…today’s secret…A riddle everyone laughs at…

I have been experimenting with this riddle for going on eight months now.

When I heard it I laughed and wondered why I laughed. I rarely laugh out loud except when I have a few beers.

I’ve asked this riddle over a hundred times and every time the person has laughed when I answer it. Yep, every time.

Ready? Here it is.

Oh, by the way, the degree of laughter is directly proportional to how sincere it is told and the relationship depth between the asker and the potential laugher. Just sayin…

Riddle:
Where do rainbows go when they go bad?

Answer:
Prizm.

(Two second pause while you laugh/chuckle/snicker/delete this e-mail)

Why did I do this experiment?

When you deconstruct these nine words and understand how they were assembled in the listener’s mind to create a laugh, you can start understanding how YOUR thoughts and communications can be assembled to entertain? …to persuade? …to teach? …to help change someone’s life?

That paragraph was pretty heavy. Maybe you should read it again?

Let’s deconstruct this rainbow riddle in the brain. Maybe stay with me here?

1) Your eight-word riddle is heard by your soon-to-be laugher. Your words enter their brain’s left hemisphere.
2) Your riddle will be answered in their prefrontal cortex, located behind their forehead. However, before it gets there your riddle needs additional left-brain screening.
3) The word ‘rainbow’ is carved out and sent to Wernicke’s Area to determine if the person knows what a rainbow is. Lucky for you, your listener knows rainbows and has a visual image in their storage locker.
4) Their rainbow pic is now reattached to the seven words and together they have now become a full-blown mental image. Mental images can be complex. This rainbow mental image is simple…a rainbow trying its damnest to go somewhere because it somehow misbehaved.
5) The fully formed mental image is now sent to Broca’s Area, the left hemisphere’s gatekeeper. Broca allows mental images to pass through…or not. Broca rejects the common. It is tricky to get by him.
6) Broca is surprised here because he knows rainbows don’t travel, and who assumes they are judged on their behavior anyway? New to him. “Pass on brother.”
7) The prefrontal cortex can’t immediately answer the riddle when it arrives because it must send the mental to the right brain to see if an answer might be in storage – maybe from their childhood days. Righty checks and replies,
“Got nuthin Dude.”
8) This is when the prefrontal cortex instructs the face muscles to raise eyebrows indicating that your listener has no answer.
9) When you answer “Prizm” the process starts all over again. Ear, Wernicke, Broca, Prefrontal, Righty…yada, yada, yada…and a series of electrical impulses go shooting throughout the brain which results in the laugh you know has been coming all along.

All of this happens in about a billionth of a second. Amazing.

Why am I boring you with this?

Thought particles are the ones and zeros of the mind. If you understand how they are assembled into mental images you can then fling those images into the heads of the people you are trying to help. This will help you change how they think and feel about themselves and the world around them.

That would be good, huh?

I would love to give you an 8 minute short course on thought particles and mental images. Afterwards, if you have more interest, I’ll tell you where the rabbit hole is to learn more. Interested?