I found a useful article at The Write Touch on October 18, 2025 titled Persuasive Speechwriting: Six Solid Tips that was originally by Adam Frankel, with comments added by Marsha Zinberg. Those tips are to:
1] Write like you talk.
2] Tell a story.
3] Structure matters.
4] Be concise.
5] Be authentic.
6] Don’t just speak – say something.
The hexagram was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
There is a wonderful 2018 book by the designer Ingrid Fetell Lee titled Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness. A preview is at Google Books. And there is an excerpt from the introduction. The ten chapters, a JOYFUL TOOLKIT and their starting pages are titled and numbered as follows:
Energy 13
Abundance 42
Freedom 73
Harmony 103
Play 134
Surprise 164
Transcendence 189
Magic 217
Celebration 245
Renewal 271
JOYFUL TOOLKIT 299
Chapter 6, Surprise begins:
“I sat near the head of a boardroom table in a towering office building in Sydney, my heart fluttering inside my chest. The table seemed to stretch a mile from end to end. All along its edges sat the directors of business units, division heads, and people whose titles start with the letter C. Three weeks earlier, full of bravery and blind optimism of a twenty-four-year-old who had just moved to the opposite side of the world by herself, I had talked my way into a trial run as a brand consultant, a job I had never dine before. I had worked nonstop since then on a brand analysis for the client’s new business, expecting that my boss would be the one presenting it. But a few days before the meeting, my boss told me he believed that the people who did the work should speak for it and that, despite my lack of experience, he wanted me to give the presentation. So there I was, pale faced and shaky, awaiting the calamity that I was certain would follow as soon as I opened my mouth.
As the last few attended straggled in, I tried closing my eyes and taking deep breaths, but as I did so, memories of my previous misadventures in public speaking rose to the surface, and I began to feel even more panicked. I snapped my eyes open and looked down at my feet. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a burst of color. A pair of rainbow-striped socks peeked out from under a charcoal-gray pant leg. They seemed so incongruous I wanted to laugh out loud. I looked up at the wearer. It was the imposing, no-nonsense head of the digital business. His eyes followed my gaze to the socks. Then he looked back up, smiled and winked. A moment later I heard my boss bring the meeting to order and call on me to begin the presentation.
Joy has a way of showing up when we least expect it. As we move through the stream of daily life, tiny moments can capture our attention and turn our thoughts in a joyful direction. These moments can be especially powerful in times of stress or sadness. My encounter with the rainbow socks didn’t magically transform me into a brilliant presenter, but it did something else that was helpful in that moment: it interrupted my anxious inner monologue, turning my attention from the highlights reel of my past failures to the incredible opportunity I had before me to share my work with an eager audience. It pulled me back into the room and widened my perspective. Suddenly, I found myself wondering what else might not be as it seemed. Maybe hiding inside all those power suits were other warm or funny people. Maybe my boss wouldn’t have given me such a big client if he didn’t think I was capable of handling it. Maybe I could do this after all. I can’t say I wasn’t nervous as I stood in front of that room. In fact, I clutched a water glass for the entire two-hour presentation so tightly my boss later said he could see my white knuckles. But despite my jitters, there were moments when I had to admit to myself that I was actually having fun. In the end I did well enough to turn my trial run into a full-time job and gained more opportunities to practice speaking my mind in public.”
The JOYFUL TOOLKIT has a JOYFINDING WORKSHEET on page 302 that has the following questions to think about:
PLACES
Where do I feel most joyful?
What is joyful about these places?
What aesthetics define these places?
PEOPLE
Who are the most joyful people I know?
What is joyful about these people?
What aesthetics do these people embody?
THINGS
What are the most joyful objects in my house?
What is joyful about these things?
What aesthetics do these things exhibit?
ACTIVITIES
What activities bring me the most joy?
What is joyful about these activities?
What aesthetics are present in these activities?
And The JOYFUL TOOLKIT has a parallel Killjoys Worksheet on page 304 which has the following questions to think about (but none for PEOPLE):
PLACES
Where do I feel least joyful?
What about these places kills my joy?
THINGS
What are the least joyful objects in my house?
What about these things kills my joy?
ACTIVITIES
What activities bring me the least joy?
What about these activities kills my joy?
There is a 2 page pdf Joyspotter’s Guide at The Aesthetics of Joy.
Ingrid has a 14-minute TED talk on June 11, 2018 titled Where Joy Hides and How to Find It | Ingrid Fetell Lee | TED. A second 19-minute TED interview by Chris Duffy on September 3, 2025 is titled How to Be More Joyful (W/ Ingrid Fetell Lee) | How to Be a Better Human | TED.
A cropped version of Dirck Hals Joyful Gathering painting came from Wikimedia Commons.
There is a useful Facebook post by Kathryn Esther Clement on July 15, 2020 titled 15 fears of public speaking you must conquer before you think of getting on any stage.
Those 15 (listed in alphabetical order) are the more detailed fears of:
asking or answering questions
being judged
criticism
failure
forgetting your lines
looking nervous
making mistakes
not being good enough
rejection
silence
a small audience
speaking to influential people
starting
success
using a microphone
For each fear she has a sentence with discussion, like for being judged to:
“Stop worrying about what people think. Focus on the value you’re bringing.”
Must is too strong a word in the title though. And, back on December 12, 2009 I blogged about how Almost nobody wants to see your Top 15 list: please use either a Top 10 or a Top 20 list.
There is an article by Jason Teteak at Rule The Room Public Speaking on March 9, 2021 titled Top 10 Fears of Public Speaking, which are in alphabetical order the fears of:
competition
embarrassment
failure
futility
inadequacy
leadership
people
self
selling
success
Those 15 snooker balls came from OpenClipArt. I added the numbers.
There is an article by Steven Miller at ProRhetoric on July 21, 2026 titled From Government Speechwriter to School Bus Driver. He spent 72 weeks searching for another job, and then changed his definition for success:
“So, I am doing something different. Very different. I will soon be a school bus driver for my local school district.
I am happy about and relieved by this because I know that God has led and directed me to this place. Both the place of the bus driver role, but, more importantly, to a place of contentment about it.
Going from a full-time executive speechwriter position to a part-time school bus driver is tough financially; no doubt about that. The good thing is that this role give me the time to pursue and do the work that I am now confident is my true calling in life. To help churches and ministries with their organization and leadership communication questions and challenges. Those organizations cannot afford to have full-time communications staff. My current role allows me to help those leaders and organizations with time and cost that is affordable for them and for me.”
A school bus image came from Wikimedia Commons.
The Stats tab on Google Blogger says this blog now has 5,026,125 page views!
In the past year there were about 2,200,000 page views, distributed as is shown above. For the past 12 months the daily maximum was 32,775 on June 21, 2026.
And over the past month there were 292,000 page views. The daily results were a maximum of 32,926 on July 24th – over sixteen times the minimum of 1986 on July 8th.
The image of an hp laptop was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.
At the ProRhetoric web site on May 11, 2026 I saw an article titled Your Life, as Six Strings. It has this quotation from country music singer-songwriter Eric Church:
"The difference between a life that sounds like music and a life that sounds like noise ... is whether you're honest enough to hear which string has drifted out of tune, and humble enough to make the adjustment."
There is an 18-minute YouTube video from May 14, 2026 titled Eric Church – 2026 Commencement Speech at UNC Chapel Hill (Full Version).
First he demonstrates how awful an out-of-tune guitar sounds. Then he discusses all six strings on it: Low E, A, D, G, B, and High E. String one, the low E is your foundation. That low E is your faith. String two, the A, is family. String three, the D, is your partner or best friend. String four, the G, is ambition and resilience. String 5, the B, is community. String six, the high E is the one most easily bent by outside pressure, but ignore that.
There is a five-and-a-half-minute lyric YouTube video of his recent song Darkest Hour sung live at the Pinnacle in Nashville on May 24, 2025.
The guitar image came from Wikimedia Commons.
Stephan Pastis’s Pearls Before Swine comic strip has a gray donkey called the Great Wise Ass who sits atop a hill and dispenses sage advice. His July 24, 2026 comic has this dialogue:
Pig: Oh, Great Wise Ass, what is the key
to success?
Great Wise Ass: Effort.
Pig: Nooooooooo…
Pig: If you had said ‘luck’ I could have kept
sleeping in.
On July 16, 2025 I had blogged about How to become smart according to a Pearls Before Swine comic.
