How to face your fear monster

On June 18th at Forbes.com there was an excellent brief article by psychotherapist Amy Morin titled How to Face Your Fears One Step at a Time and Conquer Your Anxiety Forever. She discussed using exposure therapy. Her article also appeared at Monster.com.

Is cleaning a boring topic? Not at Don Aslett’s Museum of Clean!

If you ever are anywhere near Pocatello, Idaho, make sure to stop in Old Town and pay the $6 admission to see the Museum of Clean. Back in 1989 its founder Don Aslett wrote a public speaking book called Is There a Speech Inside You? He also has co-authored a whole shelf of books about cleaning, including, of course, The Cleaning Encyclopedia. Watch the brief AP and CBS videos about his museum and his mission spreading the gospel of clean. Then watch Don play Happy Birthday with a toilet plunger. 








I visited it on June 24, 2015 and Don gave me and three other visitors a tour. When you walk in the door you’ll see a pair of knights made from galvanized steel buckets, tubs, and furnace ducts. He has a wide variety of items - thousands of them. There are curiosities like a trash compactor from the Space Shuttle Discovery, a quilt made from vacuum cleaner bags, and a bunch of plungers for hand washing clothes in buckets called Mountain Maytags.

 
Down in the basement there are exhibits that include Sweeping, Dusting, and Mopping. There’s a totem pole made of mop buckets, and a Bad Mop Bouquet.

On the ground floor the museum has an amazing collection of vacuum cleaners, including the World’s First (powered) Vacuum, a 1902 horse-drawn monstrosity as large as a modern carpet cleaning van. There are whimsical sculptures, and vacuums marked Try Me. There are exhibits on Hand Laundering, a bunch of washing machines, and Ironing. At the upper right of the ironing display there even is a pair of pants stretchers for putting in a crease by just air drying. I dimly recall those from before I was ten years old, when permanent press fabrics were not common.

Five most common fears for younger Americans ages 16 to 34 are other drivers, public speaking, death, snakes, and spiders

On June 23rd the Ford Motor Company issued a press release mis-titled Younger Americans Fear Other Drivers More Than Death, Public Speaking, and Spiders, New Study Finds. It was about an online survey done between April 29th and May 4th by Penn Schoen Berland on a sample of 1000 people in the U.S. from Generation Y (ages 23 to 34) and Generation Z (ages 16 to 22).  

Results are shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it for a larger, clearer view). The five most common fears were other motorists driving dangerously (88%), public speaking (75%), death (74%), snakes (69%) and spiders (69%). For this sample size the margin of error is plus or minus 3.1%, so the difference between 75% and 74% is not significant.

The survey also covered driving situations. Those results are shown in a second bar chart .The five most common ones were snowy or icy roads (79%), maneuvering into a tight parking spot (75%), backing out onto a busy street (74%), monitoring blind spots (70%), and not knowing where I’m going (69%).

Ford’s press release displayed fuzzy thinking. Their title suggested the survey was about what people feared more, while the data actually described what more people feared.

Two opening paragraphs said:

“Public speaking just lost the top spot as the most feared task for younger Americans. Distracted, dangerous drivers are now the first concern for Millennial and Generation Z consumers, new research finds.

For decades, public speaking was America’s most anxiety-inducing activity. Now, dangerous drivers are more frightening than speaking in public, death, spiders and snakes – according to independent research company Penn Schoen Berland.”

Public speaking didn’t just lose the top spot. Back on March 19, 2001 Gallup released the results of a poll in an article titled Snakes Top List of Americans’ Fears. That article  had results from an earlier 1998 poll that also had snakes first. I discussed that article and results from other polls in an October 2012 blog post for Halloween titled Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not our greatest fear.

How do the Ford results compare with other recent surveys of young people? Back in 2014 I blogged about how a YouGov survey of U.S. adults found they most commonly were very afraid of snakes, heights, public speaking, spiders, and being closed in a small space. That survey also listed results for A Little Afraid, which can be added to those for Very Afraid to produce totals that ranked in the same order as those for Very Afraid. The YouGov survey listed results for different age groups, including one from 18 to 29. Those results are shown above in a bar chart. The top five fears were spiders (65%), snakes (61%), public speaking (58%), heights (50%), and being closed in a small space (47%).

Lots of journalists thoughtlessly parroted the title from the Ford press release. MotorWeek said Young Drivers Fear Other Drivers More Than Death, and MagazineCar.com said Young drivers fear other road users more than death and spiders. They and others who communicate about the auto industry are hereby awarded honorary membership in Journalists Asleep at the Wheel (JAW).

Back in February 2014 I blogged about Busting a myth- that 75% of people in the world fear public speaking. The 75% for public speaking in this new Ford survey likely will get spread around as if it applied to the whole world, but it instead apples to just about half of the U.S., as shown above.

Getting one of your favorite TV episodes wrong

This week I was reading Paul R. Brown’s 2015 book, Entrepreneurship for the Rest of Us and on page 123 I saw the following story highlighted in a gray box:

“D’Oh!

We all like confirmation that something we believe is correct. I got mine, for this chapter, from my favorite antihero, Homer Simpson of The Simpsons.

After realizing that he has lived half his life and doesn’t have much to show or it, Homer, in one of my favorite episodes, is inspired by Thomas Alva Edison and sets out to become an inventor.

Not surprisingly, given that this is Homer, most of his inventions - a horn that sounds every three seconds when everything is perfectly okay, a musket that women have to aim at their face to apply makeup - are profoundly lame. But in the midst of creating these dumb ideas, Homer inadvertently comes up with a good one.

While he was pondering his next invention, Homer would lean back in his chair... and promptly fall over. This happens repeatedly. To solve the problem he creates a chair with two hinged legs on the back, making it impossible to tip over backward. Voilà! A new invention is born.

If Homer Simpson can turn a problem into an innovative solution, so can you.”

But, that’s not how that episode, The Wizard of Evergreen Terrace, really ends. Instead:

“His hopes are destroyed when he notices his poster of Edison, which shows Edison sitting in the same type of chair, indicating that he has already invented Homer's untippable chair. Bart points out that the chair is not featured on a list of Edison's inventions, and that maybe no one knows he invented it.”

So, Homer goes to sneak into the Edison Museum to smash Edison’s chair with the electric hammer that he really invented. He changes his mind, but accidentally leaves the hammer behind. On the TV news the Simpsons see that both the chair and the electric hammer have just been discovered at the Edison Museum, and are expected to generate even more money for Edison's already wealthy heirs.

That ending illustrates what is known as The Matthew Effect (Matthew 25:29) which tells us that life isn’t fair. The the King James version says:

“For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath.”

Before you put a story in a book or a speech, it is important to double check and see that you got it right. 

Visualizing emotional equations with PowerPoint or flipcharts

One of the ways adults think about and deal with their emotions is by naming what they are feeling. As Yoda said in The Empire Strikes Back,

“Named must your fear be before vanish it you can.”

Back in February 2012 I read a book review post on Bob Sutton’s blog titled Chip Conley’s Emotional Equations: A Leadership Self-help Book You Will Love (Even If You Hate Self Help Books). Rather curiously the U.S. version of Chip’s Emotional Equations book is subtitled Simple truths for creating happiness + success while the UK version is subtitled Simple formulas to help your life work better. Chip has explained his ideas in a two-minute book trailer and an 18-minute talk at Stanford.

Last month I finally borrowed a copy of Emotional Equations and began to skim through it. Chip listed a bunch of equations that describe relationships between emotions. But I was surprised to find how much less visual his thinking style was than mine. Chip just wrote out those equations as words. I’m a fan of Jessica Hagy’s Indexed cartoons, so I was expecting to see some schematic x-y charts or Venn diagrams. So, I opened up PowerPoint and tried making some simple charts for Chip’s equations that involve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. (You also could draw them as flip charts).


ADDITION

The easiest sort of equation to visualize is one like:

Curiosity =  Wonder + Awe

This positive statement can be shown by adding a couple of line segments and three brackets:

There also are negative statements like:

Regret = Disappointment + Responsibility

and

Remorse = Regret + Guilt

which can be put together to produce:

SUBTRACTION

A negative statement like:

Despair = Suffering - Meaning

also can be shown using line segments and brackets:

Chip said that once he realized that suffering was the constant and meaning was the variable, he could put his attention on the meaning, grow that, and reduce the despair.


MULTIPLICATION

The positive equation:

Authenticity = Self-Awareness x Courage

can be expressed by showing Authenticity as a rectangular area:

  














DIVISION

A positive equation like:

Happiness = (Wanting what you have)/(Having what you want) 

can be expressed by showing a quotient of two areas:

SQUARE ROOT

I’m not sure how to express this one, or even if it makes good sense:

I think these little PowerPoint charts help describe his equations. What do you think?

Slip-ups, bloopers, and outtakes

When there is a slip-up in a presentation being recorded, you get a blooper or outtake that can be removed by editing. The blooper also can be used to remind that we aren’t really perfect. On June 1st Diane DiResta posted a YouTube video and then blogged about some of her bloopers. She also has another very brief video of her recovering from one.     

Sometimes a slip-up produces a useful innovation. Venerable Los Angeles restaurant Philippe the Original claims that back in 1918 the french dip sandwich resulted from a counterman accidentally dropping the roll top (or roast beef sandwich) into the gravy trough. The customer said he was in a hurry, tried it, and liked it. 

On April 1st I blogged about Phil Plait’s first ten videos for Crash Course Astronomy, and embedded his video of outtakes. There are lots of other humorous videos with Crash Course Outtakes. One of my favorites is the 2012 one from World History. It is Not Suitable for Work (NSFW), since at 3:10 John refers to “a long-ass time.”



Six others are:  

Anatomy & Physiology #1

Biology & Ecology

Chemistry #1

Government and Politics #1

Literature

Psychology #1

The sign was derived from a Caution slippery sign at Wikimedia Commons and a banana peel at Openclipart.

Snakes are the most common fear for Canadians, followed by heights and public speaking

On June 8, 2015 the Canadian Cancer Society issued a press release about an online survey they had done by Angus Reid to go with their Fearless Challenge fund raising campaign. It was titled Snakes and ladders top list of Canadians‘ fears, just don’t ask them to speak publicly about it. They polled 1500 adults.

As shown above in a bar chart, the five most common fears were snakes (40%), heights (34%), public speaking (33%), spiders (31%), and natural disasters (30%). (Click on the chart for a larger, clearer view). There was not a link to the detailed results. But, the Toronto Sun had more results for women and men in an article they mis-titled Snakes are Canadians’ greatest fear: Survey.

As shown above in a second bar chart, the four most common fears for women were snakes (46%), a tie between natural disasters (40%) and spiders (40%), mice/rats (38%), and a tie between heights (37%) and public speaking (37%).

As shown above in a third bar chart, the five most common fears for men were snakes (33%), heights (31%), public speaking (28%), spiders (21%), and a tie between natural disasters (20%) and tight spaces (20%).

All the fears for women were much more common than those for men. Snakes were feared by 46% of women and just 33% of men, and spiders by 40% of women and just 21% of men. Note that public speaking was not the most common fear overall (ranked 3rd), for women (ranked 4th), or for men (ranked 3rd).

An image of a garter snake came from Wikimedia Commons.