Great stories happen to those who can tell them.
Ira Glass.
Are you confusing information with wisdom?
Something magical happens when one couples the mesmerising words of American writer and poet Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) to the skills of British animator Jonathan Hogson and illustrator Jonny Hannah.
Charles Bukowski
This breathtakingly beautiful animation of Bukowski’s poem “The man with the beautiful eyes” is an ode to words and images’ power to touch our imagination, souls and hearts.
One day…
The narrator recounts his memory of a strange house where he and his friends spent the summer playing in the bamboo-filled yard. One day a rough unshaven man appeared, his eyes ‘blazing’ with brightness…
The animation was first released in 2000, and if you haven’t seen it yet it will be a real discovery.
Watch another inspiring animation.
Seth Godin really needs no introduction. And his thoughts need no comment.
Thank you for making this world an inspiring place, Seth.
Read more from Seth Godin.
ON THE ROAD
The metaphor of the journey has often been used by writers, philosophers and leaders alike to inspire audiences and motivate collective action. Recent results published by the American Psychological Association demonstrate that visualising goals as destinations on physical paths does indeed significantly increase the impact of the message and the chances of reaching the goals.
INCREASE ENGAGEMENT
The authors studied the effect of different visual metaphors on students’ engagement and academic success. Students that were asked to visualise their academic career as a road or a path, using a goal-as-journey metaphor, reported stronger motivation and displayed increased effort, compared to students exposed to different visuals. This motivating effect persisted in time and was reflected in better final exam performance. Even more interesting, visualising an active journey, like cycling, was more effective than a passive one, like a travelling by train. This seems to suggest that visualising active participation is a key factor in self motivation and success.
LEARNINGS, ALSO FOR CORPORATIONS
These results make a strong empirical case that using the visual metaphor of a journey has a significant impact on motivation. Colleges should continue to include journey-metaphoric framings in their orientation materials. Sports teams, health communicators, and corporations could similarly employ journey-framed communications to encourage goal-directed action.
Read more on metaphors.
Photo credit Wendell@2013
Best communication book of 2013
“The skill sets it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, a successful marketer, or a relevant celebrity is a different skill set than you needed ten years ago, even though that was the skill set that mattered for decades.”
Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World. By Gary Vaynerchuk.
Are you are serious about building your (personal) brand?
Are you wondering how to make your voice heard in today’s noisy, social landscape?
Do you want to understand visual communication on different social channels?
Read. This. Book.
That’s it.
Read more on visual communication.
PUT DOWN YOUR GLASS
A psychologist walked around a room while teaching stress management to an audience. As she raised a glass of water, everyone expected they’d be asked the “half empty or half full” question. Instead, with a smile on her face, she inquired: “How heavy is this glass of water?” Answers called out ranged from 8 oz. to 20 oz.
She replied, “The absolute weight doesn’t matter. It depends on how long I hold it. If I hold it for a minute, it’s not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I’ll have an ache in my arm. If I hold it for a day, my arm will feel numb and paralyzed. In each case, the weight of the glass doesn’t change, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes.” She continued, “The stresses and worries in life are like that glass of water. Think about them for a while and nothing happens. Think about them a bit longer and they begin to hurt. And if you think about them all day long, you will feel paralyzed – incapable of doing anything.”
Read more about inspiration.
Photo credit Tony Hall@2009.
Original post: facebook.com/sungazing1/posts/180276155460555
Are you making an impact or foie gras?
Foie gras is a food product made of the liver of a duck hat has been specially fattened by force feeding. A tube is put into the duck’s neck and up to 2 kilogram of food is forced down in a very short time. Does the duck enjoy it? I doubt it.
How much information are you going to put in your next presentation? Sure, we gave you a 30 minute slot. That’s a lot of slides you can squeeze in, say 40, or even 50; you are an experienced speaker, sure you can manage that? And hey, you really cannot skip the background info, it is key for us to understand how difficult your project was, right?
Problem is, it is not about you or your project, and we certainly are not here to be force fed by you, slide after slide. We gave you an opportunity to connect with us, to inspire us, to touch us with your ideas. How about you only talk for 20 minutes and spend the rest of the time involving us in a dialogue? How about you give us something truly remarkable, something memorable, something we’ll talk about at home tonight at the dinner table?
You don’t think you have anything remarkable to tell, I hear you say. Well, why are you wasting our time? Come back when you do have a remarkable story for us. And by the way, foie gras production has been banned in many nations.
Read more on corporate presentations.
