Mind-Manual

Do you really know yourself?

I’d argue the average person doesn’t know themselves very well at all. And that’s a real problem, because without self-awareness, you’re essentially flying blind.

Let me explain what I mean: Say you want to change something. Unless you’re aware of how the situation is right now, you’re probably not going to be able to make strong headway. Take the goal of losing weight. If you don’t know exactly how much you weigh now and how much you want to lose, then there’s a very small chance of that particular goal becoming reality. This is about knowing some general, essentially biographical details about yourself.

Another thing that many PD gurus espouse is to catch your thoughts and change them. So, if you think, “I’m never going to be able to do this” you should change it. But there’s problems with that: very few people actually have that level of moment-to-moment self-awareness of their thoughts. Another problem is that very often there’s no actual thought that sounds like that, and when there is, it is so quick that its barely noticeable.

However, being able to catch your thoughts and select more empowering ones is an important skill to have, so it’d be useful to be able to have that level of moment-to-moment self-awareness. Here’s a few ways I’ve found to increase my moment-to-moment awareness:

1. Meditate

Regular meditation enhances mindfulness and moment-to-moment awareness of your own thoughts. And it doesn’t have to be long, start off with 5 minutes every day. Just sit down somewhere and try counting your breaths. Or try to “listen” to your thoughts and try to see how they “feel” in your own head.

Besides all the other benefits of regular meditation, I’ve found that I have a better awareness of what’s going on inside my head (including my thoughts and states) even when I’m not meditating.

2. “Feel” your thoughts

Each thought you have, like everything you say, has a certain feeling. There are some thoughts that feel “egoic” in my own head, especially when I start to feel prideful or petty. Other thoughts feel “angry” in my head. Seeing as how the point of choosing thoughts is to be able to select better feeling and more empowering thoughts, its a safe bet that thoughts that feel better are probably better to think.

So, instead of trying to follow your individual thoughts and trying to judge whether you are more empowering or less, you can just go by how they feel in your head. This one is a bit tricky because it takes practice. I setup sort of “flags” in my head that basically bring my bad feelings to my mind. I consciously know pretty quickly when I’m starting to feel bad and then I try to figure out why I’m feeling bad and change that state.

3. Maintain your state

You’d be surprised how many of your thoughts are not really your thoughts. I mean, they are not consciously chosen, but instead arise from various sources including your environment, your beliefs, your current emotional and physical state, your previous thought patterns, your general attitudes about the topics or events currently happening, and so on.

You can control some of these elements. Get the right amount of sleep consistently, for example. Eat right and excersize your body. Hang around with positive people. Read positive stories, books and articles. That kinda stuff.

I hope this helps.

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What’s wrong with this ad?

I saw an ad in the subway recently and I thought it was terrible. See if you can tell why:

“The Right Phones.

The Right Networks.

The Right People.

That’s why we’re the #1 electronics retailer in Canada.”

Or something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but I think I captured the essence of the problem. Can you guess what it is?

If you said that it was the font and the background colours were too similar, then you’re wrong (although there was an ad on the subway about the Ontario Child Benefit that had a lot of text and the text was too close to the background, making it hard to read). This particular ad (and I’ll try to get a picture of it, if I can) had a red background and the font colour was yellow.

Nope, the reason why this ad sucked is because its all about the company (who shall remain nameless…for now, at least). Well, that’s not totally fair. They were doing ok (and just ok) with the “Right” stuff, even though that’s not nearly good enough to win my attention. But they totally bombed it in the last line.

I don’t care if you’ve got the biggest hat in the world, I’m (as a potential customer) only interested in ME and what you can do for ME. Here’s another bunch of ads that I just came up with now. They’re not perfect but they’re better than whatever they have now:

Ad 1: Picture someone in low-key, film noir-ish lighting, looking visibly afraid and trying to get back from electronic thing (like a printer or computer or something). Caption reads: Scared of your computer? We can help!

Ad 2: Buy like four ad spaces at whatever station you’re going to buy it at, and create a comic book-like sequence. Knowingly cheesy, like those ads for workplace safety a while ago. First panel – show someone running out of ink or their printer’s busted while they’re trying to print a mission critical document (or a class report or something). Second panel – show whoever it is deciding to run out to the local <insert electronics store name here>. Third panel – show them getting there and talking to one of the sales reps. Fouth panel – They have received the ink or whatever and they hold it above their heads with the customer service reps in like tights and stuff being all hero-y. Insert a small talk bubble of the customer saying “uh…why are you wearing your underwear on the outside?”. Or have a kid in the background saying, “Mommy! Mommy! Why is that man wearing his underwear outside? Can I?” Or something. The reason this works better is cause a) its a sequence. Make each panel interesting enough that people want to know what happens next and they’ll go and LOOK for each panel and notice it). b) it’s about CUSTOMERS being happy.

Obviously these ideas need refinement, but they’re still better than the original ads.

If I was this particular electronics retailer, I’d fire my ad/marketing team and get someone else in. Someone who can focus on the CUSTOMER.

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