, Raves

I’ve taken to calling what I do ‘Speech and Confidence Training’ – because when I said ‘voice coach’, people thought I taught people how to sing, and if anyone’s ever heard me sing they’d know that causes a few eyebrows to raise. But the new claim – that I train speech and confidence, also begs a few questions:

“Can you train confidence?”

Yes, I think you can. Well, actually, I don’t know if you can. I think I can.

Many people adhere to an established wisdom: Confidence is something that some people just have, and other people lack. That you can’t learn it any more than you can learn to have brown hair or to be taller.

Bollocks.

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Australia’s Floods: The sexiest natural disaster in years

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Posted 17 Jan 2011 — by Harry
Category Raves

Join in lads!

I was reading the Metro on the tube here in London the other morning and noticed a large article about the floods in Queensland, mentioning that 53 people had died, and the opposite picture. Below it was a teeny article about floods in Brazil, where 500 had died.

No matter what – Aussies seem to have a determination to be funny and interesting. “There’s no point whinin’ about it” so they’ll take a break from digging their lives out of putrid sludge to pose with masculine yet boyish charm around a piano.

Or they’ll wander down the high street wearing a bikini. If the water’s too deep for a stroll, grab some tinnies of beer, hop in the tinny, and go for a tootle around to survey the damage. She’ll be right mate!

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Even a homeless man has a better voice than you

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Posted 05 Jan 2011 — by Harry
Category Raves, Speech

This guy is great, such a beautiful sound it almost seems faked:

NLP at Fernleigh

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Posted 05 Dec 2010 — by Harry
Category Raves

I’ve just come back to Fernleigh. Last weekend, we ran a weekend NLP course with my guru, Sue Knight.

I met Sue in India when I started my NLP training. She’s very gentle, perceptive and I noticed that her interactions with people are very effective. She gets results. She uplifts people. I wanted some of that, so I set out to follow what she does.

Sue has a way of giving feedback, she tells me challenging things, about my behavior and how it might change, in compelling ways that makes me inclined to pay attention and comply. Read More

Take a deep breath

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Posted 28 Oct 2010 — by harry
Category Confidence, NLP, Raves, Speech

I sometimes run a voice session and someone says ‘Nobody listens to me’ and I usually say ‘You’re right. Moving on…’

So  relax. Learn to breathe in a calming way that demands respect…

And as you relax...

Some people think that ideas should be weighed based on their merit, just as there are people who think that we should judge people on their personality rather than their looks.

Well that’s a wonderful thing to believe if you’re softly spoken, poorly dressed and shockingly obese, but sadly it’s just not true.

If you’ve got a good personality, then parade it in a way that says: ‘I’m worth talking to.’ If you’ve got good ideas, speak them in a way that says ‘I’m worth listening to’.

You don’t always need to be loud, that’s just annoying. It’s about having the range of behaviour to match the situation, acheive your results. When you’re with your beloved you don’t scream sweet nothings in their ear, and when you’re in a club don’t mumble like a muppet.

If you’re going to present your ideas to an audience – when you have a nervous war of gasses going on in your belly that makes you want to do a poo right before your presentation, that’s when you need to take control of your physiology and assert yourself. If you can’t control your own inner state, how are you going to affect theirs? Read More

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You are an amazing organism

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Posted 26 Oct 2010 — by harry
Category Confidence, Raves

You are.

Trillions of forms of thing have existed. Strange things, feathered things. Slimy things that make funny noises; scary things and small things. There’s been trees and moss, and creatures to nom them.

You are literally the dust of a million exploded stars.

For you to be there right now, so many things have happened in their perfect sequence just the way they were always going to, so many variables, events of chance, ideas, flirtations, kisses and Cadillac’s have happened in a special order…

How did we get here, to this point, rather than to another?

Perhaps a stupid question. But I still want to know.

Within our own world we are becoming rapidly more aware of how truly clueless we are. Have you heard of quarks? Strange quarks, up quarks and down quarks? What preceded the big bang? Why do platypus deserve poisonous spurs? If our sole purpose is to procreate, why is it so hard to find someone to root?

I dunno.

But it’s bloody fortunate that you’re here. It’s bloody fortunate that anything is here.

But you, specifically, your ability to read words, coupled with your desire to do so. That’s pretty clever. You read other people’s opinions, and consider them, even if you don’t agree with them. That’s commendable, many radicals are crippled by their inability to do that. Well done – you’re obviously a very talented person.

What do you want from the world? Really. Take a moment now.

Do you also want to know that it’s all going to be okay?

Well – it might be. You have a good chance to make that happen. Use your talents to have an impact on something. Save a species. Be nice to someone. Have sex with them. Eat a cabbage.

It’s incredibly strange that we’re here at all; you might as well enjoy it!

Smacky rats

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Posted 23 Jul 2010 — by Harry
Category Raves

Bruce Alexander did the research in the 70′s – but it’s still pretty salient.

Bruce considered that the pathetic, cold, isolated conditions in most lab experiments on rats were analogous to the shitty life that most smack-addicts live, and considered that perhaps it’s not the heroin but the hopeless circumstances that drives people (and rats) to abuse substances.

With a cannula jammed in your brain wouldn't you too become a junkie?

If given the choice of utter boredom, no panky time with girl-rats and just a single button that creates an artificial euphoria, wouldn’t we too sit around all day twiddling ourselves to oblivion?

So why don’t we? Smack ain’t hard to find.

So Alexander created ‘Rat Park’ – a 95 square-foot enclosure with plenty of food, fun running wheels and places to create nests and make little ugly pink blind rat-babies. Rabies! He also included a tunnel that ended with a drinking dish of tap water and one of methodone water that was sweetened with sugar (‘cos smack tastes yuck). Read More

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Drunk literature?

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Posted 18 Jul 2010 — by Harry
Category Rants, Raves

Imagine that the world needs you so much that you just have to serve. For whatever reason, you discard your current desires and seek only for the betterment of everything around you…

Those things that are most near you, most similar to you, clearly deserve your greatest concern. Monkeys with their hirsute yet childlike faces probably ought only be harmed when absolutely necessary, for purposes of neurological science. But fat, four legged cows seem to be less human and coincidentally, more tasty. Moo… Nom nom nom.

We, in all our bell-clanging awesomeness seem to have realized that the reason for aforementioned awesomeness owes to the biological diversity from which we come. We must continue to cherish every species (but not every life) that exists. Except the mosquito, because they’re fucking terrible. They gave me malaria. They are like whiny, winged syringes of death. They can go.

But everything else is pretty awesome. Including frogs.

Just pretend that your stupid shit is even stupider when gazed upon from the horizon of existence. Up there in it, amongst all the crap, it seems complex and interwoven and oh-so-important – but step back, a mere 1000 years, and the metropolis of your existence becomes barely a bumpy silhouette in the sunset.

Look further, into the dawn of tomorrow, and wonder what will you have mattered to them when they’re then.

Good night.

Welcome to tomorrow: Organic Studpidity vs Artificial Intelligence

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Posted 01 Jul 2010 — by Harry
Category Futurism, Rants, Raves

When humans started teaching computers about evolution, we sealed our fate. The machines will rise. It’s survival of the fittest, and the fastest to adapt controls the situation…

He will be back.

When us humans write instructions for machines to undertake simple, repetitive human tasks we expect it to be easy. It is not. Even a simple activity like catching a bus requires us to make choices based upon so many variables: What is that noise? Am I awake? Am I late? How late? What’s wrong with my alarm? Is this really the time to be fiddling with my alarm? Maybe it’s set to 24-hour time? Who is this calling me? Should I answer my boss who’s calling because I’m late for work but I haven’t left yet because my alarm didn’t go off and I stayed home to write a blog about it?

The knowables are: When is the train coming? How far is it from here to the train station? Will it be quicker to catch a bus or walk? What is the statistical relationship between chances of missing a bus versus the distances between bus stops if walking towards the station? Perhaps a computer program could do it… But the dogs, the rain, the cute girl in the stairwell, the forgotten key and the millions of other variables make it all too confusing to type about. Read More

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Rajasthan’s 5 legged cows – TOI article

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Posted 07 May 2010 — by Harry
Category Raves, Travel

I wrote this (well most of it) recently for a Times of India special on Rajasthan

Holy Cow and a B’wood Gora.

Enjoy it!

Neither smiles nor turbans come any bigger

Rajasthan was exactly what I’d expected of India, the postcard image that had been romanticised for so long: Long rolling deserts, blistering heat, tenacious religious fervour and broad, welcoming smiles. I rode to Udaipur at around dusk on my Enfield, and revelled in winding up through the steep streets (my bike loves an incline) gazing at the ancient buildings. I was so captured by the sight, craning my neck upwards, that I almost ran right up an elephant’s rear.

Pushkar was amazing – the heat was oppressive such that almost everyone that ventured into the sunlight was rendered unconscious by its harsh glare. The streets were deserted, and only the most legitimate holy babas remained – all of the scamsters had left with the tourists, in search of temperate climate. I even saw a five-legged cow, that was far holier than those from my farm in Australia. I have developed a strange relationship with cows after being in North India, where the Brahmin bulls stand taller than me – and I’m 6 foot 3! I’d grown on a cattle farm in Australia where the black cows we knew were terrified of us from birth, it was amazing to be able to touch and feed these holy beasts as they nonchalantly stood in the middle of the chaotic roads. They really are more intelligent than I’d guessed. The cows in Australia know that they are food, and yet here they are Gods – and again they know it.

5th legs: Particularly useful for cows suffering from vertigo or alcoholism

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