Structure of Humor, & Humorous 1-liner Jokes - NLP Article
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Most jokes of the well-known "One-Liner" form come from taking a well-known, oft-heard cliche, and considering what ambiguities can be found within the sounds of the words, or what other meanings can be made from the words themselves.
And then once ambiguities are found, or other meanings are found, you then build up the joke around the punchline, in reverse, setting up the ambiguity. So I challenge you to do the same. It doesn't have to be "great," it only matters that you play with the exercise. Ambiguities breed mental flexibility and acuity, which helps in everything else we do.
For example, let's take:
"killing two birds with one stone"
"One stone" could also be heard as "one's tone."
And since I'm a bear for tonality... and irresistible voices... what if you make the ambiguity about bad tonality killing birds.
Maybe you caught another one in that last phrase, too... :)
OK, so let's see... if a guy with bad tonality speaks to birds in a pet shop and they die, that covers the "alternative" meaning of the phrase. How do I set it up so that the primary meaning is also covered?
(1st cut) How about:
A man whose voice annoyed all his friends was told to buy a pet bird that could imitate him, and give him some real-time vocal feedback. But he also was told that birds are sensitive to sound, so he went into a pet shop to find out if his voice could be improved by talking to birds, and to determine how sensitive birds might be to his grating voice. The pet store owner directed the man over to the bird cages, and upon listening to the man, two parrots went berserk, then promptly keeled over & died. "Wow," thought the owner... "that's really killing two birds with one's tone."
Now it's your turn. Come up with a better one for "killing two birds with one stone" (I'm sure they're out there)... or for another cliche!
Oh, also, watch out for those bad-tonality killing-birds.
In Roswell, GA, a few years back, I visited a pet store to pick up some dog food, for my neighbor. And there's a bird that they display in a cage outside this door of the store. It's parked when you enter, and it's trained to say "goodbye" and "come back soon" and "have a nice day" when you walk out this door. Makes for a great laugh. And it had pretty good tonality, too, for a bird.
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- Bob AnzlovarIT Consultant, Denver, COAttended Course : “Irresistible Voice”seminar
I've trained with Jonathan twice now. If you want whizbang magick but don't mind not necessarily knowing how it happens, there are lots of folks who provide that. If you want nuts and bolts and understanding of exactly how they go together, Jonathan is good for that. I recommend him for anyone who wants to know what really happened at that other seminar! Thanks for the weekend!
2009 - Jorge A. ColonAttorney, Miami, FLAttended Course : NLP Practitioner Training
Jonathan Altfeld is truly dedicated to each of his students' growth and effectiveness. His integrity, patience, and kindness are a good model for trainers, managers, and parents.
1998 - Jason KnierumEntrepreneur, Sydney, AustraliaAttended Course : Speaking Ingeniously
"I very much enjoyed your seminar. Having more comfort when I talk with people makes the rapport deeper. Even though my demo is only 90 seconds, I hold longer eye contact with more potential customers, building a sense of connection. Result? Sales of my juicer product increased 30%." -
- Peter FreethLondon, UKAttended Course : Belief Craft MP3 Set
Less than 5 hours after the end of Jonathan's KE course in London I'm visualising extensive and complex belief systems hidden within language - and keeping up a 'full time' conversation at the same time. Why is this useful? In the past I may have gotten to a strategy and thought 'I'm done' whereas now I hear and see the whole complex structure. Key decision points and` behaviours are emerging which are many times more complete, powerful and elegant than anything I would have arrived at previously through standard 'strategy elicitation'. Before today, I knew people who I thought were complex, now I know that they're no more complex than anyone else, they just hide their beliefs better. This means that I know that I can now choose to work with everybody rather than just the 'easy people'. I am now creating subtle and elegant interventions without thinking about it and I know how much that is going to benefit me more and more over time. And I had a great time too!
2003 - Alex DeeInvestor Relations Consultant, London, UKAttended Course : Belief Craft MP3 Set
"Belief Craft opens your eyes to what you already know, but didn't know how you know, as well as teaching excellent skills/tools in tracking beliefs and [SoM] persuasion techniques."
2005 - Brian TracySpeaker, Author, World-Renowned Business Expert, Brian Tracy International,Bought Audio : Finding Your Irresistible Voice
"This is a wonderful program that will give you a powerful, authoritative voice. It can change your life."
http://briantracy.com/2000 - Jim RapsonNLP Trainer, Real Estate Investor, Entrepreneur, Houston, TXAttended Course : Speaking Ingeniously
Having taken Charisma Enhancement from Bandler/Lavalle in 2002 in Mexico, I just finished Jonathan's 5-day Speaking Ingeniously course in Orlando FL. (With due respect to Richard Bandler and John LaValle:) Here's why a person should take Speaking Ingeniously instead of Charisma Enhancement. Whether you have extensive public speaking experience but want to refine your skills or are a newbie who wants to stand out from the pack from the start, this course is a must for you. Here are the reasons why I think Holographic Communication is the superior choice: (1) Extensive practice at state chaining. Few skilled established NLP trainers will disagree that state-chaining is an integral part of any well designed training. Unfortunately few trainers will provide enough TIME, PREPARATION and PRACTICE in their training to really master the skillset. Several skills comprise the art of state chaining, including anchoring, state elicitation, use of tonality, etc. Jonathan teaches IT ALL. (2) Material and drills designed to "read" your audience while presenting. Some speakers are more focused on delivering their content, and less so on their audience's response. You need to be focused on BOTH. Few trainers will address this with any real level of detail and most will not set up drills to practice it. Jonathan does BOTH. (3) Preparation and practice with language patterns designed to generate the time distortion effect for learning. This wasn't taught at my Charisma Enhancement. (4) Immediate feedback on demos. FEW TRAINERS will offer you a comprehensive verbal review of your performance DAILY both good and bad. Jonathan does both. (this is not the same as some "green" well intentioned trainer's assistant giving you their "hepfull comments"). (5)Getting your audiences’s ATTENTION. This is a skill in itself- Jonathan coaches and drills students on this everyday thoroughout the training using what he calls developing a HEADLINE. Finally, this is not a complete list of all skills taught by Jonathan and there were other skills that Jonathan presented not directly related to group presentations, in response to our requests during training. He went out of his way to deliver on those.
2007 - Silke ScheidereiterGermanyAttended Course : NLP Skills-Builders (course)
Great, great, great! Thank you so much for helping me to find out more about what I've already been doing well, unconsciously! This was exactly what I needed to take my NLP skills "out there" and to the next level... and beyond! And thank you for opening up a whole new world full of miracles & adventure. Now I'm ready to explore! My main goal in this seminar was to find a way to integrate NLP more into my day-to-day life. In the past I sometimes got frustrated because I felt that I learned something very valuable and never got around to using it - at least not in a way I could verify to myself. It was as if a connection was missing between what I knew theoretically and what I actually DID. That's changed! Not only am I now using my NLP™ skills... I can't even turn it off anymore!! I've become an active player in this game - and I love it! Just the other day I got a glimpse of what really effective communication feels like. I had an appointment with a guy who definetely was in a less-than-positive state and who had no intention of giving me what I wanted -- and I got my way!! I was in the right state, alert, got my language spot on (...did I tell you that I love sleight of mouth?), had the tonality right, paced and then led led led led him to feeling great about my demands... WOW... talking about flow!!! Thank you, Jonathan, for sharing your knowledge! And thank you for blowing my limiting beliefs apart once more...!
1999 - Quinton ZondervanCEO, Excelimmune, Inc., Woburn, MAHired Coaching :
I hired Jonathan for weekly 1-on-1 executive coaching, as well as invited him to spend two days with my team of scientists and managers, for a customized presentation followed up with individual employee coaching sessions.
Jonathan was tremendously helpful in coaching me through some very difficult situations. We focussed primarily on "emotional state management" which he quickly diagnosed was where I needed the most help. Maintaining the proper emotional equilibrium while going through stressful situations to a large extend comes natural to me. Nonetheless, there was a lot of room for improvement, and Jonathan definitely helped me reach a higher level of performance. Working with Jonathan was an absolute delight because he would quickly assess the situation I would describe to him and give me clear, specific pointers on how to adjust my perceptions and options to create a more positive emotional state regarding the situation. From there we would seamlessly transition to specific training exercises to prepare for future situations. I use many of these techniques now without thinking about them; they've become part of my repertoire and toolset.
Not only was Jonathan able to help me improve my performance, he worked with my entire team to help them improve their internal communication. By appropriately confronting them with the need to take responsibility for the outcome of their individual attempts at communication, he was able to help many of them move towards a greater awareness of their own specific communication needs and approaches and to make adjustments to improve the outcome. One team member told me what an amazing resource he was. I was very pleased with the changes in the team's approach to communicating with each other. While communication is still of course not yet perfect among them, it has improved considerably, and this allowed the team to achieve an amazing result. We set goals for the end of the year that we thought were aggressive. In fact we ended up beating the date by 2 months. No doubt we got lucky of course in terms of not encountering major technical obstacles we could not easily overcome. Nonetheless I credit a significant part of our success to Jonathan's work in enabling better team communication. Just the knowledge that in fact there were specific, attainable ways to make communication better encouraged the team and gave them the confidence to work through tense or difficult situations more smoothly than before.
Jonathan is indeed a tremendous resource for those who want to improve their communications (in the broadest sense of that word). Ultimately all human achievement is based on our proficiency to interact with others in a way that makes it more likely we will achieve a mutually beneficial, mutually desired outcome. Jonathan is able to work with any team or individual motivated enough to seek help in doing better, and helping them improve. What I appreciate the most about Jonathan is that he does not try to create an unnatural dependence. On the contrary, he happily shares his techniques and uses exercises and training to help you internalize them. Like any good coach, he helps you get better and acquire new skills that you can use on your own to achieve amazing results.
http://www.excelimmune.com/2011 - Chris FialaMarketing Consultant, Clearwater, FLAttended Course : Speaking Ingeniously
"I very much enjoyed your seminar. Having more comfort when I talk with people makes the rapport deeper. Even though my demo is only 90 seconds, I hold longer eye contact with more potential customers, building a sense of connection. Result? Sales of my juicer product increased 30%." -