Busy Bragging Isn't Helping Your Reputation Or Your Life

"I'm crazy busy!" 

I heard this busy bragging phrase too many times when I was living and working in China. 

People said it to affirm their work as valuable.  

But those who used it the most were also the ones with the worst sales figures. 

Which raises the question, were they "crazy busy" or just busy bragging?  

Or maybe just crazy?

I don't care about your busyness. And neither does anyone else. 

Regardless of what the "lords of hustle" say, being busy is not a badge of honor that you should proudly pin to your chest. 

No one is going to slap you on the back, shake your hand, and tell you "well done" because you're spending too much time working and not enough time with your family, friends, and enjoying life. 

I trust that COVID-19 has taught us that there are more important things in life than hustling to earn a living. 

Life is more important. So go out today and enjoy it. 

If you liked this post, please feel free to subscribe to my blog and if you have any questions or comments, email me: mikeallisoncoaching@gmail.com 

How Marketers Use Advertising To Manipulate You Pschologically

Why do so many people believe that having more and more stuff - more money, more cars, more televisions, more technology, more clothes, more shoes, more accolades, are going to make them happier?

Marketing and advertising, that's why!

Marketers and advertisers LIE to the public to get them to believe that owning their products will make them happier and more successful.  

Most companies must satisfy their shareholders, and what do shareholders want? They want a higher stock price. And what causes stock prices to rise? Higher revenues and profits (read more sales).

That being the case, here are two of the main methods marketers use to manipulate you emotionally and psychologically and get you to buy their products. 

Why Does McDonald's Still Advertise?

It's a great question to ask because McDonald's is a globally recognized brand and shouldn't need to advertise at all. 

Fact: McDonald's doesn't advertise to inform consumers about the features and benefits of their products. Instead, they advertise to build an opinion and corresponding brand image in your mind. 

Marketers use two main psychological methods in advertising. 

1. Mere Exposure Method. 

2. Classic Conditioning Method.

The next time you go to the supermarket, take note of how products are displayed, and where they are displayed. This is an example of using the "mere exposure" method. 

Proctor & Gamble, the maker of Tide Laundry Detergent, know that by exposing you, over and over again, to their brand, you're going to start feeling like you know it, and then you'll start to trust the brand. 

Exposure = Recognition = Trust = $$$$$$$$.

You'll purchase Tide over the no-name brand, even though Tide is more expensive and may not do any better of a job cleaning your clothes.  

The method works. The fact that Tide is such a well-known brand is proof of the effectiveness of the "mere exposure" method. 

Then there is the "classic conditioning" method, which has its roots in the research done by Ivan Pavlov, who noticed that his dogs would salivate at the mere expectation of receiving food. He had trained his dogs to expect to get food at the sound of a bell. Just hearing the bell ring caused them to salivate. 

Marketers use the same technique in their advertising. Watch the ad below to see how Thai Life Insurance uses the theme of "be good" to move people emotionally and psychologically without telling them anything about their products and services. 

The story told in the ad has nothing to do with Thai Life Insurance's products and services. But the marketers know that by creating a correlation between "be good" and their product in the minds of consumers, they'll sell more life insurance. 

Here is Chevy's "Maddie" ad from 2014 that illustrates this same technique. 

The ad does not inform us about its vehicles. It simply uses the story of a woman and her dog to move the consumer emotionally and psychologically to sell the message "A best friend for life's journey," which you should associate with Chevy vehicles.

Now you understand why you have the opinions, beliefs, and most importantly, feelings that you do about certain brands and their products. 

You and I are being emotionally and psychologically manipulated every day with the intent of getting us to buy things. We've been led to believe that owning a certain brand and a specific product will make our lives better, which in most cases, is a lie. 

In fact, the more things that we own, the less freedom that we have because owning a lot of stuff also requires spending a lot of time to either use it or take care of it, which takes time away from the things and activities that bring real happiness to people and which I'm going to blog about tomorrow. 

In the meantime, subscribe to my blog if you'd like to keep up-to-date on all of the latest content. Feel free to share your comments and opinions, too. 

And if you'd like to email me: mikeallisoncoaching@gmail.com is my email address.

Have a great day. 

 

 

 

Using Dreams For Creativity

 Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

National Geographic Magazine reported,

"people who took naps featuring REM sleep-in which dreams are most vivid-performed better on creativity-oriented word problems."

 Sara Mednick, the psychiatrist who led the study found that, 

"REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, helped people combine ideas in new ways."

That's cool, isn't it!? 

So, here's a fun way to use your crazy dreams - admit it, you have them too - to combine new ideas. 

This exercise will help you slow down and strengthening your creative powers while having some fun too.

Let's Go To Disneyland

The dream I had early this morning inspired this post and the exercise that goes along with it. For some crazy reason, I dreamt I was at a conference and one of the keynote speakers brought all of the Disney characters, or I should say people dressed as the Disney characters, onto the stage. 

I can't even recall his purpose for doing so, but when I woke up I immediately thought, "how can I use this crazy dream as a creative exercise?" Here is what I came up with. 

Take one Disney character - let's use Mickey Mouse for this example - and write a story with him as the POTUS (President of The United States), or the Pope, or an NFL star quarterback, or any real-life character you want to choose. 

Write two types of stories. One that is serious and one that is as humorous as you can make it. 

I would love to read your stories when they're done, so feel free to post them right here in the comments section, or email them to Mike: mikeallisoncoaching@gmail.com

Have a great day today and remember to subscribe to the blog so you don't miss any of my daily posts. 

Cheers!

Disneyland Photo by Makenzie Kublin from Pexels

 

A Fun Way To Stimulate Your Creative Powers

At the end of yesterday's post, Why Doing Nothing Is Doing Something, I promised to give you a few suggestions to help stimulate your creative powers. Here we go. 

If you believe that you're not a creative person, I've got news for you. Your brain has the ability to be as creative as any other person's on this planet, and the secret to stimulating your creative powers is to practice using them.

Creative power is a muscle that needs to be exercised to get stronger. Practicing every day will quickly get your creative juices flowing so fast that you're going to need a notebook at hand in order to write all of the ideas down. 

Here is a fun way to stimulate your creative powers. 

Rewrite The Titles Of The Books In Your Personal Library

How many books do you have in your personal library? Which are your favorites? Choose 10 and start rewriting their titles. Make as many new titles as you can. 

Here's an example: at the moment I'm reading "Shadow of the Titanic - The Extraordinary Stories of Those Who Survived."  It's a great book by Andrew Wilson, in case you're interested in reading it. 

Here are a few ways I could rewrite the title:

1) Shadow Of The Titanic - The Hilarious Stories of Those Who Survived.

2) Gloom Of The Titanic - The Disastrous Stories of Those Who Survived.

3) Rats On The Titanic - The Whimsical Account of Horace and Hector, Two Rats Who Stowed Away On The Titanic And Lived To Tell Their Story

4) Playing On The Titanic - The Ruinous End Of The Band That Played On The World's Most Infamous Ship

5) Remnants of The Titanic - What The Greatest Maritime Disaster In History Teaches Us About Hubris 

I think you get the idea. Once you begin, you'll have dozens of titles running through your head. Once you've come up with a few you like, choose one and start writing the book. It doesn't need to be based on facts. The more outlandish, the more you're exercising your creative powers. 

This is a fun way to stimulate your creative powers. I'll share another one with you in tomorrow's post. 

In the meantime, get creative, have fun, and have a great day. 

Why Doing Nothing Is Doing Something

In yesterday's post about the art of Niksen, I explained how doing nothing is actually good for you. 

In this short post, let's explore one good reason to make time to do nothing and how that is actually doing something.

Your CPU (brain) has too much to do

Have you ever been frustrated because your computer has slowed down? If you've experienced this then you likely know some of the causes.

One is bottlenecking, which happens when the processor isn't powerful enough to keep up with all the tasks being demanded of it.

Now, I'm not suggesting you need a more powerful brain. Your brain is far more powerful than the most powerful of supercomputers. The comparison isn't even close.

Yet, it is possible to have too many tasks running through your head (brain) at one time. You know when that happens and how you feel. 

You might even refer to it as being frazzled, or you might say things like, "I've got way too much going on up here," as you point to your head.  

The remedy? It's time to slow down so your brain gets a rest. (Yes, your brain needs to rest. It's one of the reasons we need to sleep to be healthy). 

Another common cause of a slow CPU is unnecessary background programs. The remedy is to get rid of the ones you don't need or set specific times when they should be running so that they are not running 24/7. 

Same for your brain. 

There are times when you have too many background programs running in your mind. You might call it multitasking. Multitasking is a myth because no human can concentrate effectively on more than one thing at a time. 

And that's why:

Doing nothing is doing something

When practicing Niksen - the art of doing nothing - you are actually doing a lot for your mental health, creativity, physical health, and more. Again, see my first post on this here. 

Sitting quietly and letting your mind wander is like giving it a rest. It's also like turning off the background programs you would normally have running and not be aware of. 

Another benefit of practicing Niksen is a notable increase in your creativity. Whether you're aware of it or not, you have the ability to be hyper-creative. If you don't believe you're a creative person, it's not because you don't have the power to be, it could be that you have never learned how to develop your creative powers. 

But trust me, you have them, and one of the ways you can power them up is by doing nothing. Once you get into the practice of doing nothing, I guarantee that you'll have all kinds of creative ideas popping into your head.  

In my next post, I'll give you a few suggestions to help stimulate your creative powers. 

In the meantime, practice Niksen today. 

Have a good one. 

5 Reasons You Should Start Practicing Niksen - The Art of Doing Absolutely Nothing

The practice of Niksen is brand new to me, although the idea isn't. 

Niksen is the Dutch concept of doing absolutely nothing, and I found it weird to think that one could practice doing nothing. 

And yet, when you think about it, it's not like highly driven people in a world that glorifies the hustle and the grind to make time to do nothing other than, well, nothing. 

So, it does take practice to do nothing.

But apparently, doing nothing is exactly what a lot of us need. 

Niksen is as simple as sitting in a comfortable chair, looking out of the window, and letting your mind wander. 

Obviously, I'm not practicing Niksen right now, because I am concentrating on writing this blog post. 

But I have begun to work on this practice. 

Here are 5 reasons you should start practicing Niksen.

1) It is a positive, stress-fighting tactic. 

2) It gets your creative juices flowing so you can come up with new ideas. 

3) It prevents burnout, which is on the increase globally.

4) It promotes better physical health because reducing stress strengthens your immune system. 

5) People who regularly practice Niksen are happier overall. It makes sense that if you're less stressed, more creative, and healthier as a result of being less stressed, your overall happiness should improve. 

How you can practice Niksen

It might be best to start slow because most busy professionals, mothers, fathers, are not used to doing nothing. 

I suggest you begin by scheduling 5-minute blocks of time throughout the week to do absolutely nothing. From there you can increase the amount of time you spend doing nothing. 

Ideally, it would be best to block out one evening each week where you have no obligations so you can spend it doing nothing. 

I know this is going to sound like a contradiction, but when you're starting out, practicing Niksen can include taking a walk in nature, knitting, coloring (yes, you can buy coloring books for adults),  or writing a letter of gratitude. 

These kinds of activities will help to ease you into the practice of doing nothing. 

And if you can, try getting to the point where you're able to also sit quietly for a time and just allow your mind to wander. 

Start niksing today. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to leave a comment. And subscribe to the blog so you don't miss any of my posts. 

Want to get in touch with me? Great. Feel free to email me at: mikeallisoncoaching@gmail.com. I will respond. 

Have a great day.