Dave Caperton

We’ve all heard that “perception is reality.” That means that your world is what you perceive it to be. But what you perceive owes as much to the choices you make as it does to your senses. Your commitment to joy, your sense of humor, your focus, even your physiology, shapes your perceptions. Consciously making positive choices leads to healthy perceptions about your life, work and relationships. And when you change your perceptions, you change your world.

Laughter doesn’t just feel good, it’s good for you. Besides providing a release for stress, a sense of humor has also been associated with improved immune function, pain relief, lowered blood pressure and is a proven predictor of longevity. This program presents the healing benefits of humor both for self-care and to minister to the needs of others. Healing Humor is perfect for healthcare audiences or any group interested in healthy living through laughter.

Stress is one of the most talked about yet least understood threats to our success and health. Uncontrolled stress is a sure road to burnout and unhappiness. Unchecked stress depresses immune function, leads to illness and absenteeism and erodes energy and effectiveness. Combing humor and solid research to explore the stress response, this program provides real solutions for coping successfully and thriving in times of change and challenge.

It may seem counterintuitive that emotion, not rational processes, are the key to learning, but that is what brain research shows. In short, negative emotions stimulate limbic response (e.g. fight or flight) while positive emotion enhances cortical alertness. Learn ways to make compassionate humor a useful tool in the learning experience and join your students in enjoying increased learning and lowered stress.

Successfully adapting to change is a must for personal and organizational success. Understanding how your brain processes change both logically and emotionally reveals strategies so you can cope and thrive in the face of change.

Recently published research by Gallup indicates that 70% of workers are unhappy with their jobs and 18% are “actively disengaged” meaning that they deliberately undermine the work of others. A Maritz poll in 2010 revealed that workplace leaders inspire trust with only 7% of workers and all this mass unhappiness and dysfunction is costing up to $450 billion dollars a year in lost productivity. This program addresses the reality and impact of unhappiness at work and lays the groundwork for simple steps that can have a profoundly positive impact and transform the culture in just 30 days.

From Oliver Twist to Ebenezer Scrooge, Charles Dickens gave us some of the most memorable characters in literature. One minor character in A Christmas Carol represents a standard for joyful and people-centered leadership: Scrooge’s old boss, Mr Fezziwig. Fezziwig is jolly, kind, beloved by his employees and a successful business person. In short, he is in every way the leader that Scrooge is not. Still, old Scrooge displays nothing but admiration for his old boss. Scrooge himself observes that: “He had the power to render us happy or unhappy; to ; make our service light or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up, what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”

In The Fezziwig Principle, you’ll learn the 5 major principles demonstrated by this character in Dickens’ classic tale are just as powerful today, and and remain keys to creating the kind of work environment where authentic success simply becomes the by-product of doing the right things for the right reasons. This program will give your leadership team valuable tools for building loyalty as the foundation for success!

A true committment to one’s faith should result in greater inner peace and outward joy, but somehow, it’s often not so. When people of faith are chronically angry, fearful and dour, it can be a poor reflection on their beliefs. This program uses laughter to reveal  spiritual insights on the nature of joy and fear and the one critical element that will result in more of the former and less of of the latter.

Everyone has occasionally been stuck in a traffic jam and when that happens, nobody is happy. In that gridlock, time gets wasted, plans get altered, and everyone around you is part of the problem. The worst part is that there is nothing you can do. Or is there? A recent story in the Wall Street Journal described how one person can help solve a traffic backup. But to do so it requires both the right actions and attitudes. Just as stalled freeway traffic is bigger than any one driver, the challenges you might be facing in and out of work can seem to dwarf your ability to have an impact. Yet did you know that recent research shows that one person’s influence initiated in a single act of positivity can have an influence on people they haven’t and may never meet?

• When you learn and commit to the choices and actions that amplify your influence and improve individual and organizational health, you’ll realize your individual potential and the power of one to make all the difference.
• Apply the 1P + 1Q = C (1 person plus 1 question = Change) formula for changing their work culture
• ïList the two attitudes necessary to solve the problems that affect everyone 
• Describe how to fulfill three employee needs with small actions that cost nothing
• Explain how observing the “magic ratio” of positive-to-negative interactions with others can allow one to have the honest and sometimes difficult conversations without destroying trust