Well it’s time to revisit my original presumption, or rather what it’s not about i.e.:
High quality marketing NOT about hyping something that people want, but believe they don’t have … to present it in a way that makes it appear simple AND easy … like taking the magic pill or the laying on of hands.
Despite the overwhelming presentation of much of the marketing done in the Internet space today that is done that way, e.g.: “In just four hours you’ll transform your life with this amazing gizmo … video … program … software … whatever … whatever … whatever.”
Be nice … maybe, but it isn’t like that actually in my limited experience. Them’s that got did what it takes to get it.
“Homer was wrong in saying: “Would that strife might perish form among gods and men!” He did not see that the was praying for the destruction of the universe; for if his prayer were heard, all things would pass away.” – Heraclitus
This is the opening quote to one of the most influential books I’ve ever read, “The Judoka” by W.D. Norwood, Jr. In fact the structure of this book informed the way I choose to write my own book, “The State of Perfection: Your Hidden Code to Unleashing Personal Mastery” along with Richard Bandler’s “Magic in Action.”
I find this quote so powerful … beyond that it’s from Heraclitus, which makes it worth paying attention to just because of who he was and the wisdom of what he said in general … because it speaks to a deep truth that is uncomfortable for most folks, i.e.: that pain, suffering, strife, violence, even evil … all the negatives that arise in human experience are part of what and who we are … and are part of what drives us to become what we are not yet but desire to be. Yet most of us do all we can to avoid these aspects of what it is to be human, and thereby avoid the opportunity they provide us to become fully human in the process.
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How can we know joy without the possibility of suffering?
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How can we know what pleasure feels like if there is no discomfort or pain to provide the contrast?
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How can we know love without the recognition of hate?
These considerations are part of what I call “Inconvenient Wisdom” … the body of human experience and knowledge that point directly to what is evident, but that we’d rather not know about or see. The challenge of Inconvenient Wisdom is that once you have had your eyes, ears, heart and mind opened … you become awakened and can no longer tolerate going back to sleep … the sleep of the waking, walking dead. This is the typical zombie state that most people amble through life in, what some folks (including yours truly) have referred to as the “sheeple” … people ambling along nose to buttocks like sheep being herded to the arrbatior.
Yet this does not need to be the case … AND it’s why I’ve sworn off all “hype marketing” (great title for a book for someone out there with the inclination and inspiration to write it BTW).
While much of what it takes to be extraordinarily successful, to be happy and satisfied with and in your life, to perform at elite levels in virtually any field of endeavor is simple that belies this basic truth:
What is SIMPLE is NOT necessarily EASY!
So there is no magic pill … there is no four hour, four day, four week, four month … or four year program that will make you successful and fulfill all your dreams on it’s own, and there sure as hell isn’t any software program you can plug in that will make you rich while you sleep or lead you to the land of happiness!
If you want what you want …
and it’s not what you already have …
YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK
… required to get it.
Now many people read the word “WORK” like it’s a curse word … like I told them to go and perform an anatomically impossible task with themselves … but it ain’t … WORK just ain’t what it’s cracked up to be …
Here’s the first thing you want to add into your thinking about what work is … and what it ain’t:
WORK is just something to be done …
no more, no less …
if you want what you want, and you ain’t got it yet.
It’s like taking a bath if you want to be clean after taking a sweaty run or doing a sweaty workout … or maybe working up a sweat in some other more imaginative, more pleasurable kind of way … BUT the point is if you don’t want to be sweaty any more you just have to be willing to run the bath and get into it and it’s done.
Work is just the activity associated with doing the tasks that produce some particular outcome that require some degree of expenditure of effort on your part …
WORK by default is NOT SUFFERING!
A great little book about this last idea above (and I mean LITTLE!) is Staurt Wilde’s “Life Was Never Meant To Be A Struggle” … FWIW I think the audio book version, that Staurt reads, is even better, “Life Was Never Meant To Be A Struggle – AUDIO VERSION” … get it and read it, or listen to it now, you’ll thank me later. (NOTE: The story about the tiger at the beginning is worth the whole price of the book IMO.)
Yet what every Hype Marketer depends on is that you believe that getting what you want requires WORK …AND THAT YOU BELIEVE WORK IS BAD, i.e.: SUFFERING!
This is of course ridiculous … but your nervous system has been trained to associate the word “WORK” and the notions you attach to it to equal suffering … except when you don’t. Here’s a simple example for you …
Think about something you like to do … maybe even love to do … that is or was difficult, e.g.: playing a musical instrument, painting or drawing, gardening (turning over soil … digging … weeding …) … whatever it is for you. Maybe you love working out … the feeling of your muscles working and rippling under your skin … or the simple joy of the activity. It doesn’t matter what the content of your thoughts are, just that you recall something that was or is difficult, but you enjoy or even love doing.
Now, when you think about that think … that was or is difficult … and doing it well does it “feel” like work to you … or something else entirely??? (I’m betting something else entirely.)
How do you feel during and after doing the thing you thought of? Better or worst for the wear???
This is when you think about work, i.e.: the expenditure of effort, like it’s not WORK … just something to be doing to get what you want … SIMPLE!
What’s This Got To Do With Me?
Well what I really want to point to is how we all got this way in the first place … where our nervous systems, our entire neurology … where we came to associate EFFORT with WORK.
Maybe you guessed my answer already if you’ve been reading along faithfully in this series … SCHOOL!!!
Waldorf Schools (Steiner Schools in some places) have amongst the best pedagogy based on human developmental processes that I’ve come across … and while powerful and potent for the learners in them in so many ways … still refer to the schooling activity of the students as WORK!
When my wife and I dropped my daughter off at the local Waldorf Early Education program for pre-schoolers, they referred to her time there as “doing her work.” They meant drawing, singing, dancing, playing and the other things that pre-schoolers tend to do while in the program … BUT THEY CALLED IT WORK!
Then this transitions into … SCHOOL WORK … and then HOMEWORK … the parts of the program that students like least. No more drawing, singing, dancing or playing for the most part … just WORK. All in the service of preparing you for … MORE WORK. Admittedly it’s more than a little insane.
Now within the schooling system you have rituals and patterns that are expected of you in relation to your WORK, e.g.: be on time, start and finish on time, don’t speak with others while you work, let others do their work without interruption, do your work neatly … and one I’ve personally come to love, “Show Your Work.” (that’s sarcasm in case you didn’t recognize it).
Literally it’s not enough to “Do Your Work” even if you do get the desired outcome … you must “Show Your Work” … which means that you must do your work in the particular way the teacher wants to see it … regardless of how creatively you might develop your own way of doing it.
The further absurdity of this is that when you have finished schooling and go to WORK … you still have to “Show Your Work” … i.e.: do it the way the employer now wants you to do it …
And, most of the rituals and patterns you learned at school have become RULES you now live by … e.g.: be on time … do you work neatly … raise your hand if you want to speak in a group … blah, blah, blah …
The challenge is that you never learned that you were following rules that you had a choice about … so they get imprinted on your soul and psyche … they become part of your default response pattern at the level of reflex response in your nervous system when you have any contextual stimuli that are connected to the RULES.
So you don’t … and can’t break free … UNTIL YOU GET THAT YOUR FOLLOWING ARBITRARY RULES CREATED BY OTHERS FOR THEIR CONVENIENCE, COMFORT AND BENEFIT … NOT YOURS!
Okay … so what can you do …
WAKE UP!
I used to play a video game with my son, “Toe Jam and Earl” … about two aliens that crash land on Earth, their spaceship falls into pieces and they have to reclaim the pieces to get home. In the process all these annoying people try to interrupt them from completing their task … policemen, supermarket shoppers with baskets, obnoxious children … and they have to avoid them, sometimes using the only weapon they have … rotten tomatoes which they can throw at the annoying humans.
Every once in a while after running around on this strange planet Toe Jam or Earl fall asleep … and that’s when they’re most vulnerable to the annoying humans … so you have to use the power you have in the game to get them to WAKE UP! … literally shouting “WAKE UP!” to them to rouse them from their slumber … it’s the only way they can survive. It was a fantastic game with a remarkably repetitive sound track that still in my head today.
So the first step is learning that there are rules you’re following, that don’t seem like rules at all, but simple truths. Then you have to notice where the rules show up … and make conscious decisions about them. This doesn’t mean not following the RULES, it means being aware of what you’re doing as you do. Then you can take the step to choose which RULES to follow and which ones to ignore or rebel against. Once you get that you don’t have to follow the RULES because they are there … you can begin making up your own RULES … very cool!
Now the first RULE that I suggest you examine is
the RULE about
things having to be EASY
before they are valuable to you
… and reconsidering the value of
SIMPLE AND DAMN HARD!
Trust me … there are so many times in life that I’ve found that HARD is really good for getting what I want …
Joseph Riggio, Ph.D.
Princeton, NJ
PS – If you’d like to speak with me about working with me privately, or in a group you can still register for a private, one-to-one complimentary conversation with me using the link below and Niki my Executive Assistant will get back to you to schedule a time for us to speak:
