Posts Tagged ‘human psychology’

Hello again. Sorry about the long hiatus in terms of this blog. I've been very busy, of course. Also, I've been battling illness and care-taking responsibilities.

My sincere apology for not updating this blog sooner, but I don't like outsourcing it and sometimes my life stuff just gets in the way.

Anyway, if you follow this blog, thanks for your patience, and I hope you will find that what I am about to recommend to you is well worth the wait.

If you are just starting your online business venture or if you feel your business effort has been going off track lately, I'd like to recommend something 'holistic' in terms of building your business the right way.

(I just wish something this good had been available when I was starting out.)

So here it is:

• Michael Christon's Personal Fulfillment Machine

This is not a script or plug-in or marketing robot or tool or marketing course.

Yes, those can be valuable in the right context.

But no.

This is something very, very special.

But first, a little background.

I have listened to and viewed various success and motivational programs over the years. As a result, every now and again I've been prompted to do a little brainstorming about where I'm trying to go and why.

It's always been a kind of re-envisioning, and it has often been just after these brief interludes that I've been my most creative, productive and fulfilled.

Knowing from my own experience how helpful I've found such opportunities, I was understandably …

Well, I don't know how to say this without it sounding hyped, but I was very "excited," or "wowed" or "impressed," or something that sounds a little bit over the top like that, to discover Michael Christon's Personal Fulfillment Machine training.

If you've sampled the combined works of various motivational and business thinkers as I have, old and new, e.g., Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy, etc., then you may think you've already heard much of what Michael has to say.

I pretty much felt that way myself at first. So why am I now so excited about this?

Because Michael has a compelling talent for presenting the information, old insights and new — a way that offers new perspectives, eliminates the extraneous, and systemizes and explains the essentials of how to build a more fulfilling life and business.

I feel as if he has burned away the fat, leaving only the condensed, concentrated, lean, mean, and useful behind — yet he has also kept the information palatable and easily accessible.

And there is nothing cookie cutter about Michael's approach either.

He teaches a methodology — a manner of thinking and of structuring your thinking about yourself, your life, your values, your goals — that allows you to create your own custom template that can help you build your ideal, and very personal, future.

I've been through the course, and I know it's worth going through again and again.

I believe you, too, will agree it is going to be helpful to contemplate, again and again, what Michael has to say.

Frankly, most of us need that kind of repetition to really "get it" (whether we will admit it or not). By following — more closely each day — what Michael has to say, I am certain any of us would be better able to align our business goals with our values and have a much more fulfilling life and a more successful business.

Because I believe the bottom line is that that is what we all want, I'm recommending PFM to you. And because:

• I believe it's for those just starting out.

• I also believe it's for those who need to get their business and life back on track.

• Actually, I can't think of anyone in business, or anyone hoping to start a business, who this training couldn't benefit.

Briefly, here are just a few of the questions and considerations you will be exposed to when you decide to take a journey toward your Personal Fulfillment Machine with Michael Christon:

•  Where are you now?

• Where are you going?

• How are you going to get there and are you 100% sure you want to?

• Moment of truth: how's your mental, physical and spiritual health? Are you achieving soul-destroying success?

• What's your 'bucket list?'

• How to have something exceptional in your life and in your business.

• How can understanding yourself and your values make your business effort easier and more profitable?

• How your business can become your personal fulfillment machine and why it's absolutely imperative that it should be.

• Your life's blueprint: using imagination and visualization, coupled with your values, to "walk around" your life's blueprint, and why doing so can empower your life and your business.

• Why is becoming richer in every other way ultimately more valuable than becoming financially rich, and why the former makes the latter that much more possible and satisfying?

• Purpose and structure: why becoming uncommonly successful has so much to do with ways of thinking that may seem initially to have virtually nothing to do with your desire for success.

• How to break the impossible down into the possible.

• How to supercharge your business's mission statement, and why you must.

Far too many start businesses without a clue. They know not where they are going nor how to get there. Michael reminds us that starting a business is about far more than just making money or being your own boss. This kind of training — this kind of thinking — is far too often neglected, yet it is by far the most important. I cannot recall having ever recommended anything more potentially valuable than Michael's Personal Fulfillment Machine.

This is the stuff that our dreams are made of.

Trust me, this will inspire you today and, applied, it will have an enormously positive impact on your life and business for decades to come:

Michael Christon's Personal Fulfillment Machine

Thank you for your time and for considering my recommendation.

To your success!,
Richard D. Farley / MythoSpheres Development

As we all know, taking risks means facing the uncertain and unpredictable, and understandably, it can be scary. To risk means facing the possibility of humiliation, criticism and loss. It can even mean disastrous loss and having to pick up the pieces just to start all over again.

Who wants that? Why would anybody take risks when the costs can be so great, when there is so much to lose?

Part of the answer of course, is that an unwillingness to take risks, when they are appropriate, can in and of itself be the biggest risk of all.

Life is dynamic, always changing, and risk opens opportunities to grow with change rather than be victimized by it. Taking a risk means you are making things happen in your life rather than just letting life happen to you.

Self discovery, new ideas, new skills, new and exciting experiences, new interests, renewed confidence and previously unrealized talents can all be rewards of risk.

And a life without risk can easily become a life that is lived primarily in fear — and sometimes without interest, without enthusiasm, without exhilaration, without, well, a sense of being truly alive.

But why talk about this?

Because my observation and experience suggest that the fear of taking risks — or too much eagerness to take them without sufficient thought — are the two characteristics, the two extremes if you will, that have diminished far too many lives.

And whether I can succeed in this or not, I want to do what I can to keep any of that from happening to the people I know and care about, i.e., my family, my friends, my business associates and my customers — you.

But of course, I don't mean the mundane risks we take every day, the ones we don't think about because we can't see their potentially life-changing effects (even when they are there) because we have become so inured to them.

What I am really talking about are the big ones, the ones that we know are big and that we face only a handful of times in our lives, the ones that we may even know can make us, or even break us.

Of course I don't want to suggest that there aren't at least a few guidelines one can use to evaluate these risks.

Certainly, if a potential outcome is very positive and the potential downside is very limited, that's probably a risk worth taking. And contrarily, if the potential downside is great, but the upside is relatively modest, many would rightfully question the wisdom of taking that kind of risk.

With some thought, of course we can all take calculated risks, considering our finances, our circumstances, our strengths and weaknesses, our health, our relationships and our sense of fulfillment.

All that said though, there really are no magic wands or crystal balls that can tell us what risks are right for us, or are worth taking, or when.

Still, it is worthwhile to remember that not stepping up to the challenges in our lives can sap our spirits, drain our energies and make our own personal worlds smaller, darker, flatter and far less fulfilling.

So … if you've had any trouble taking risks up until now, or have had any trouble with having faith in yourself, or in investing in yourself, I hope you will think seriously about the potential rewards of risk, and not just the perils.

As we all know life doesn't come with any guarantees, except, maybe, for one. When death comes, it is not likely to be the chances we took that we will regret, but the ones we realize we should have taken.

Are you going to be okay if what you remember most about your life are the missed opportunities, the times when you plodded along in safety and listened to your fear?

Or are you going to feel a lot more okay about your life knowing that when it really mattered, you went for it? Sure, maybe, sometimes losing — but sometimes winning wonderfully even against the odds?

So what are you willing to risk? If not now, when?

Remember, your time on this Earth is limited. Are you going to look back one day and wonder what your life might have been? Or are you going to put yourself out there, put your dreams on the line and go for it … while the achievement of at least some of those dreams is still a possibility, while you still have the chance?

Okay, this post is for those who are wondering what the last post was really all about. (BMinto, you were ever so slightly warm, but no cigar.)

First, I apologize for the fact that one of my WordPress plug-ins was malfunctioning and keeping a lot of folks from commenting. (Believe me when I say this annoyed me as much as it did you!)

Second, I probably should have given a little more information upfront about the recent experience I had.

Third, there’s a product launch right now that is lying to us (a lot) and doing so in the name of honesty. The guy behind it is making a whole lot of noise about honesty being the answer to untold riches, and (among other things) I’m here to tell you he is not being very honest about that.

What? Okay, first let’s get back to the original question of the last post, Is Honest Marketing An Oxymoron? — my answer, the only valid answer, and maybe this will surprise (and even dismay) some of you — yes, yes, yes! Honest marketing is an oxymoron! It is an out-and-out contradiction!!

Now before too many of you start to reach for a handful of fruit to throw at my blog, let me explain my meaning.

Why do people smoke? Yes, I’m starting my explanation with another question. Sorry about that, but I do have a point. If you ask people how or why they got started smoking, about eight out of ten will tell you they got started smoking because they thought it was cool.

Surprisingly, smokers don’t generally tell you they started smoking because the smoke tasted so good, or because they enjoyed the initial dizziness or all the initial coughing (i.e., their bodies trying to tell them they were putting poison into their lungs).

Okay, not so surprisingly.

So, even today, after all that has occurred and all the government regulation and all the people who have suffered and died from smoking, is the average cigarette manufacturer always and completely honest about their product?

No; and yes I can imagine some are thinking right now that the tobacco industry is an extreme example and that you don’t want to be that kind of marketer, and good for you. But the point is…

People don’t buy a product, or a service for that matter.

We buy a feeling.

Okay? If you disagree with that premise, I can’t help you, but if you see that it’s true, then what is a marketer selling? Products? Services? Or feelings?

Feelings, of course.

And the experience I was not talking about in the last post was a big wake up call. It drove this home for me, and I’ve been mulling it over ever since.

It’s an experiment you can try yourself if you like. After a brief discussion with another marketer, we decided to set up two email lists under two pseudonyms. For one list we wrote upbeat promotions of various products and services, mostly in the online marketing niche. For the other list, we wrote very matter-of-fact descriptions of these same products and services, pointing out what was worthwhile about them and what wasn’t so worthwhile.

Can you guess what happened? After three months, not only had the second list performed abysmally, most of the subscribers had unsubscribed! Meanwhile, the first list had performed rather well, and most of the subscribers are still subscribed.

So what does this tell you? While people complain constantly about marketers not being honest, what is our behavior saying? Well… it’s kind of saying, all that honesty isn’t really what we’re looking for either.

Now this experience was a harsh reminder for me. I kinda already knew it, but I’d drifted considerably: people don’t buy a product or service; we buy a feeling.

So what feeling are buyers looking for? Are we wanting to buy something that makes us feel like we just bought an inferior product? How about something that makes us feel like we don’t have much of a chance to make it work?

No? So what is the feeling we’re looking for?

It’s the dream. The dream, the dream, the dream. I’ll say it again, the dream — the dream that, if I buy this product, it will renew my life’s experience in some significant way, e.g., it will make me invulnerable to disease, it will make me fabulously rich, it will make me look like a movie star, etc., etc.

So yeah, honest marketing is an oxymoron — at least entirely honest marketing.

Because as marketers we are not going to sell anything by dwelling just as much on the drawbacks of a product or service as on the potential benefits, which would be the truly honest approach.

We are not going to sell anything if we don’t communicate the dream that everyone is really buying.

No matter how many people bitch about this or that marketer being dishonest about this or that product or service, the fact is they bought it from that marketer, and the reason they bought it was because that marketer sold them on the dream, and any time you do that, you will be subject — at least occasionally — to accusations of dishonesty, and any time you don’t, you won’t sell.

Now initially, when I was so harshly reminded of this, it was a little depressing — and not just because I started wondering if maybe I’d been a little too honest lately.

But after a little more thought, and a couple of discussions, I began to realize that it’s not a bad thing at all. Yes, we are all addicts of hyperbole, but no matter how much we complain, our behavior says most of us are fairly happy to be so addicted, and that yes, despite all protestations, on some level we actually want to be sold to, so long as it isn’t a hard sell and so long as what’s being sold is that special feeling…

So yes, honesty is the best policy, and I encourage everyone to be careful not to build expectations too high, and to be as honest as possible, including me — but…

… if you hear from a guy making a lot of noise about plain ol’ honesty being the answer to untold riches… keep in mind that he’s lying.

There is a reason this is called marketing, people!; what marketers are really selling is the right to dream, and… we all want — and I think we even all deserve — to dream.

There is a lot of misinformation around these days, some of it, unfortunately, out here on the internet and coming from some of my fellow marketers. The other day, I saw two different posts on two separate sites stating that all you have to do to be massively successful is to simply change what you are thinking, the theory being that your behavior is the result of your emotions and your emotions are a result of your thoughts.

Well… yes and no.

I don't disagree that there is something to this, but it is not always as simple as this implies. This notion, that success is simply a matter of changing one's thoughts, is popular psychology put out by folks like Wayne Dyer and Phil McGraw (Dr. Phil), and as with the many wisdoms in our culture that have widespread popular appeal, it glosses over the complexity of the human experience and characterizes only a tiny fraction of reality as the whole truth.

It is not always possible to simply change what thoughts you are thinking. I'm sure it works for some, but the degree to which it works, or doesn't, depends on the context and how emotionally healthy you are.

It is scientifically proven that human psychology includes an unconscious, and that much of our behavior is caused, or at least influenced, by experiences, attitudes, and inculcation of which we are not always consciously aware.

These unconscious influences can be far too powerful to simply change what thoughts we are thinking. Though true to an extent for us all, it is especially true for those of us who may have been emotionally traumatized and particularly if one or more of those traumas occurred when we were children.

For many, creative visualization can help far more than simply trying to change one's thoughts.

This is, in part, where you vividly imagine behaving in the ways you wish to behave, making an effort to imaginatively activate all your senses, i.e., your sight, smell, hearing, etc., and make the effort to feel the emotions and sense of confidence that that desired behavior would elicit in you.

This approach can help those for whom simply changing thoughts does not come so easily. It gets to the visual and creative part of the brain — the unconscious part, the inner seat of your most powerful emotions.

It has been proven scientifically that your unconscious mind often cannot tell the difference between real and vividly imagined experience. So you not only imagine this experience as creatively and vividly as you can, but as often as you can. Vividly imagining the desired behavior, and doing so repeatedly, will gradually overwhelm and cancel out any past, real experiences that may be affecting your thoughts, emotions and behavior on an unconscious level.

So if you have had trouble just simply changing your thoughts, you might be ahead to move beyond some of the pop psychology and into creative visualization. It can go a long way toward helping you to change the emotions and the behavior that are holding you back.

Many hypnotists use this technique, but it is not usually necessary to go to a hypnotist. You can do it for yourself, or if you find it difficult, there are various guided visualization tools that can help.

Just a few particulars you can find on the internet:

I'm sure there are many other resources available, on the internet and otherwise, but these are resources I have seen work, and so I feel confident in recommending them to you as well as to my associates.

I hope some of you have found this post helpful.

Wishing you success!,
Richard D. Farley