Illuminate: Ignite Change Through Speeches, Stories, Ceremonies and Symbols

are the ones who change the world.

A study by the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology found that ceremonies also enhance communication by “eliciting arousal, directing attention, enhancing memory, and improving associations.” Basically, ceremonies help people understand and process new messages and ways of thinking, making the moment more likely to be remembered.

anything can become symbolic. Some are intentionally created,

Visual What you see

Some of your fellow travelers are adventurous, too, and ready to dive right in without trepidation. But others will hesitate just long enough to let doubt creep in. If you don’t encourage them, their apprehension will develop into varying degrees of fear—from apathy to panic—that will leave them immobilized and unwilling to act.

Persuasive speeches establish a gap between what is and what could be, and then resolve it by introducing a new bliss

anthropologist Arnold van Gennep first introduced the term “rites of passage,” he wrote, “All societies use rites to demarcate transitions” in life. He saw them as rites of regeneration, in which the old self must ritually die before a new self can emerge.

For many, the largest stumbling block to progress is letting go of the world they know. To help people move forward, show them how their attachment to the current state holds them back, and lay out how the proposed future can and will be better for them.

Jim Collins’s Good to Great was released at just the right time. His Hedgehog Concept states that if you can be best at, be passionate about, and make money at one thing in the world, do just that one thing.