Ted Talk Analysis- Grant Guenther

Ted Talk Analysis
https://www.ted.com/talks/tony_robbins_asks_why_we_do_what_we_do?language=en

.Image of Tony Robbins next to the Ted logo.

          As I near my Ted Talk, I am starting to look into  well- known talks to see  methods that are effective. Relating to “Best Friends”, I have analyzed a talk given in June of 2006 at the annual Ted Conference by Tony Robbins titled “Why we do what we do.” In his nearly twenty-two-minute speech he describes the six basic human needs, and how they relate to the reasons an individual acts the way they do.

Tony walking around stage energetically
with a smile. Notice he has his hands
in his pocket and is wearing jeans. This
shows an action shot of his great speaking skills.

          Tony Robbins truly did release his mastering speaking skills throughout the speech. As I analyzed his clothes, I noticed Tony was dressed casually in jeans and his hands often in his pockets (showed in image on right), showing the audience that he is a normal human. Throughout the talk he engages the audience by allowing them to answer questions and he makes eye contact throughout the whole audience during his talk, causing exceptional conversational skills. As Tony walks around the room he talks at a lightning fast pace using his booming voice, making the audience think and pay attention. Lastly, he grabs the audience’s attention through stories, humor, and exceptional insight. Tony truly has mastered his speaking skills in this talk.

          Coming into the speech, the audience knew everything Tony said but did not really know they knew it because his topic was on a subject that most people do not typically think about. Coming into the speech, he audience expected that he was going to be a motivational speaker since that is Tony's profession; however, Tony arrives and immediately states that he is not a motivational speaker, but rather the why guy: why we do what we do. What he taught the audience was the six basic human needs including certainty, variety, needing to feel significant, connection and love, growth, and contribution beyond oneself.

Tony's dinner give-away project where he gives away millions of
dinners to those who cannot afford them otherwise. 

 Most Ted Talks contain a jaw-dropping moment in the speech somewhere, but the jaw-dropping moment is uncertain in Tony's speech.  Two stories Tony told could possibly be considered jaw dropping. One story Tony Robbins tells is about how as a young kid he wanted to feed families during Thanksgiving time, so he would go to the store and purchase meals for families in need. At first, he started with a meal a year and gradually increased to millions of families being fed each year now. Another story relates to 9/11 and how a couple broke up recently before 9/11 and while one of the people was far away from New York, they happened to give a nice phone call to apologize. Little did this person know that their loved one would die that day in 9/11 with that message being their last memory. These stories show how humans always have to strive to get better and how something in us just has to try to help others. Because these stories effect emotions, they can be considered jaw-dropping. 

Tony giving Al Gore a high-five. At this point the
audience was lauging hysterically.

          His humor is what really gets the audience going. He opens up by saying the shortest speech he has given was 50 hours, and that 18 minutes would be hard. Then he goes on to asking the audience what hinders them and Al Gore, former vice president, says “the supreme court”. Tony hysterically goes into the audience to give AL a high-five. Throughout the whole speech he often criticizes people using bad language, making it funny. He is an extremely funny guy and uses his humor appropriately throughout his speech.
           Throughout the whole talk, there are only a few things I would change about Tony's talk. One thing I would change would be a better jaw-dropping moment because I feel that is an important part of the speech, but his jaw-dropping moment was not clear or jaw-dropping. Another thing I would do is use more visual aids. Tony used a couple powerpoint slides but no other visual aids. Lastly, his speech could be condensed to under eighteen minutes by removing some parts in the middle of his talk.
           Overall, the speech was very effective. He stayed in his lane the whole time and his organization was well-thought-out.  “Best Friends”  draws relations to Tony's talk because the patients at this daycare are the most down-to-earth people I have ever met. Knowing they have a disease  of dimentia, they still live each day to the fullest by giving back wonderful times to the volunteers. They exhibit growth, love and connection, and contribution to my life through their smiles and stories. This speech by Tony Robbins tells me why these people are so happy all the time; it is because it is in basic human need to act the way they do. Tony's speech was amazing and I would strongly recommend it as I have watched it close to ten times now.

Grant Guenther- Video Reflection 2

Grant Guenther- Video Reflection Two

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khnaByMk7UA -video of my past experiences
       
          I have been to the “Best Friends” daycare center three times since my last post. I have met many people that I am excited I got to meet as they all contribute to my wonderful experiences. Each patient has their own stories and ranges of dementia, making all visits equally exciting but unique also. Since the first volunteering visit, I have really learned what my role as a volunteer is as well as how to talk to the patients better. Each week I go, I love my organization more and more, but with more experience comes harder challenges at “Best Friends.”                  

Matt and I go way back in time as friends.
We have always been great friends and
both share an interest of volunteering

          My second visit, three Fridays, I decided to  volunteer at 1 or 2 instead of 3 because it is more fun earlier in the day because you are not there as the patients are dismissing. During this visit, I brought a friend from high school named Matt because he was visiting me for the weekend. Our main games for the time we were there were Jeopardy and Trivia. The main things from this visit  that I focused on were Matt’s reactions as a new volunteer and the patients’ reactions on a volunteer that was volunteering for his last time ever at “Best Friends.” Matt participated in the games and was having a great time. He took away a lot from the experiences. One of his grandparents has dementia, so it really gave him an inside look on what having dementia is like. He learned how their thought-process worked as well as how to talk to adults with dementia better so he could better relate to his grandma. Matt thanked me for the experience once we left volunteering. The next main thing I noticed was that a man who had volunteered for the last few years on a weekly basis announced his leaving of “Best Friends” to accept a full-time job in a nursing home. The patients all started tearing up as this was one of their friends leaving their life. It was a sad day as the man gave all of his wonderful new friends a hug as he left. Yet another male had left “Best Friends."

The piano that me and Paula sang to.

                  The next Friday was a day in which we played Jeopardy and sang again. I kicked butt in jeopardy, but that isn’t very important here. As we sang I made a new friend. I danced with a wonderful lady and sang next to her. She was a very funny old lady who was in great shape and she was born in Germany, coming back over to the USA as an adult. She came up to me before singing started and said “you’re the cutest boy I have ever seen” and then gave me a kiss on the cheek as she sat down next to me. This experience was weird and uncomfortable for me, but I stayed smiling as I knew that something like that could make one of these people's days. The whole time singing she referred to me as her boyfriend and often times told me I was a great singer after every song, showing me she forgot what she said often. It was a funny day as I made a new girlfriend for the day.

A picture of what a brain looks like with
a severe case of dementia

                  This past Friday I went again. This was an experience that I will remember forever as it was extra challenging. I was assigned to a patient named Julie. The hardest patient to deal with by far as she often times screamed “I want to go home”, “Where is my momma”, and “I want ice cream.” It was sad, scary, and distracting as she would randomly break down crying. The lady that assigned me to Julie wished me good luck as I had to spend two hours with Julie. Julie immediately smiled as I said hi to her. She said she was happy to see me today and we continued discussing her past vacations and favorite animals. We sat secluded from everyone most of the time because that is what kept her calm. For the majority of the time, I kept her calm and kept her from crying all but three times. It was a hard task, but I really got along with Julie and got to experience first hand what late stages of dementia do to an individual.

                  These past three visits have been all totally different experiences. I am really learning a lot and will remember these instances for the rest of my life. I cannot wait to continue my service. I only have one more required visit, but will continue for several more visits because I love this volunteering so much. "Best Friends" gives me a new view on life that I never would have received without volunteering with these lovely people.

Men Need To Volunteer More -written reflection one

Grant Guenther

          As it has been three weeks since my last post on this blog, the viewers need an update I think! "Best Friends" is cooperating nicely with my team and I. The problem has been that owner of the organization has been on sick leave for close to six weeks now, so setting up visits has been difficult, but the owner is back now! We started our weekly visits this Friday, October 2nd, where we finally met the owner of the organization. He was nice and passionate for his organization as he encouraged us to meet as many patients as possible. 

This is where we sung songs all gathered around the
piano. The middle section is where eeryone was dancing.

          During the time my group and I were at the organization it was singing time and time to talk with patients individually. The singing was a great time! It is absolutely astonishing how elderly people can have trouble remembering all kinds of things, but once they are given a song they can rattle it off with no trouble; it turns out that the volunteers are the ones that need the song books rather than the patients. While singing, some of the people got up to start dancing while holding hands including me. The energy in the room was remarkable.

          Meeting some patients individually was my favorite part of the visit. I talked to Dan and Paul the most. Paul was a 93-year-old veteran who participated in World War Two at a very young age. He was comfortable sharing about his experiences in the war, but most of his thoughts were how terrible and scary the war was. Paul was a trucker his whole life, starting at age 14. He lived a life of traveling around the country, causing him to become detached from his family. He still says he doesn’t know where his parents are even though he is 93 so it would be a miracle if they were still alive. His children take turns having Paul stay with them, making a life of travel for Paul. He remarked that he loved “Best Friends” because it gave him something to do and new people to meet. Overall, he was a very healthy looking 93-year-old, and his dementia must short-term because he remembered his past vividly, yet repeated stories often.

This is the area that I talked toDan. Notice
how there are plenty of chairs and games in the back.

           Dan was an interesting man also. He did not seem very old, and was in tremendous shape. He had great hearing, was very vocal, and had a great sense of humor. He made an eye-opening comment of “if you take life serious all the time, then you are living wrong.” That quote explains his constant joke-making. Growing up, he was a hard-working man whose goal was to support his family and he did just that. His first wife died many years ago, and he is now remarried. He comes to “best friends because it gives him something to do while his wife is till at work. He made the comment of “I love meeting the people who are patients here, but I love meeting the young volunteers and the male ones because I can relate to them more.” This comment caused me to really think. Talking to these two men was eye-opening and fun, but gave me a great essay topic for school too!

           For this class, one of our main assignments is to write an argumentative essay on a subject related to our experiences at our chosen organization. Dan and Paul gave me an idea for my argument. Both of them were interesting men who shared their stories openly, but had no males to share their stories with. You could be saying that they can share their stories with females, but that is not the same to them. They want people they can relate with to tell these stories however, there are few males volunteering at the organization. At “Best friends” there are 32 patients with 12 men and 20 females which is 37.5% males, yet only 18 out of 88 volunteers are males which is 20%. This shows that there are not enough male volunteers to accompany the male patients.

          I thought about why this situation is occurring as I threw around reasons like men have more high maintenance jobs and a need to support their family. As I looked nation-wide, the stats are similar but a little less skewed. Nationwide last year, 22% of males volunteered and 28.3% of females which shows that males still do not volunteer as much as females. I feel very passionately that men need to volunteer as much as women, so will focus my argumentative essay on the subject. See you in a couple of weeks, when my essay will be complete and I will fill everyone in on our next few visits.

The Amazing Organization- Initial Reflection

 Grant Guenther-Initial Reflection

This is me (and my brother) Delivering our

non-perishable food and hygiene items to the

charity of my choice in my first service learning project.

      There are the people who only care about themselves and the people that want to help others in the community. I am one of those people who gets joy out of helping others because it is fun, rewarding, and teaches me more then any class could ever teach. The life-lessons I have learned through service are lessons that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I have learned things like how to communicate better, why helping others is important, that others are not as lucky as I am to be so healthy and privileged in this world, and too many other things to go on naming. I was ecstatic when I figured out that in my college class we will be doing service learning as we pair up with organizations. Although this is not my first service learning go around, I am equally excited to work with others.

          In my college communications class everyone must work for a service organization; my service organization is called "Best Friends" which deals with adults with dementia.  Dementia is defined by Dictionary.com as “a chronic or persistent disorder of the mental processes caused by brain disease or injury and marked by memory disorders, personality changes, and impaired reasoning.” So basically, they just have trouble thinking and remembering. When I found out that I got paired up with “Best Friends” I was both excited and nervous. This organization was my top choice but not for reasons you would think. It was not my top choice because it looked the most fun or easiest, but because I thought I could learn the most from this organization. Helping adults with dementia will be a whole new experience to me because I have never really interacted with adults before in community service. I want to be part of these adults’ lives to get a whole new perspective on elderly people and to help them in whatever way I can, even if it just means talking to them and playing games with them. 

          This blog will reflect my personal experiences as well as our group experiences after the visits. I will try my best to include pictures of what it is like there, but it is a challenge. Most of the people in the building do not allow pictures to be taken or posted of them do to security reasons so it is tough. That being said, there is also not much information on the center nor social media results on the organization either. It is one of those places where you have to make an appearance to learn what it is or truly about. If I had to guess, I would say the lack of websites and social media for this organization is due to the older workers who are not as tech savvy as the younger generation. Some of the only things I did find are that the organization deals with patients who have different severities of cases with demential and that it is a faith-based organization. Even though the little information hinders me, it just makes it so I have to display information in words more so rather the media. Challenge Accepted! For this blog post I have used the pictures from www.kentucky.com which you can find at this url (url)

The group of patients listening to a guitar player 

(much like how they listened to the singer when

we were there!). This is the gathering room for patients.

          On Friday, my group and I went to the site at which we will be volunteering for the first time. It was a very large building with many organizations. Once in the building we all had to fill out information forms in case something happened to us under their watch. While filling out the forms we got ice cream, then after we were explained what we will be doing with the patients. The way it works is that every week will be assigned a patient to take care of that day; before we go into meet them we will receive a short bio about them. During our time there we will provide elderly assistance to our individual, entertain them, and get to know him/her better. Now that we knew our job, we went in to meet everyone. As we walked into the room the elderly faces lit up because they were so excited. The 25 patients were filled with joy to see young adults like us; most likely because every patient and worker was elderly so it was a change in scenery. One person in my group then introduced the patients to his beautiful voice which they loved so much that we spent the hour we were volunteering doing sing along songs. This is where my first realization of how some adults struggle at later ages; as we opened the song books the lady next to me was looking for the right page with her book both upside down and backwards. It was so sad! I had to help her find the page only to find out that she had a beautiful voice. Once singing was over we said our goodbyes and headed out.

Two "Best Friends" holding hands as they 

participate in activities.

          The people in which we are helping in this organization are of older age, but have tremendous stories to share. The severity of dementia ranges from individual to individual; some are in early stages of dementia so are almost 100% normal, but others have noticeably severe cases. I want to be part of this organization. An organization that makes mentally ill people feel at home and safe 24 hours each and every day. I feel that elderly people do not get as much care because they aren’t cute kids or anything, but I want to show these people that they are cared about and loved just as anyone else in this world. Hopefully I can make some Best Friends in the process as well. I am so excited to be paired with “Best Friends” as my service-learning organization! The first visit only made me more excited to be a small part of their lives, but I have no doubt they will influence my lives even more.