–By Jan McInnis, Comedian and Keynote Speaker
Actually, I’ve never been caught in a wood chipper and I don’t know anyone who has been. But, as a keynote speaker and comedian who has attended thousands of conventions due to her job, I’ve been privileged to hear many “caught in a wood chipper”-type stories from motivational speakers. You know people who have been forced to jump off a burning building or land a plane on a palm tree, and I think we love listening to these stories because we’re fascinated by people who live through tough times and come out ahead. We gain strength from those who’ve overcome the impossible, and aren’t bitter or resentful or disenfranchised by the human race.
This fascination of being your best despite the odds, the great keynotes we hear at these conferences, is how I recently found myself at a Tony Robbins convention in Dallas as a paying customer. That’s right: attending a conference in my free time! I first listened to his tapes 20+ years ago while driving my Honda Civic 60,000 miles a year doing comedy clubs. A friend copied them for me onto cassette tapes (ooooh, so high-tech!) and Tony kept me sane as I drove straight through from Minneapolis to Virginia one day/night/day (it’s 18 hours!). I loved the tapes, and put it on my bucket list to see him in person, as payback for the tapes I had copied. That item had been buried in my bucket for about 20 years. . . until recently. My sister and niece were attending his “Unleash the Power Within” experience, and they encouraged me to knock it off my list. So I went!
Now I’m not much of a “rah rah” (as I call it), motivational type person, but Tony is very high energy and very “rah rah”—in fact, he gets 8000 people to “rah rah” with him. You get more hugs in one hour than you do at a weekend of Burning Man (look it up). There was also screaming and yelling, but in a good
way. In fact the only time we didn’t scream was while walking on the two million degree hot coals. Yeah, that’s part of the. . . er, ah. . .“attraction” to the event. I gathered that the point in doing this was not to give you a skill for your next BBQ (“Hey look everyone! See what I can do!”), but rather to show you the power of your mind – how you can get yourself in a state of mind to do anything. It’s quite amazing and it works.
Aside from dancing around on hot coals, I learned that all the “rah rah”- ing had an actual purpose. One of his many points (and I’m paraphrasing here) is that information without emotion is not retained as well. So if you learn something and then create emotion (“rah rah”-ing), you’ll remember it. This is good news as my humor keynotes have some great tips and lots of laughs…so people (hopefully) remember the tips!
He also gave us nutrition advice. The downside was that we were at a convention center with limited access to tofu and fresh avocados. Five hours into listening about my crappy diet, I snuck out to get us some lunch. . . after paying the snack bar cashier, she told me she was out of bags. I said “I can’t go back into a nutrition seminar openly carrying three chicken Caesar wraps and a large bag of sea salt potato chips!” – she laughed and found me a bag! I shouldn’t have felt so bad though. . . later during the break, the line for the caramel corn was huge, which shows that it’s easier to understand something intellectually than to actually put it into practice.
And of course he told us about and showed us a lot of other useful tools that did not include tofu, but that will help us live life in a “beautiful state,” as he says. But what I really learned, aside from never wanting to hug another stranger again (for a few days anyway), is the value of attending a conference to connect with people face-to-face, take a break from the hectic pace, and pick up effective tools that will help me enjoy life more fully. And at the risk of being self-serving, because I keynote at so many conferences, I do encourage you to make time to attend professional events that feed your soul, because that’s just as important as catching up on your emails. And who knows, maybe you’ll pick up a tip or two that will help you if you ever find yourself caught in a wood chipper.
About the Author . . . Jan McInnis is keynote speaker, comedian and comedy writer. She has shared her customized humor keynotes with thousands of associations and corporations, and she is the author of 2 books: “Convention Comedian” and “Finding the Funny Fast.” She was also featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Huffington Post. Jan can be reached at www.TheWorkLady.com
Client Quote: “Having Jan McInnis as our opening keynote speaker was a perfect way to start our annual conference. She helped set the tone with her humor and her helpful ideas on using humor to deal with stressful situations. Throughout the remaining days of the meeting, members could be heard referencing her comments. We would highly recommend her to any group.”
