Living Lucky® Podcast with Jason and Jana Banana

The 5 H's: Worth The Exploration

• Jana and Jason Shelfer • Season 10 • Episode 25

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0:00 | 12:55

The 5 H’s: Your Secret Framework for Instant Connection 🎤✨

Ever felt like you’ve been speaking for an hour, only to realize it was just 90 seconds? In this episode of Living Lucky®, Jason and Jana Banana dismantle stage fright with the 5 H’s: Hero, Hardship, Highlight, Hope, and Hilarious. Whether you're at a keynote or the dinner table, this framework bypasses small talk to build deep trust and personal development.

In this episode, you will learn to:

  • Beat Time Distortion: Stay grounded when pressure makes seconds feel like hours.
  • Master the 5 H’s: A pocket guide to structure any talk without filler or rambling.
  • Anchor Hope with Action: Transform "wishes" into results through intentional living.

Mindset Nuggets for Fearless Communication:

  • Heroic Alignment: Identify the traits you admire to embody your best self. 
  • Hardship Builds Bridges: Sharing growth—not just pain—dissolves judgment. 
  • Highlights Reset Your State: Proud moments instantly shift energy from heavy to inspired. 
  • Hilarious is Healing: Laughter closes loops and resets the nervous system. 

Stop rambling and start connecting. Hit play to grab the 5 H’s and speak with unshakeable confidence today!

  • Self-help, personal development, public speaking tips, mindset shift, life coaching, Toastmasters.
  •  Building connection with family, overcoming stage fright frameworks, the five H's of storytelling, hope vs wish in personal growth.
  • "How can I improve my impromptu speaking skills?" Use the "Five H’s" framework: Hero, Hardship, Highlight, Hope, and Hilarious. By focusing on these categories, you can quickly organize your thoughts around personal values, growth stories, and humor, ensuring your message is structured and impactful even without preparation.
  • "What is the difference between hope and a wish?" In the context of personal development, hope without action is merely a wish. To turn hope into a productive state, it must be paired with agency—a specific next step or practice (like thought-catching or breathwork) that moves you toward your desired outcome.

Public Speaking, Communication, Mindset, Storytelling, Toastmasters, Confidence, Relationships, Living Lucky

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The 4 pillars of Living Lucky
Believe in yourself
Believe in the people around you
Believe in your circumstances and
Believe that God is working through you, for you, and always conspiring in your favor.

*Previously Recorded

Jana Shelfer:

Are you ready to create a life you crave? Let's spin that doom loop of negativity into an upward success cycle and start Living Lucky®.

Jason Shelfer:

Good morning.

Speaker 1:

I'm Jana.

Jana Shelfer:

I'm Jason. And we are Living Lucky®.

Jason Shelfer:

You are too.

Jana Shelfer:

Jason and I joined Toastmasters this year. Again.

Jason Shelfer:

January.

Jana Shelfer:

And so every Monday we go and we practice speaking.

Jason Shelfer:

All kinds of speaking.

Jana Shelfer:

Which is has been a little bit of an eye-opener because sometimes I start getting confidence in my speaking until I go do it. And then I'm like, oh, I have a I have a long way to go.

Jason Shelfer:

Isn't isn't that everything we do though? It's everything, everything that we we do is like when we put ourselves in different rooms, it's like okay, how how will this go? And it's just allowed. I get paid five figures to speak.

Jana Shelfer:

I have sometimes uh grandiose grandiosity. Is that the word for it?

Jason Shelfer:

I think a lot of times we all do. It's like me going out on the on skis. I'm like, I'm gonna do a flip. And I'm like, because in my mind, I do it.

Jana Shelfer:

Which is why he hasn't been able to walk this week. He's like, honey, can you help me off the toilet?

Jason Shelfer:

It's been bad.

Jana Shelfer:

And he skied for what?

Jason Shelfer:

Five minutes.

Jana Shelfer:

Five minutes.

Jason Shelfer:

And I skied on two skis for five minutes. Like I skied on beginner skis for five minutes, and everything hurt.

Jana Shelfer:

Well, tonight we have a Toastmasters meeting, and Jason is has been assigned a role called the Table Topics Master.

Jason Shelfer:

For extemporaneous speaking for the for the group.

Jana Shelfer:

Now, for anyone who is not in the loop, extemporaneous speaking is when you get up, you get a topic on the spot, and you give a speech.

Jason Shelfer:

Two to three minute speech on that topic.

Jana Shelfer:

Whatever comes out of your head.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah. So in the first time I I was a participant in it, I thought that I spoke for five minutes. I thought I was like, I am way over twenty.

Jana Shelfer:

I am scrambling. I am going on and on and on.

Jason Shelfer:

And I spoke for a minute and 20 seconds.

Jana Shelfer:

I know that happens when you look out of the crowd and they're just looking at you with these blank stares, and you think, you know what? They haven't laughed at any of my jokes. They haven't, they're not understanding the message I'm trying to portray. They're just looking at me blankly, or and you think, I've been up here for an hour.

Jason Shelfer:

Right. And sometimes, so one of the things that I was thinking is, I've given everything I think I can give about this. And I guess I I didn't there was I was like, I took all the filler out. I took, and I was like, these are the points, this is why I'm telling you, and this is how you can apply it. And it was like, like that, just saying that this is these are the points. Yeah, this is the main message, and this is how you can apply it. Yes, that took me just a couple, like a second or two to say that.

Jana Shelfer:

I think it was a minute, 30 seconds, and you literally came back to the table and you're like, that's all I spoke.

Jason Shelfer:

I was in shock.

Jana Shelfer:

I gave 90 seconds.

Jason Shelfer:

It's like I had time to sweat this much, and I only did 90 seconds worth of material.

Jana Shelfer:

All right. Well, here's an exercise that I challenge all of you to do because Jason is the table topics master tonight. And so last night I was saying, hey, just to remind you, your friendly wife reminder, right, that you are a table topics master. So you need to be prepared for tomorrow night's meeting.

Jason Shelfer:

And I was prepared.

Jana Shelfer:

And Jason said, you know what, I've already got it done. I'm like, what?

Jason Shelfer:

Right. Who is this guy?

Jana Shelfer:

Share it with me. So here's the exercise. I challenge all of you to do this because when he was telling me this late last night as we were in bed, I then went to bed thinking, huh? What would I say if I was up there? So let's let's all go through this.

Jason Shelfer:

Sometimes it's just a conversational prompt. Yes. That one thing it will take you out of any kind of negative think thinking that you're doing already doing. Um, and the first one is who's your hero?

Jana Shelfer:

Who's your hero? Who is your hero?

Jason Shelfer:

So I would love to in in our group, I would like to call someone up and just say, okay, who's your hero? One thing it lets us know, it lets us search our value systems internally. The next thing it creates this community within the group because when you hear a question, your brain is gonna start thinking of it. So everyone in the group will start thinking, okay, who's my hero?

Jana Shelfer:

Right. And immediately I started thinking of my husband, Jason, and also my dad, my father, Jerry.

Jason Shelfer:

That's great. The other thing is a lot of times we will bond over hardships in life. And so the next question is what's one hardship that you've been through?

Jana Shelfer:

Oh my gosh.

Jason Shelfer:

You know, that's made you who you are today.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

Because what what happens in hardship is we all have them. A lot of times we don't recognize them in others.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

So being able to talk about a hardship that's made you who you are is gonna bring people closer to you because we will start seeing a lot of commonalities, and then we can kind of unpack the hardship and say, Well, I like the person you are today, and I can see how you grew. So they would start recognizing the growth and the hardship instead of the pain in the hardship.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, so this exercise is called the five H's. Number one was who is your hero? Who is your hero? And these are these are questions to not only know about yourself, your family, but if you're at the dinner dinner table and conversation is low, throw them out there. So, number one, who is your hero? Number two, what hardship have you faced? Yeah. Which when I think of that, I I mean there's so many time frames. You could think of your whole life, or you could think of, you know what? I went to the grocery store and my wheelchair rolled away. Right? Right, rolled down a hill. Yeah, like I parked my car and all of a sudden my chair is rolling down the hill. So now what do I do?

Jason Shelfer:

That's a crazy situation. That also might fall into the fifth age.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, well, let's go to the third one, Max.

Jason Shelfer:

The third one is what's a highlight in your life that makes you proud? Oh, you know, that's gonna immediately start changing everyone's state in the room, I hope.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes.

Jason Shelfer:

Because when we think of a highlight in our life, we start thinking of multiple moments because we want to say which one was the most.

Jana Shelfer:

Which one was the best? Which one do I want to share with the group? It's almost like show and tell when you're younger. Right. However, you're doing this on the spot, so you don't really have a lot of time to filter. Right. The idea is to speak the first thing that comes to your mind.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes.

Jana Shelfer:

And then And mine would definitely be our golden year. This whole past year has been our golden, it's been a highlight, just the whole year in itself.

Jason Shelfer:

It really has. So the first one that came to my mind was walking down the aisle. Oh, and then and then that waiting for you. And that also that that waiting for you to come out and come down the aisle.

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah, I had to be carried down the steps.

Jason Shelfer:

Um brings us to kind of one of the next H. Okay, so number four is what do you hope for?

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, so we've recently learned from our mentor that sometimes hope is a lower frequency, believe it or not. Even though I feel, I mean, it's all in the way you look at it.

Jason Shelfer:

It is definitely a perspective and and definition of what you mean, what you think hope means.

Jana Shelfer:

I feel when you let go of hope or when you lose hope, that that's a place I don't really always like to be in.

Jason Shelfer:

To me, there's a learned helplessness and loss of hope.

Jana Shelfer:

Yes. So it there is a middle ground there of where we're not seeking or not wanting or desperate for something.

Jason Shelfer:

Yes, the desperation and the loss of this vision, like this vision of what could be, like the what if, what if everything turns out well.

Jana Shelfer:

Because when you say, Oh, I really hope that this wish happens or wish comes true, then what what you're really saying is you don't have it now.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, and and hope without action is a wish. And that's that's the thing.

Jana Shelfer:

So it's a so hope, what is the question?

Jason Shelfer:

What do you hope for?

Jana Shelfer:

What do you hope for? What do you hope for? And for you, like where would you go with that?

Jason Shelfer:

I think I would I would hope for more peace, like just a different level.

Jana Shelfer:

You totally took the pageant answer.

Jason Shelfer:

Well, it's a so not peace in the like it's it's definitely peace in the world, but it's it's more internal peace because there's always this something happening in my head. Yes, and it's a it's me catching it. So what what I've done is I've trained myself to catch negative thoughts and and transmute them or change them.

Jana Shelfer:

We even catch them in each other very quickly.

Jason Shelfer:

Let's back that up because sometimes we don't see it, right?

Jana Shelfer:

Which now makes it kind of difficult sometimes to even have a conversation, right?

Jason Shelfer:

We're over-trained, or or does it just fast-forward the conversation into growth? So it's a little bit of that, both of those, right?

Jana Shelfer:

But in in the meantime, we don't have anything to talk about.

Jason Shelfer:

Like, I don't want to say it out loud because it might be a limiting beliting thought.

Jana Shelfer:

We don't want to manifest this, right?

Jason Shelfer:

Don't let it get into the cushions.

Jana Shelfer:

Okay, so number four is hope. And then what is number five?

Jason Shelfer:

Share something hilarious.

Jana Shelfer:

Hilarious.

Jason Shelfer:

So it's a hush. And I think it's all about a lot of these are just about getting into different states, opening up your imagination, and then also just realizing sometimes that the hilarious moments at one time were painful moments.

Jana Shelfer:

I was just gonna say, I have one incident that could literally be a hardship, it could be a hope, it could be a hilarious, it could be a highlight, I guess.

Jason Shelfer:

And I think that might be where time heals all wounds because some of my some of my what in the moment seem like the worst stories are things that are I will bring out at the dinner table to to create laughter and joy and and all this in a in a room because it's I have a new perspective on it, and I realize that was like your your underpants story at Long John Silvers. When I when I was nine years old and crapped my pants at Long John Silvers. What a horror. Like I thought it was, I didn't, it wasn't an I was trying to be funny in the moment by a silent but deadly, and it was everything but silent button.

Jana Shelfer:

We don't need to get into gross details. The moral of the story is he tried to flush his underpants down the toilet because he didn't know what else to do with them. And the thing is, is his mom had written his name.

Jason Shelfer:

In the summers I would go to camp, and everything had to have your name on it. So my name is stamped in permanent ink in my underwear, and I'm trying to flush them down a long John Silva stream.

Jana Shelfer:

And so at nine years old, then the toilet starts overflowing, and next thing you know, the And my grandparents are out in their car waiting on me.

Jason Shelfer:

I was like, I gotta go in. And I was wearing jeans. Uh, it's there's too much in the story.

Jana Shelfer:

But it is pretty hilarious.

Jason Shelfer:

If you want to know the whole story, send us a text in the show notes or text us now.

Jana Shelfer:

It is a hardship and a hope, and maybe a hero.

Jason Shelfer:

It was a horrible hardship at the time because we had a 45-minute ride from long-time selvers back to my grandparents' house.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, Jason. Okay, so this exercise is what we are gonna be doing tonight at Toastmasters, and I just wanted to share it with anyone that's listening because it does give you a lot of insight to not only yourself, but to people who are in your inner circle.

Jason Shelfer:

Yeah, if you're sitting around the dinner table with your family, ask these questions. It's gonna bring you closer. It's going to open up these little levels of awareness around you, and also it's gonna hopefully propel you and everyone that answers a question individually. Because even just hearing the question, our subconscious and our brains will start to figure it out. Just like the don't think of a white a pink elephant.

Jana Shelfer:

Oh, yeah. You start thinking of a pink elephant.

Jason Shelfer:

Your brain's gonna start thinking, what would I answer?

Jana Shelfer:

Yeah. Oh, I love this. I can't wait. I can't wait to see what everyone says tonight. Don't call on me.

Speaker 1:

Don't call on me. Ah all right, thanks for joining us. Keep living luck. Bye bye. If the idea of Living Lucky® appeals to you, visit us at LivingLucky.com.

Head Shot

Jana Shelfer

Host
Head Shot

Jason Shelfer

Host