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Tag Archives: Pakistan
Effective use of humor in your presentations. A live example :)
On 14 January 2012, when a female hostess started the second event of Mera Passion Pakistan at Royal Rodale Club, Karachi, the audience, which comprised mainly our youth, thought it was just another presentation. But they were mistaken.
When Mr. Irfan Mustafa , the man behind Mera Passion Pakistan
, took the stage, immediately he went in for a kill and jolts up the jam packed auditorium into laughter. Throughout the 2 to 3 hour session, the audience fully enjoyed the show.
How come he hypnotized the youth so successfully?
Was it his power point presentation? No, it can’t be. Because it had only one slide, the title slide.
Here is the secret. Irfan, skillfully managed to establish a rapport with us by effectively using humor throughout the presentation. Though the event started late, but his humor eased the tension and helped in reducing the barrier between him and his audience right in the beginning.
Irfan kept interacting with us by leaving the stage and asking direct questions. During the show he maintained the dialogue backed by utilizing humor, sharing jokes and telling useful information about positive sides of Pakistan.
Irfan is not a comedian but his sense of humor kept the audience on toes. The audience not only shared their view points but enjoyed his filling up the empty glass with water just to prove that the “glass is half full and not half empty”. His humor was understandable and relevant to the audience and to the topic.
In the end, one of his team member showed videos and introduced 3 
heroes of our country who have achieved personal glory single handedly in the remote and far flung areas of Pakistan. You can read and see the videos by clicking here.
I personally have seen very few of such performances where the speaker has effectively utilized humor while delivering a presentation.
Moral: It is not the technical side (power point slides, hi-tech animations, serious information, handouts, videos) of the presentation that makes it successful, but it’s effectively using your sense of humor in liaison that will make it a hit.
Asma Inayat (@DonDonu) has written an excellent summary of the event, click here to read it.
What so funny about diabetes?
[For this blog post, i am thankful to Karyn Buxman for allowing me to share some images and information from her website]
Since my birth I have been hearing “Laughter is the best medicine”. As a kid I never believed it. Whenever I got ill, instead of convincing me to laugh, my parents made me drink all sort of crazy syrups.
Now that I have my own kids, I do the same to the kids, but at the same time encourage them to develop a strong sense of humor. Of course by laughing or smiling your fever won’t go away but it will make your suffering bearable.
Studies have shown positive results of smile / laughter on your health. By laughing, we manage to reduce a stress harmone in our bodies called “Cortisol”, while the level of “Endorphins” increases which creates a chemical rush that fights negative feeling and stress. It also eases muscle tension which is good for rheumatism and so on. I think those days are not far away when your doctor will be prescribing a heavy dose of daily laughter and smile along with the pills for most of the diseases.
Take for example diabetes. Karyn Buxman, 
full time professional speaker, writer, consultant and the publisher of the renowned Journal of Nursing Jocularity, has written the first in a series of books for patients with chronic illness: What’s So Funny About Diabetes? A Creative Approach to Coping With Your Disease
There is nothing funny about this serious disease. According to a recent report the number of diabetic patients worldwide has skyrocketed to 230 million. In Pakistan there are 7.1 million people suffering from diabetes whereas this figure could go up to 11.5 Million by 2025. In US, currently one in 10 adults has diabetes, but those numbers could go as high as 1 in 3 by the year 2050.
But when it comes to handling diabetes, there is after all something funny about it. No wonder based on its therapeutic value, laughter is indeed the best medicine even for diabetes. Humor and laughter have been shown scientifically to have positive benefits for diabetic patients. Laughter has been shown to lower blood glucose in diabetics, as well as decrease hormones that can be harmful.
Karyn’s book shows how you can incorporate humor in your daily life to better manage your diabetes. The books provide useful information not only for diabetic patients but also for the ones who are taking care of them.To read more about the book, please visit Karyn’s own page
To learn more about diabetes in Pakistan you can also join National Association of Diabetes Educators of Pakistan.
To learn more about Karyn Barynx click here
Missing in Action – Humor
Our sense of humor gives us the strength to survive difficult times. Humor not only brightens our day during normal course of events but also act as a survival agent by keeping thing in proper perspective even at a time of loss or difficult times.
Couple of months ago, one of my relative lost his wife in a tragic snatching at gun point activity. When we visited his house second time after few days of the event, his spirits were high when he said that, “look it at this way, she died but only after living her life to the fullest by enjoying each day while she was alive”.
William Arthur Ward, once said,” A well developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life”.
Similarly Max Eastman believes, “Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully”.
These days, our country, Pakistan is going through the toughest times since Independence. I agree these are the toughest times in the history of our country. Most of our complaints are 100% legitimate. But at the same time our response is 0% correct. Most of my country men are found complaining all across the social media, in bazaars, offices, factories, at homes, schools etc. Complaints, Pakistan bashing, ill words, bad language are quite common, be it loadshedding, security issue, political scenario or economic hardships.
To survive, we need to keep things in their proper perspective. And one of the appropriate mechanism to face these hardships is our sense of humor. Instead of shouting or getting short tempered at the onslaught of trouble time, we need to see the lighter side of it. By seeing the lighter side, quite often we start to smile or laugh. This simple act of smile or laugh changes our mood from gloom to bloom.