What You’re Avoiding

Garth Beyer

During a PR team meeting about time management, it was noted a recurring issue of meetings is they go longer than they’re supposed to, typically by five minutes or so.

I had a suggestion for how to have more productive meetings and typed up a decent email explaining my suggestion for improvement, my reasons for it, one concern about it and one overall realization. I was going to send the email to the PR director, but I called myself out on my action. Why in email? Why not in person?

The reason is that it’s less personal. It’s because I feared the idea would get rejected. After all, it’s easier for both of us. The director can email back saying thanks for the suggestion and that’s that. No feelings hurt.

It’s critical we notice the ways we avoid rejection, the ways we avoid being vulnerable, the ways we avoid failure and make the tough decision to overcome.

 

Stay Positive & Personal Is Best

Lazy Brains

Lazy Brains

Garth Beyer

Breakthroughs don’t come from simply staring at an object and thinking harder about it.

A sculptor doesn’t stare at a ball of clay and then magically turn it into something remarkable. No. She collects and combines images throughout her day that, pieced together nicely, can be communicated effectively through clay.

It is the images she collects and combines that make the masterpiece, not the clay itself, and the images in her arsenal come from the variety of her experiences.

We have naturally lazy brains. Some might spin the word “efficient” around, but I believe they’re lazy. Our brains take shortcuts, our peripheral vision isn’t what we are really seeing, it’s what our brain is guessing we would see.

Gregory Berns wrote in his fantastic book Iconoclast, “Experience modifies the connections between neurons such that they become more efficient at processing information.”

That is, the more experience we have the better the processing. Moreover, the more new experiences we have, the more likely we acquire a path of uncharted processing, which leads to creative remarkability.

Therefore the path of an artist is quite simply laid out… have more new experiences and you’re bound to create better art.

 

Stay Positive & New Is Always Better

Where’s Your Attention At?

Garth Beyer

It’s easy to notice the not-so-good. Easy to talk bout bad advertisements. Easy to rant about poor customer service. (Just did yesterday, oops.)

The number of blogs and conversations dedicated to the bad and the ugly are infinite.

It’s sad, really, that there’s so much bad stuff out there to comment on. Sadder yet there are those out there willing to focus so much attention on it.

You have to wonder, does it do good to focus so intensely on the negative?

The typical response is that we learn more from failure than we do success. However, that only holds true when it comes to our own actions, not others’. When it comes to others’, we learn more from their successes than their failures. (That’s why we attend seminars, to learn what works. Sure we hear a failure story or two, but it’s a lead to them saying what works. They don’t focus on the negative and we benefit greatly from that.)

Better to learn from others what success looks like than what it doesn’t. Reason being is we can dedicate our lives to seeing what doesn’t work and still not find the answer for what works.

It’s best to celebrate the success of others and attempt our own.

 

Stay Positive & Time Spent On Negative Is Time Not Spent On The Positive

Feel The Room

Garth Beyer

Alfredo lost a sale and started our weeklong vacation experience on a poor note. It’s disappointing that one of the quickest and most common ways to lose a sale, to get a poor review, to turn what could be a returning customer into a one-timer is failure to feel the room.

Alfredo knew we were starving and were running on only a few hours of sleep, yet he stood around waiting for us to get checked in just to pull us to his office and talk about all the upgrades we could purchase and time shares we should consider buying then and there.

Talk about aggravating.

Time would have been better spent sitting at the restaurant with us and talking there or just telling us to come back to him later. It would have saved both our times. But, no. He failed to feel the room.

Actually, he failed to act on what he felt. He knew we were frustrated, tired, and starving. Is that the type of person you want to try selling to? I sure don’t.

I’ll take someone who has energy, who’s content, who I know is capable of desiring what I have to offer.

The concept of feeling the room runs across all life’s themes.

– You wouldn’t tell a joke about the reaper and death in a hospital room full of mourning people.

– You don’t make out with your significant other in front of her parents when it’s your first time meeting them.

– You don’t blast your iPod music during a quiet yoga session.

Of course, these examples seem extreme and quite obvious, but so are all the other moments in life. It’s easy to recognize when someone is frustrated, ancy, nervous or hungry. (And if it’s not, ask how the person is feeling then work on satisfying them on that note first! Selling 101.)

It’s obvious what to do next when someone says they are tired or hungry or mourning, yet so many salesmen (Alfredo!) reject the opportunity to do the unscripted, to turn a stranger into a friend, not just a commission.

 

Stay Positive & Feel The Room Then Act Accordingly

(even if “accordingly” is against the guidebook)

In The Box Podcast

Episode 4: Transparency, Exhaustion, Storytelling And More – Podcast

Garth Beyer

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we talked about customization, citizen journalism, storytelling in business, humanities desire to conquer more, video games, and transparency.

Episode 4: Transparency, Exhaustion, Storytelling And More

Customization — Do you think for a product or service it has to have a completely customizable option?

Citizen Journalism — What is the point of citizen journalism? Big ideas will get out to the public anyway, right? (do we need to define citizen journalism?)

Storytelling In Business – Would you say it’s essential to tell a compelling story if you’re a business? Why or why not?

Conquering more and more and more… — What piece of the human condition triggers the desire to continually conquer land?

Video games – What is the appeal?

Transparency – When is it a problem?

 

Stay Positive & See My Q&A For Transparency

Advice To My Younger Self

Advice To My Younger Self

Garth Beyer

During meditation earlier my mind began to wonder. For some reason it went back to some childhood memories, of moments that I thought I was the only one who thought something or experienced something.

You know the odd-looking air on the horizon of a road, it’s almost as if it was heat or some fume? When I asked anyone driving in the car with me if they saw it, they responded as if I was crazy. I believed them.

Or, to the extreme, thinking of jumping off a building you’re on. Everyone has thought it at one point, but in the moment we feel so alone, as if we’re the only ones who think these things and we get uncomfortable about it.

The advice I’d give to my younger self is “you’re going to think about a lot of things that you will think are unique to you. They’re not.”

The reason I’d say this to my younger self, and to you, now, is that we have thoughts, which we quickly dispel based on the premise that we think we’re the only ones to think it. It’s a tragedy, really.

You think you’re the only one who has come up with a spectacular idea, but you’re not.

Think Jobs was the only one to think of transportable music in your pocket? Think Gladwell was the only one to wonder about cockpit culture and why planes crash? The answer is yes, you do.

And we’re wrong in that thinking; they’re merely the only ones who acted on an idea. You can be them if you realize you’re not the only one who thinks about things differently, who has the thoughts you do, who has an idea that just might damn well work.

 

Stay Positive & Worth A Try Right?