Reading these kinds of things makes me quite excited in one moment, and in the very next, I’m bricking it.

It excites my futurist technophile tendencies. It scares the fleshy, vulnerable parts of my anatomy.

Technorati Tags: artificial intelligence, Futurism, technology

This is a quote from Carl Sagan which comes from a photograph transmitted back from Voyager 1 as it is hurtling out of our solar system and catches it’s last glimpse of earth.

This quote always blows my mind. It’s not just Sagan’s peculiar voice or pace, but also the concept that the sheer scale of human endeavour is wholly limited to a ‘mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam’.

It is a truly provocative notion. While coaching I often confront a client with their own mortality, to challenge their sense of self and purpose, this is a whole new idea. That pale blue dot is so alone, so fragile, and it’s bigger than everything I’ve ever been able to care about.

Your thoughts? Do ideas like this inspire you or scare you?

Below is a video/audio recording of the quote.

Technorati Tags: linkedin, technology

I do wonder about overpopulation when water, the source of life, is in short supply.

I mean not enough water in the Sahara, in Sydney, anywhere, but not enough water in England!?

I do love that this image is hosted by http://jewmanist.com

Technorati Tags: quote

It’s quite bizarre that public speaking is such a terrifying thing. Most of the other fears we suffer are rational because they’re dangerous and should probably be avoided like death, heights, and cats. Speaking to groups is a strange fear because it is something that, when done well, will improve almost every aspect of your life. A great speaker will always be destined for greater successes (personal, romantic and professional) when compared with someone who doesn’t speak to groups at all.

So, stop being scared! If you wait until you’re not, you never will.

Here are some tips to overcome your fear of public speaking.

1. Do it more often:

The more you do something scary, the easier it becomes. When speaking to a group of people, your body will probably be dumping adrenaline into the blood and you’ll feel your face flush, you will hear your heartbeat pounding against your throat as you suck raspy gasps of air, your mouth will go dry and you will struggle to corral your thoughts. It’s natural, there are some pretty good evolutionary reasons why talking to a group of people (or confronting groups of strangers) should be scary. I also believe that evolution imbued us with a fear of public speaking so we can self-select leaders who are able to control their emotions.

But, our bodies are remarkable – and adapt to recurring stressful situations quite quickly. The more frequently you do it, the more comfortable you’ll feel. You’ll get less of an jolt of adrenaline and your body will produce less and less cortisol (the so-called ‘stress hormone). So, rather than avoiding speaking to groups and bricking in when you absolutely have to, seek out opportunities to speak in public (or at least don’t shy from them), and you’ll very quickly become better at it.

There is no shortcut for experience.

That being said, you may be pleased to read on and find there are some shortcuts to confidence and calmness.

2. Adjust your self-talk:

If you have patterns of negative self talk, you’re going to have to change them. I’ll show you why: Get a bottle of water, a cup and a towel. Try pouring the water from the bottle into the cup from two feet above it while thinking to yourself “Do not spill it all over the table. Do not make a mess.” You will make a mess. Clean it up. Now try pouring the water again while thinking “Pour all of the water neatly into the cup” – if you are like most people, there will be a lot less on the table and more in the cup when you’re focusing on what you do want.

I had a client the other day who said “I feel like I’m going to make an idiot of myself every time I talk” – what kind of speech will come from a mind that is busy thinking those thoughts?

Think of proactive, future paced, positive things to say to yourself when you talk. Focus on your content, your audience and your desired outcome. Find ways to say to yourself (and believe): “I’m going to feel comfortable. I’m going to be clear, persuasive and entertaining” – say it out loud to yourself if you have to.

Developing helpful self-talk is often a lifelong challenge, and sometimes coaching can help. Or…

3. Find your placebos:

The placebo effect is the most powerful tool you have at your disposal when public speaking.

Placebos are not ‘fooling yourself’ – they are you using your body’s natural resources. Just as anxiety is a spiralling pattern of negative ideas, you can set and maintain triggers for positive ones that will convince you you’re going to speak well and enjoy it.

I once coached a client who had a fear of speaking in public and meeting new groups. He was an artist who often needed to meet dealers and talk at his exhibitions, so his anxiety with groups was a severe disability in his professional life (as it is for most people). He was also quite a spiritual chap, and depsite the fact that I’m a skeptic, I talked about energy paths that flow around the body, and how holding his left elbow with his right hand would temporarily disrupt the flow of his anxious energy and allow a calming, confident energy to flow in its place.

Despite the fact that what I was saying was utter baloney, his belief was enough to disrupt the old pattern. After letting him squeeze his elbow all the time and experience feeling calm with groups, I came clean and told him I’d made it up. He later told me that the ritual of doing it had become so powerful that despite knowing it was hogwash, he still found squeezing his elbow to be particularly useful. (In NLP this is called ‘anchoring‘)

Invent for yourself a ritual that will allow you to feel comfortable and confident, while thinking these useful thoughts. For some people, it can be their preparation process, but I’d suggest you use something small and immediate that you can still have at your disposal even when you haven’t been given an opportunity to prepare.

As far as rituals go,  the next exercise is a bloody useful one:

4. Breathing:

I’ve written a lot about breathing – and will write a lot more. Breathing well is the most important part of anything to do with presentation. It will make you sound good, and a small breathing ritual will actually make you calmer – so when used as your placebo, both will be infinitely more effective.

Firstly: Do not take big deep breaths. If you do, you’re actually likely to disturb the natural pH balance of your blood and feel more stressed as a result. This is how anxiety or asthma attacks happen: Too much breathing. Try taking a bunch of deep breaths right now, huffing and puffing through your mouth and into your chest. You’ll instantly start to feel a bit lightheaded, and if you were under any kind of stress, you’d start to freak right the hell out. Your brain will actually be starved of oxygen (strangely breathing too much oxygen will have the effect of stopping it getting to the brain).

Try this instead: Hold your belt and put your thumb on your belly. Draw long, slow breaths through the nose only. Breathe into the lower lobes of your lungs, way down into your belly, feeling it expand. Your chest shouldn’t even move. Breathe in for 4 counts and out for 6. Slower and lower. Notice the difference? This way of breathing will calm you, and as you speak from this place, deep in your gut, you will also exude a sense of power and calmness as you talk. Thoughts will come to mind more easily, and you’ll find it easier to be the best version of yourself.

5. Be yourself:

I listen to many people who have a sort of professional ‘presenter mode’ they get into when they’re talking. It’s crap. Don’t do it. People in the audience want to connect with you, and the more personable you are, the more easily their empathic system will lock in on yours. We have neurons in the brain that are called ‘mirror neurons’ that mimic the mental processes of someone we’re in rapport with. Being in a ‘presenter mode’ will be disconnected from them (and yourself) and deny them the opportunity to empathise with you. As they disconnect, your mirror neurons will match their disconnect. Boredom ensues.

Connect with your audience. Speak to each one of them, like you’re speaking to just that one person at a time. It’ll allow you to see them as a room full of individuals (allowing you to calm down and get on with it), and them to see you as a real person. You’ll all relax and start getting along – and that’s when the magic happens. They will begin to actively want you to succeed. They’ll be more supportive of your suggestions, and they will start looking for ways to align their goals with yours.

6. Engage with your audience:

If you know people in the audience, connect with them as you start. Get them to introduce themselves, if necessary. As you draw more people into the action of what’s happening, everyone will become more involved. Use collective terms, talking about what “we’ve” done, rather than just your own achievements or experiences. The act of including them will allow you to relax, and they will enjoy themselves.

For presentations, rather than waiting to the end invite them to ask questions during the talk. It’ll allow you to connect with them – and you can refer back to points made earlier: “As Jack pointed out…” To really do this well, you must be willing to remain flexible, and if necessary, rewrite your script as you speak it. It will make your audience feel like they are participating rather than just sitting and watching. They will also feel invested in the outcome. People who are presented with a solution will often nitpick and find flaws in it, whereas people who feel they’ve constructed an answer will be far more inclined to support it.

7. …And have fun!

Don’t try to do it right, do it well. We enjoy watching people who enjoy public speaking, that’s why stand up comics or passionate TED talkers are such a joy to watch. Find a passion about what you’re saying and expose that, infect other people with your enthusiasm. It will be there – if you look for it.  If you’re passionate, you’ll be entertaining, and if you’re doing that, you’re doing it well.

Technorati Tags: confidence, how to, linkedin, NLP, overcoming fear, persuasion, presenting, provocative style, public speaking, speech

Any frequent reader will be well aware of my obsession with TED.

I am consistently amazed that they can find people who can speak so eloquently and humorously about such nerdy topics. Perhaps they offer training, or maybe they just refuse all the really nerdy ones. In either case, it’s cool. They are making intelligence sexy and complex ideas accessible for dullards like me. Now we can feel smart.

I also love the cranky monkey!! How pissed off is that little guy!?

Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals

Usually information alone will not cause a change in behaviour. Most people need an experience or an emotional payoff to adjust long-term patterns; but there are some ideas that once heard, ferment in the brain. They percolate through the thoughts and you’ll find them popping up again and again.

They become relevant to everything.

I had an experience of this when I first heard of the confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is (as you may know, or be able to guess) that habit we all have of looking for evidence which supports our beliefs. We’ll ignore or discount the relevance of evidence which contradicts our beliefs, and overstate the accuracy of stuff which seems to confirm them. This probably explains why 90% of people think they’re of above average intelligence. Because being smart is a nice thing to think about oneself, we’ll look for the proof. After hearing of the confirmation bias, I would constantly find myself thinking “Am I very perceptive, or is this this just my confirmation bias at work?”‘

Well here’s another of those insidious ideas. This TED talk I saw long ago, and has been bubbling through my mind since then. The idea that Dan Gilbert is voicing here is that being able to choose (anything – career, wife, which brand of chocolate to eat) does not make us happy; but simply through the act of choosing, we are doomed to be unhappy. Hidden within that scary and paradoxical idea (how could we choose to not choose!?) I see a glint of hope for a different way to be.

Thanks to @JustSewTired for the discussion that lead to the post.

According to The Journal of Sexual Medicine, you can tell how often a woman reaches vaginal orgasm by watching how she walks.

Yup. We're all thinking it. Who is that lucky man who's been cropped out of this photo?

Researchers in ‘sexology’ at a Belgian university (I enrolled myself there yesterday) have been able to predict a woman’s history of vaginal orgasms by watching videos of university students walking across a library lawn.

They surmised that “greater pelvic and vertebral rotation and stride length might be characteristic of the gait of women who have experienced vaginal orgasm” to me seems they’ve got the cause of it totally ass-backwards, saying ‘if you have had lots of orgasms, you will start to walk like this’.

I’m be inclined to think it goes the other way around. I would expect that women who walk with “a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality, freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles” and have “greater pelvic and vertebral rotation” are having more orgasms because they’re walking sexy.

Firstly: Sexy walkers exude a sensual vibe. They’re more likely to attract the kind of man who goes to extra effort to make her scream. Women who don’t walk sexy will attract less men in total, and those who they do attract will be less sexual, and both are likely to be less confident once they get to the bedroom. They’re basically saying that women who swing their hips and stride with confidence are more likely to have orgasms than a shy girl who shuffles along with pigeon toes. Duh.

Secondly: We would assume that the greater control a girl has over her pelvic muscles, the greater chance a girl has at steering someone’s man meat into the moan zone. I bet you’d find that girls who can hula-hoop also have more orgasms.

Thirdly: Blood flow and sensitivity – the more you move that area, the more blood will flow through it. The more aware you are of that area, the more sensitive it will seem. If you plod along letting your hips drop into each step rather than swing through them; or if you stomp along with no hip rotation at all, the muscles in the area will become weak and lifeless. That does not seem like a recipe for great sex.

If you sway and stride and stare at the world head on, with your shoulders back and chest out, with a loud laugh and bright eyes – then obviously you’re going to have more fun in the bedroom – you’re going to have more fun everywhere!

So women, WALK SEXY! If you learn how to fake your walk, soon you won’t have to fake your orgasms.

P.S: If anyone knows of any methods for a man, any man, not me necessarily… If you know of any way to make that guy not be terrible in bed – just go ahead and let me know. Him know. Let him know. Tell me and I’ll forward it on. To him. That guy who sucks in bed.

N.B: This research is posted simply because it agrees with what I’d like to believe. If you look at their statistics, that researchers watching women walk could predict their history of vaginal orgasm with 81.25% accuracy, you can be sure that their research was massively flawed. Real results will rarely be that clear-cut.

Links:

• Article
• Research summary

Katy is a freelance writer living in the heart of London navigating her way through the world of dating, and blogging about the strange and plentiful pitfalls along the way! If you’re looking for minced words and sugar coating you might want to turn away now.

Join her on her quest to understand men, dating, relationships and all the nonsense in between at http://all-sweetness-and-life.blogspot.com/

A couple of nights ago I went for a drink with some girlfriends. We are a fun bunch there’s no denying it. Intelligent, attractive and up for a laugh, I don’t mind saying it because it’s true. We are a catch. Of the 4 of us 2 were single and 2 had recently been dumped. Dumped I ask you! What a nasty little word, discarded like a pair of ripped 15 deniers after a boozy night in Manchester town centre, how very dare they.

Fortunately for us these days it takes a little more than some prick getting cold feet to put us off our Sauvignon Blanc and after a 45 minute bitching session we spent the rest of the night sexually abusing poor bewildered Italian tourists in skinny jeans en route to have their pictures taken outside Amy Winehouse’s house. Nothing like a good dose of harassment to lift one’s spirits.

However the situation as it was did get me thinking about the techniques men use when it comes to calling time on relationships. Friend A. received the following after a 7-month relationship -

“Hiya, you are a beautiful, witty, fantastic person, you make me laugh constantly and of course the sex is amazing ; ) I have been totally blessed to have you in my life. Who’d have thought when we met that we would have the memories that we do now! But, I’m sorry and there’s no easy way to say it but I’m not the man for you. Somewhere out there is some lucky man who’s going to spend his life with you. Your are an amazing girl don’t ever forget it.”

WTF??

There is of course the polar opposite (take friend B) when the spineless prick in question makes no contact whatsoever, leaving one open mouthed and completely clueless as to the whys are wherefores (though from my experience there is almost always a 3rd party involved in situations such as this, break up with my girlfriend of 3 years, fuck around with someone else for a month, get back with girlfriend and totally wipe from memory and sim card time spent with other girl ) this is chilling enough but a text of this level of bullshit or this degree of utter patronizing claptrap?! It renders one speechless no?

So let’s get this straight she is beautiful, witty, fantastic, hilarious amazing and great shag….but not quite enough to warrant a relationship with the dumper. Man alive what’s this guy looking for? And to boot we have smiley faces, Happy Memories and lucky men thrown in. Fuck off Mr Nice, you ain’t foolin’ no-one.

Note to all men, dumping a girl by turning your phone off and not answering calls will make your girlfriend get pissed and slag you off to her friends. Dumping your girlfriend by telling her how amazing she is will send her into a irreversible state of insanity, consumed by a fury which will only be calmed by the total destruction of your life, and ideally your slow and painful death.

Worst case scenario however is that she believes your flowery tripe. And let this in turn be a lesson for all women. A man doesn’t finish with you because you are wonderful, because you are fantastic in bed or your ‘too good for him’ (who the hell invented that pile of shit?) they finish with you because you’re too needy, you’ve put on a stone since they met you or they have started shagging the barmaid in the Crown and Goose.

It’s not you it’s them? Utter nonsense of course it’s you, he didn’t sign up for nights watching all star family fortunes and trips to the in-laws every other weekend, he wanted fun, great sex in the kitchen and wild nights drinking Sambuca with a hot chick wearing crotchless knickers – you were that girl once were you not.

Finally be warned, the ultimate P45, the mother of all bullshit lines – I’m just not ready for a relationship. Under no circumstances believe this codswallop. Men are ALWAYS ready for a relationship, contrary to popular believe men are in actual fact far more needy than women and from my experience will happily bounce from one girl to another in a matter of weeks. How many times have you seen a couple break up after a 4-year relationship only for him to have another poor fool up the duff within 6 months. The truth is it’s not that they are not ready for a relationship. They are just not ready for a relationship with you.

Talking of which on no accounts should you waste your precious time pitying him for his inability to get close to anyone. I guarantee while you are blaming his relationship with his mother for his fear of intimacy he is shagging the girl from HR in the office loos at lunchtime or proposing to Janet from the running club 2 weeks after breaking up with you.

In conclusion, when a man dumps you, regardless of which pitiful ridiculous way he does it, it is not because you are too good for him it is because he just doesn’t really fancy you much anymore. My advice? – By all means feel free to send him 86 texts in 1 night, scream abuse outside his window and post a picture of his tiny penis on twitter. Being dignified won’t make him wish he’d never ended it it will make him breathe a sigh of relief that he got away so easily, so let your hair down girls, go crazy and enjoy the ride! Trust me it’s far more fun than family fortunes.