Have you ever gone on holiday and believed that you could live there? Then you have been caught by the mental sunshine effect.
The Sunshine Effect is when we are caught up in a joyous experience, seperate from what we normally live, and believe that it can fully replace our current reality. That moment, that space around us, feels so happy we consider we can exchange our existing everyday life for it. Most typically it’s on a vacation to some beautiful sunny location. Hence The Sunshine Effect.
In September 2000 Channel 4 TV in the UK launched a brand new lifestyle TV show. The premise was that British couples were helped to find their perfect property abroad in warm climates that they could retire to or rent out part of the year when they weren’t using it. The show was called, ‘A Place in the Sun’.
Twenty five years later and it has aired some 2000 episodes featuring over 3500 people seeking the sunshine dream that the programme wants to make real with them. For some, that’s precisely what happened, for others, something else ended up taking place.
Perhaps the clue that it may not all turn out like the idyllic future that some had in mind on the show, was that some 10 – 15% of participants had never actually been to the location they wanted to relocate to. They saw it once on TV, read about it in a magazine/newspaper, or heard about it from others, and decided as it was a sunny seaside place that looked beautiful, it would be their forever home.
But forever changed fairly soon.
Dreams are full of sunshine.
All our dreams are full of sunshine. We see ourselves happy or wealthy, or loved or successful. And that’s all. We believe so much in that sunshine, in our mind it’s all we see. Reality will match the imagined fantasy. Nothing else could possibly happen.
It’s clearly what many couples and lone buyers on A Place in The Sun felt too. But the dream in the head wasn’t the same daily life they encountered when they got there. The picture postcode mindset gave way to less than sunny experiences. What they expected in heart, feelings, and circumstances, didn’t materialise either fully or in any part.
While no exact numbers have been released, the estimated numbers of those who bought abroad on the show but then came home is as much as 20%. You can even find stories of those who did just that and shared why they never found quite what their sun filled mind had promised them.
That’s the Sunshine Effect. Seeing only the Cinderella type outcomes and the feelings and beliefs that come with them, and nothing else. We don’t need a beach to cause that. It’s something we’ve all done at some time in normal life. Maybe you recognise a few of these yourself –
Pictures of love.
Here’s some typical examples of amazing sunshine pictures we’ve shown ourselves that turned out as nightmares –
- Buying the expensive sports car that would get you the girls that kept breaking down and left you with no money to do anything else.
- Falling for blonde haired guys who dressed well because they were your ideal man but looks couldn’t buy you love as they liked to enjoy lots of ladies attention.
- Spending more than you could afford to buy the house you always wanted but it cost you a small fortune to run it and traffic locally was hellish.
- Quitting your job to travel and blog or film YouTube videos as an influencer but you soon realised your were one of thousands of others doing the same and no-one followed you or saw your postings.
What’s yours been? Or keeps being?
And the list goes on. Each situation starts with the Sunshine Effect all warm and welcoming. All of them end up with seeing the cold light of day. Sure, have a big goal or aspiration to follow. But, develop a growth plan over time based on research and knowledge, not just feeling the vibe and being drawn in. Big aspirations are highly recommended, but don’t get sunburn in the mind having ones that are more hope than personal meaning.
We all adore a bit of sunshine but don’t let that take root in your mind.
That mindset can lead to a place in the no fun.
.
References – www.aplaceinthesun.com – About us.
www.inews.co.uk – A Place in The Sun
It’s often said that we shouldn’t live life life alone. The same goes for ideas.
More often than not making ideas work is a solo thing. But, partnering up with ideas can be the real game changer and work wonders for the end results. History shows it and proves it. In fact it’s what saved one of the biggest and most famous companies on the planet.
In the 1970’s and 1980’s Lego was the go-to plaything for children. Almost all kids from that era owned some or had built with some at home or school. They were the staple play toy for children everywhere, and they were everywhere. But times changed and so did preferences. The mid 80’s saw the advent of technological toys like robots and computer games and the business seemed headed for bankruptcy after a $23m loss.
They needed help. And they got that help with an ingenious partner. The Star Wars film franchise was launching The Phantom Menace and sought to engage a younger audience in sci-fi and its brand. Further instalments of the Star Wars story were planned and a new fan base would be needed through the years. They felt creating special Lego based kits would achieve just that.
And boy did it! The revenue kept Lego afloat and led them to creating new licencing tie-ins elsewhere and the business turned around. In 2024 it made 17.1 DKK (over £2.4billion) profit and sold 12% more products than the previous year. That’s what partnering ideas can do.
And they are not alone!
Eating ice cream in a Rolls.
In 1978 two school chums who hated gym but loved ice-cream decide to take a basic $5 correspondence course on their favourite food. Enjoying it so much they decided to give it a go and set about making ice-cream through using local Vermont ingredients they also loved. They survived their first harsh winter and soon word got around. The two guys with their flavoursome ice-cream with chunky ingredients (that they threw in day to day on their own whim) such as cookies and candy, began to become popular.
Within a decade they had opened 80 shop outlets in 18 American states. These two ice-cream creating fans were Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. The world knows them as Ben & Jerry’s. When they sold the brand in 2000, the price tag was $326m. Two friends, one idea, one partnered success story.
Perhaps their ice-cream is considered a bit of a luxury. Well there’s another luxury item that we all love that never would have come about without a partnership. The Rolls Royce car.
Charles Royce was the son of a Lord and had an affluent background. He studied engineering and became an accomplished driver even breaking the world land speed record in 1903. He set up one of the first car dealerships to import cars to fund his driving escapades. The very opposite can be said of Henry Royce who was a working child from the age of nine. He managed to gain an apprenticeship with a railway company and loved all things engineering.
Royce began to build cars as he felt other designs were lacking in engineering. Rolls was also disappointed in the foreign cars he imported. Hearing of Royce a friend of Rolls invited the two to meet and in 1904 they sat down together for the first time. They hit it off. Royce agreed to make cars for his new friend who agreed to sell them exclusively through his car dealership. They both needed each other for what the other brought to the table.
We all know how that story turned out. Today Rolls Royce is worth a whopping $100.3 billion!! Not bad for two people who probably would never have done what they did without their joined union.
Who’s your other ideas half?
If you have been struggling along alone with an idea or business, then ask yourself, ‘Who can I partner up with’?
Who can be the Ben to your Jerry? The Rolls to your Royce? The Star Wars to your Lego?
Don’t look in the obvious. It could be an old friend. A person who simply seems to know what people think or like. Another business who you can meet in the middle to form something good for both of you. Or a fellow enthusiast who loves what you do but in a different way. Even someone in the bus queue. Get talking, get sharing with others, get connecting, get yourself closer to your partner in dream. You could be theirs too!
Two can become one and create one mega success. Two works wonders where one is trying to work things out.
Two heads and two ideas are better than one. And can be waaaaay bigger as well.
References – www.thisforthat.biz – ‘The partnership that saved LEGO’.
www.cbr.com – ‘How star wars saved LEGO’.
www.lego.com
www.unilver.co.uk – Ben & Jerry’s
www.rolls-roycemotorcars.com – how rolls met royce.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Stress.
Stress is the No.1 killer in the background. Heart disease, alcoholism, smoking related diseases and drug taking all stem from the stress in our lives and our attempts to get away from it. Stress is a negative force for humans. We need to talk about it here on SuperMind Saturday.
- Stress is classed as a mental reaction to perceived pressures upon us. These cause physiological changes in the body such as a raised heart rate, impaired thinking, and increased body temperature and sweating. This means stress itself DOESN’T EXIST. It’s our response that does. Should we therefore be approaching stress completely differently than we are because of this?
- American philosopher William James observed, ‘The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over the other’. That being true as stress severely impacts work, relationships, and the health service here’s an idea. Could we start training children at a young age how to manage thinking and mindset so they are prepared for it as adults? And make that part of schools curriculum?
- SuperMind Thought – Stress does not have a level. There is no official measurement system to gauge it. No-one knows a job’s designated level of stress merely a level of skills and requirements. What we need is a stress scale from mild bother to extreme like the Beaufort scale from a breeze to a fully fledged hurricane. This helps us make informed choices as to whether the salary is worth the pressure.
- We never talk about stress until it’s got its grip. We almost never expect it to be there but invariably it is, certainly at work. And yet, we all know it exists. Maybe employers should have a stress policy that is declared with job candidates before they apply. How would you make pre-stress awareness compulsory in work and life?
- On the other end of the scale, some stress is good for us. It pushes us to achieve, make better efforts, can keep us fit, and get out of us what nothing else would….or we would. What are the best positive stresses we should aim to experience?
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Do you experience good luck all time? Everything always coming up roses?
Or are you the opposite? That nothing remotely lucky ever happens to you.
It’s no surprise. Luck, actually, tends to be more of a belief that an actual blessing.
Professor Richard Wiseman, a well known TV and broadcasting psychologist, was highly interested in the whole subject of luck. In the early 1990’s he embarked on a ten year study into luck to see if people were truly lucky…..or not. He ran adverts in national papers asking for people to become involved in the study who believed they were either incredibly lucky or incredibly unlucky.
From this 400 were chosen to embark on the luck factor research. His aim was to examine the actual beliefs and life story experiences of both sets of people to determine if there was any factor(s) that lay at the root of their luck/non luck. His study was in depth involving keeping diaries, completing questionnaires, and participating in experiments. This 10 year programme was the first and biggest of its kind in the world.
So, what did he find? Who exactly really does enjoy good luck?
Good Beliefs = Good Fortune.
Well, from the title of this post, you can probably work out the outcome.
His groundbreaking exercise and findings were shared in his best selling book, ‘The Luck Factor’.
His studies showed that people were as lucky as they believed themselves to be. This was underpinned by 4 key traits, namely –
- They create self-fulfilling predictions through positive expectations.
- They adopt a resilient attitude under all circumstances turning lesser luck into greater luck.
- They have become skilled at noticing and creating chance opportunities that they follow.
- They make beneficial decisions through trusting their intuition.
Putting the four together in one human led to one good turn of fortune after another. Let me share a perfect example.
Luck hangs around.
In ‘The Luck Factor’, Richard Wiseman tells the tale of Barnett Helzberg Jr who had built up a fairly successful jewellery business. He was now 60 years of age and wanted to sell the company and read the means by which famous investor Warren Buffett bought companies. He decided he was the man but didn’t know how to be able to have a conversation with him. That was still in his mind in 1994 in visiting New York when, by chance as he was walking past The Plaza Hotel, he heard a woman call out ‘Mr Buffett’.
Seeing the man she was referring to, there and then he decided to walk over to him and introduce himself. And guess what? It was indeed Warren Buffett. One year later he agreed a deal to buy all of Barnett’s stores and he retired a wealthy man.
And it works the other way round too.
Croation Frane Selak reputedly survived a train crash, plane crash, a bus crash into water, a car fire and explosion, a head on lorry smash, and being struck by a bus. Some don’t fully believe they all actually occurred they way he described but there is an interesting epilogue to the story. Selak did believe he was lucky and one story is undisputed. In 2010 in the last of his amazing life events, he won over £700,000 in the Croatian Lottery!
That’s what happens when you believe in luck. It kind of hangs around. And it darn well sticks too.
Your own story, like those above, has been your life. And has that story been a lucky one? If not then it’s probably that you didn’t think and believe in all things lucky being a lifelong counterpart with you to the end. You can change that today.
Because good luck is in your head before it’s in your life.
References – Richardwiseman.com/resources/The_Luck_Factor.pdf
Wikipedia – Frano Selak.
Five thoughts, ideas, insights, or quotes to power up your mind to think differently and creatively about life and who we are. Put all previous thinking away and open up a brand new world of the Supermind. YOUR SuperMind.
This week – Wokeism.
Of all the subjects that divide people, this is one of the most talked about in today’s world. It’s a phrase coined to define society’s move to be more inclusive and fair but also the feelings and opinions that go with that. It’s definitely stirring things up in society. And that firmly interests me at SuperMind Saturday as I pose some questions about it to get us all thinking.
- Wokeism is a catch all title. It’s used to denote how the world has shifted from a place that favoured some groups over others and to get us to reflect on our historical behaviours. History though can’t be changed, only understood. There seems to be a never ending stream of past events and periods that many are now being asked to apologise for. Plus accusations that come with them. If we are trying to create a better world is anti history useful or is it the future we should now really be focused on?
- Elon Musk said, ‘At it’s heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful’. Strong words. But they do lead to a crucial question. What does truly lie at the heart of wokeism?
- Wokeism is just another label. In itself it sounds a harsh term for the moral change that lies behind it to some degree. Labels can influence our opinions both positively and negatively. Therefore, is there a better term/label that can explain this modern change in culture?
- Top of the list with wokeism is how many people use the ‘I’m offended’ card to remove or cease something they personally don’t like. The powers that be in the media, scared to lose viewers, readers, or most chiefly, income, have seemed to follow suit. Often the offended person/people is in a very small minority numbers wise. Should we now be creating an official definition of offense so that anything classed as offensive is clear rather than individualistic?
- Observation – The world is fast changing. The old accepted ways are rapidly being superseded by different expected standards, values, and behaviours. Maybe older people are holding onto a world that no longer exists. Maybe younger generations are trying to force their version of the world onto society too quickly? And maybe, like all previous human behaviour change, perhaps we should see it all as a storm in a teacup that in the years ahead will slip into an adjustment we are all comfortable with.
That’s another SuperMind Saturday for your mind powers to work on. Thank you for being here for the SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its potential. Consider more, generate ideas more, think on bigger possibilities more, activate your connection to your personal higher mind more and more. Employ your SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
