The problem with market research is that consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and don’t do what they say — David Ogilvy.
This one insight about market research is in fact the gist of personal development.
Actually, if you think about it, striving to be an ideal consumer could very well turn you into an exemplary member of the human species.
Let’s see together why.
Think what you feel
I can only think how I feel, if I know what I feel.
Exploring feelings, that is spawning them into existence, is done solely based on experiences lived.
Emotional introspection reveals the nature of my feelings hence it answers the what.
My thinking bursts into imagination in seconds.
So, I am required a huge assortment of experiences to have a complete cross spectrum set of feelings. But then I have them while I don’t know their nature. Which means that for every unit of effort spent on experience, at least an equal amount of effort should be put into introspection to “get myself”.
Only then my thoughts wandering the realms of imagination will be on par with my feelings gathered from the realm of reality.
Never refuse an invitation, never resist the unfamiliar, never fail to be polite and never outstay the welcome. Just keep your mind open and suck in the experience. And if it hurts, you know what? It’s probably worth it.
The Beach, the movie
Say what you think
Obvious right?
What else says personal success, other than having the confidence to say what you think?
It’s just that, what you’ll get back is gonna make the personal success transform into personal “life lesson”, or “personal problems”.
The problem with saying what you think is the feedback, not the action itself. The action is rather easy. A few acting classes, a few attempts to be blunt, direct, frank, honest … even sincere from time to time, and you’ll learn the trick of wearing your heart on your sleeve.
However, every action causes reaction and the hard part comes from what people will do to your heart. They will rip it apart for showing itself unmasked.
Everyone attempts naively to say what they think as children, then when they learn the effects we all quit the practice.
As an adult, it gets even more complicated because most of adult life as we know it sucks.
It sucks big time because we’re all bored creatures pretending not to die, acting surprised when death does happen around us, and having trauma or new years resolutions on the same level of importance.
To say what I think, I must be able to detach from others. To say what I think, I need to cultivate an armour against the social recoil of my authenticity. I must build myself a door through which only I can pass and exit the group dynamics and leave my conditioning at that door on my way out. Only then will I be able to be genuine and complex in my outward behavior.
Star Trek roof in that Wraith of Khan / Girls get loose when they hear this song / 100 on the dash get me close to God / We don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars
Starboy, The Weekend
Just pretending not to die.
Do what you say
The trick of this quality lies in the fact that most people maximise what they say.
Words are cheap.
A word is an incantation, even the smallest word, the most unthought articulation, even if not heard by others, will produce effects when uttered.
Knowing the power actioned by words is the cause of building myself a word economy, a way to value and evaluate what I say. Because the simple introvert restraint of not speaking doesn’t lead far. You have to say things, that’s the trick. If you say nothing, it doesn’t really matter what you do.
So how do I build my speaking free market?
I should know myself and be good at what I do. Everything that I say is in fact speaking about me and if I don’t know myself I cannot understand what am I saying about myself, which is in fact the real value of every word.
The more a word says about myself, the better it describes my “self”, then the more expensive a word is, and the greater care I take to count what I can afford to say.
Then when I say it, I can do it, because it is about me.
Because it’s not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something. And if you find that moment… It lasts forever.
The beach, the movie
Be predictable. Predictability is what power becomes as humanity sprints into uncertainty with the confidence of a child jumping into their parent’s arms. Be there to catch it.