{"id":114,"date":"2008-02-07T18:17:04","date_gmt":"2008-02-07T17:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/2008\/02\/07\/a-buddist-meditation-observation\/"},"modified":"2008-02-07T18:17:04","modified_gmt":"2008-02-07T17:17:04","slug":"a-buddist-meditation-observation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/a-buddist-meditation-observation\/","title":{"rendered":"A Buddist meditation observation…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zenI’ve been reading up and studying a little on the art\/science\/craft of meditation, for reasons of my own. (Here<\/a>, for example.) One of the things that struck me – as mentioned in that very blog! – is how often people who take up the practice seem to comment and\/or complain to their instructor that they are more confused\/chaotic and stressed out after they’ve been working at things for a while than they were before they started!<\/p>\n

That, naturally, puts them off.<\/p>\n

It certainly did me, for a bit, which was why I was researching it in the first place! :)<\/p>\n

The instructors’ responses are often that this is not so – it just seems <\/strong>to be so. What is actually happening, they say, is that the sensitivity to the clutter in the mind has improved. The mind of the newly practicing meditator might have been getting better, might not have been changing much in either direction (or might genuinely have been getting worse!) but that the most likely cause of the ‘problem’ is that the person involved is now conciously aware<\/em> of how chaotic their mind is.<\/p>\n

Stick with it, their instructor says, and the improvements will come.<\/p>\n

And what’s this got to do with making presentations<\/strong>? This: I encourage people to practice their presentations before they deliver them – and many times I’m told that doing that just makes them worse. After a few (10? 5? ) minutes of practice they give up in disgust, intent up on ‘winging it’ because that’s the best way of doing it for them.<\/p>\n

Well, it’s possible, I suppose. But is more likely – much <\/strong>more likely in my experience – that the process of practicing has simply made them aware of the things that could be improved. They see things they wouldn’t have noticed were wrong with their presentation otherwise because they are conciously examining it.<\/p>\n

Get’s worse with practice? Nope, it is just that you’re noticing what needs to be changed – whereas you didn’t notice these things before-hand! In short, they’re seeing things in a way more like the way the audience sees things.<\/p>\n

And, as in meditation, that’s the first step to enlightenment… or in this case, giving a better presentation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been reading up and studying a little on the art\/science\/craft of meditation, for reasons of my own. (Here, for example.) One of the things that struck me – as mentioned in that very blog! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-key-posts","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}