Talk at Kiwanis Club

I had so much fun giving a talk at the Kiwanis Club recently.

What a fun group of people. My talk was right after their lunch, and they were laughing and joking all throughout their lunch. And then they had the formal part of their meeting, including a new inductee. And finally, they did “Happy Dollars”!! Have you heard of this?! A Kiwanis member walks up to a hat at the front of the room and puts in a Happy Dollar for something that’s going right in life, “Here is a Happy Dollar for the new inductee,” “Here is a Happy Dollar because this great piece of news happened to me this week,” etc. That was a fun activity to listen to.

I’m putting up these notes because I’ve started doing quite a few talks, and I’d like to have a record of what happened at each of these talks. So, here’s this one:

* We did the Magic Trick.
* Then I asked people to pair up in twos, and to describe a recent experience they had when they gave or received a compliment.
* Then I asked people what some of the components were of a “good compliment.” I got answers including these: sincerely, enthusiastic, positive. These words then turned out to come up again and again as I was describing ACR and positive emotions. I could also refer to “what Lisa said” and “as Doug pointed out earlier”.
* Then we talked about the potential benefit of compliments, and more generally of positive emotions.
* I gave the examples of anagrams, water and 90 seconds, and (did I talk about?) seeing on the periphery (could have mentioned liver surgeons).
* Then the fun stuff: psychological capital and the (made them guess) 3:1 through 12:1 ratio.
* Finally, I described and we semi-practiced in a large group the technique of ACR.
* We ended with “Speed Appreciation” in pairs with the elbows and wrists touching.

Cool. That was an entire session.