[Quotation about public speaking] The success of your presentation depends on more than your knowledge
"Don't compromise yourself.
You are all you've got.
- Janis Joplin
When I was between eleven and twelve years old I decided one bright sunny day that it would be fun to go fishing. I didn't have any fishing gear and I had never done much fishing other than to play on the stream banks while my father fished. I also didn't want to "hurt" the fish I just wanted to catch them and then let them go.
I looked around the house for what I could use and I found a washed out old mayonnaise jar. You know the old style jars with the big open "mouth". I walked to a nearby pond and put the jar down in the soft dust-like mud of the water's edge with the open "mouth" of the jar facing toward the center. I then stirred the waters a little and made them cloudy so that the fish would have trouble seeing me. Then I waited hovering over the jar. Gradually, cautiously a small fish would swim up to the clear jar to investigate the disturbance and when it swam into the jar I dropped my hand into the water and over the jar mouth. I caught a fish, then another.
I just let them all go and returned my jar to the cupboard. Then I decided to use wire "box trap" to go fishing and rigged a string to the door. This way I could drop the trap in the water and not have to "hover over" it like I did with the jar. I sat very relaxed on the bank of the pond and sure enough I caught a fair sized bluegill. I took it home in a water filled plastic waste basket to show my dad and afterward returned it to the pond.
When I told people about how I had caught the fish they just paused and laughed nervously. You see unlike these people, I didn't know that you couldn't catch fish in a jar. If I would have asked them they would have scoffed and said, "You can't catch fish in a jar or a box trap!" No one in my life had ever dreamed of telling me that so my belief system did not contain these words or the impact that they would have had on my "day of fishing". Only a free minded kid could come up with an idea of using a jar or a box trap to catch fish! No one had told me that this was impossible so I just used what I was familiar with and what I had available and I succeeded.
Maybe today finds you facing a situation that seems impossible. You have a desire but no visible way of bringing it into being. You may need to find that "kid" inside you who thinks "outside the box" and the normal ways of achieving things and let him or her catch that fish in a jar! See your situation from a different angle. Start looking at the resources that you already have and the things that you are already familiar with. A fresh perspective and a childlike sense of wonder may surprise you and there's no telling what you will come up with!
Jami Sell
Catching Fish In A Jar is an excerpt from author Jami Sell's book Thought And Belief: How To Unlock Your Potential And Fulfill Your Destiny! © 2010 All Rights Reserved. It is available at amazon.com, the Book Depository, and in fine bookstores.
I am writing this after a scrumptious dinner in a town in the north of our state called Townsville. I am looking out over moon-sparkled water and the dark mass of almost-tropical islands close off-shore ...
... a holiday-inspired article which nevertheless applies to all of us who speak and to those of us, also, who work on branding our businesses.
And I was inspired, today as we wandered down the main street of the town full of historical buildings and more modern businesses.
There it was. This sandwich board.
It caught my eye and then my imagination.
I had to go back and look again.
And what made it do that?
There are three reasons and they are all techniques we can use in our speaking and our branding to have people caught, intrigued and going back for another look (or listen).
1. She used Alliteration
All those Ps!
It's a beautiful rhetorical and literary device, alliteration, and it creates an effect called foregrounding
It creates a little hitch in the flow of attention, a little distraction. People might not even be aware that you used it, but they will be drawn to the words and their meaning. with a slight sense of intrigue.
If we count Pre-Push as one word, there is also anther device called the Rule of Three operating here. Create a list of three or a group of three and we have the same effect - that slight sense of interruption and something special.
2. She used Humour
(I'm using the word "she" because I met the owner of the establishment as I was taking a photo. She had a beautiful smile and very graciously and humbly accepted my exclamations about her marketing and my explanation that I wanted to use her work to share with you.)
I have never seen "Pre-push" used before.
Have you?
And even if you have, you have to admit it has flair.
It is a classic humour device - using the unexpected.
It made me smile and if we can make our audiences smile, we have them a little more open to feeling that we are likeable, that they can trust and believe our message.
3. She used an image
It's a subtle reinforcement, this image, of just what is meant by "Pre-push", and has a strong sense of the feminine, aimed, no doubt, at the target client, or perhaps her significant others.
We use images, too, to support our points when we speak. We don't need them to be distracting from our message, nor do we want them to be offensive.
(... and yes I have blocked out one of the words in the promotion in case you were offended or distracted by it!!)
So if you are in Townsville. Queensland, Australia and in need of some pampering, pre-push, I recommend you check out Bellanova.
And if you are in front of an audience, either presenting or online, I recommend you check out the lessons from her sandwich board, They are simple, subtle and powerful!!
No people were ever honored for what they received. Honor has been the reward for what they gave.
Calvin Coolidge
In the Old Reality, things were seen as opposites - black or white, hot or cold, good or bad, this way or that way. In the expanded view of New Reality consciousness, life is seen in a unified way. Opposite sides of the coin are viewed, not as polar opposites, but rather as just being different aspects of the one coin.
In the New Reality view of the world, the opposite extremes of black and white become, instead, endless shades of gray. Hot and cold become variable degrees of warmth. Good and bad become different shades of human nature; free of the judgment, resentment and fear that comes with Old Reality, polarized thinking.
In the Old Reality, destiny and free will were seen as mutually exclusive. The reasoning was that, if destiny exists, then it controls everything and, therefore, free will does not exist. On the other hand, you can prove that free will does exist by making a choice. So, as the thinking goes, if free will does exist, then there can be no destiny.
But, wait. Perhaps that choice of "free will" was really a pre-destined one. Perhaps the person was destined to make that choice all along, so the experience of choice was just an illusion. At this point, people usually give up on the whole question because it has turned into one of those brain teasers, like asking which came first - the chicken or the egg.
Brain teasers keep your mind in an endless loop until you try stepping back from the situation and seeing it in a wider perspective. The new, wider perspective allows for the inclusion of non-materialistic factors. In deciding whether the chicken or the egg came first, for example, you just have to step back and see that the Creator designed the chicken to be self-perpetuating.
When you step back and see destiny and free will from a wider perspective, you realize that nothing has to be absolute. If every event in your life were pre-ordained, there would be no such thing as free will or self-determination. As we do have free will, destiny cannot be fixed.
Destiny is therefore variable, not fixed. Destiny and free will both exist as interwoven facets of your life. Like threads in a tapestry, they interact with each other and blend to form the outcomes that are the events in your life.
Your destiny is created by plans that you made at a soul level of consciousness. Before you were born, you made your main plan for this life. Then, the minute you were born, the rules of the game demanded that you also get a case of amnesia about the whole arrangement. Such is the game of life in the physical realm.
However, at night when you go to sleep, you can go to the deepest levels of human consciousness, review how the original plan is unfolding and make changes to your plan if desired. When you return to your physical body and awake in the morning, amnesia strikes again. Within seconds of your conscious mind returning into your physical brain, you forget both the surface dreams and the deep experiences of the night.
Amnesia may be a part of the game we are playing in this life, but inner guidance is always available to anyone who pays attention to it. Your intuition is your link to your soul, or inner being, which is also linked to the rest of the universe and all levels of Creation.
You are never left alone to fumble in the darkness of a purely physical life. Your inner being is always there with you, expressing itself through the quiet whisperings of intuitive information. Thanks to this inner compass of knowing, you can always sense which choice feels right. You can always tell when your life is running on plan, and you can tell equally well if you've become temporarily distracted from your plan. You always have the means to be right on course, or get back on course, and explore the fascinating themes that make up your life plan.
The most productive use of free will is to explore your true potential within the themes of your life, thus gaining the greatest possible experience from your life plan.
Destiny is an influence that comes from your inner plan. There is nothing absolute about your destiny. It's a pressure which constantly seeks the best route to unfold into manifestation.
Free will provides the means to manifest that destiny in a way that provides the learning that you came here to acquire in this life.
Destiny is variable. It adapts to the circumstances of your life every second of the day. As destiny unfolds, you feel it within as a sense of being a part of the flow of life, of manifesting your potential in the way that you planned for this day and that you planned for this life.
Destiny is the plan. Free will is the action. Experience is the result.
That's what being human is all about.
Owen Waters is editor and cofounder of Infinite Being LLC. He promotes a philosophy of spiritual empowerment through inner connection to the source of your ultimate potential. For more Spiritual Words of Empowerment subscribe to his free weekly newsletter.
