We are often told to make a noticeable first impression as a way to achieve in life.
Or that a first impression lasts long in the memory and so it should always be a priority.
Even though it usually does, the truth is that a first impression is also often wrong. It’s too quick a snapshot and rarely provides the true picture. Something that a famous advert still talked about today captured superbly.
It’s 1986 and The Guardian newspaper in the UK wanted to cement its position as a paper that looked at every angle of the news unlike other publications. It also wanted to show that in striking style and commissioned an advert that highlighted the typical stereotypical entrenched viewpoints that filled society at the time. Their chosen representative of this was….the skinhead. The much maligned young person constantly tarred with a crime and violence and racism tag.
The TV advert began with one on a street corner seemingly running away from a group of youths following close behind in a car. The voiceover declared that an event seen from one point of view gives one impression. The angle changes to watch the skinhead sprinting towards a well dressed businessman carrying a briefcase accompanied by the voiceover saying, ‘Seen from another point of view it gives a quite different impression’ as the businessman turns expecting to be mugged. As viewers we all expected the same.
But then came the genius. And the truth.
Long held can be wrong held.
The voiceover now states, ‘But only when you see the full picture can you fully understand what’s going on‘. The picture angle is now different, from up above slightly as you see a pile of bricks being hauled up for a building site beginning to topple right above the businessman’s head. The skinhead was running not to escape or attack anyone, but to save the man’s life.
The ad ended in silence. The Guardian had made their point. A point not just to boost their circulation, but to make us all think in a way that had never been done before. As viewers we had all watched with a set first impression. One that was abjectly and factually wrong.
Our first impressions were based upon our long held beliefs. They are also loaded with bias from those beliefs and the influence of society and people close to us. And the trouble is we are too ready to hold onto them rather than being open minded at what we see or read.
Which leads to perhaps the most famous first impression error in history.
Not everyone is the same.
In the 1960’s Decca Records were one of the leading record labels in the UK and music. They signed such bands as The Rolling Stones and Amen Corner to their label and the held some 23% of the whole market in records sales. Decca was every group and signer’s dream to sign with.
That is what brought a small group of young British lads to their studios in January 1962 for their audition or commercial test as it was called. They had become a bit of a hit on the club scene and so word got out. They soon got to work and belted out fifteen songs to show their ability rather than the usual two or three numbers. The session was recorded and sent to the top brass. The young band members felt confident.
Decca management felt otherwise having heard the tape. Fairly quickly they rejected signing the band because ‘guitar groups are on the way out’ and they ‘have no future in show business’. Most other young hopefuls would have been dejected, not these fellas. They kept at it and were signed by EMI the same year…..playing the same music Decca said was very yesterday. The only yesterday would be a famous song of the same name they wrote and sang. That group were The Beatles!!
Decca fell for the blanket approach. They chose a first impression based on a general opinion rather than seeing and listening to what was in front of them. They failed to go beyond that initial reaction and wait or think a while. Their eyes and ears only supported the already decided bias i.e. guitar groups will no longer sell records. They never got past that impression. The Beatles were doomed before they started with Decca as a result.
Truth is we are all often Decca Records or viewers of an ad featuring a skinhead. We still do it today. Our first impressions are often wrong. They are too fixed and too quick to announce themselves.
So next time you see anything or anyone for the first time, don’t decide for the first time. Look for the back story. Wait to see what unfolds. Watch what really might be going on. Then you may well be rarely wrong.
Because the best impression you can ever make is not deciding about a first one!
References – Guardian advert – various. See You Tube – ‘The Guardian Points of View advert’.
The Beatles – see Wikipedia ‘The Beatles Decca Audition’.
Do you go all anxious when you see a spider? All weak at the knees and heart pounding?
Especially when you were a child?
I know I was. Their shape and weird legs freaked me out. So too the Crane Fly a.k.a the Daddy Long Legs. All gangly and buzzy flying around.
Maybe you did (and still do) what I did then. I gave them a big whack and flattened them solid. Once they were dead they could do me no harm. Of course now I’m older and wiser I know they wouldn’t have done me any harm anyway. My mind believed otherwise. It got scared, created a narrative (you might die) and so I lashed out in fear.
I killed what I was scared of. That’s what us humans are very good at in life. We try to kill (or do kill) what we are scared of now and in history.
On a stormy night near Hartlepool in the north of England during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship floundered off the coast with all hands. Apart from one. The ship’s mascot – a monkey. Locals had never ever seen a monkey before, nor a Frenchman either. The chattering of the monkey they took for French and their mind began to work overtime in terror.
They decided then and there on the beach to hang the monkey as a spy.
That’s the story in local folklore but it’s the story of human minds in general.
Going off the rails.
Most fears are unfounded. They are constructed on some incorrect fiction and blown out of proportion. Individually it can cause us to overreact, but collectively in can form mass hysteria.
The early 1800’s saw the wider development and usage of trains in Britain. Previously travel and transport of goods was through horses and canals. The advent of trains appeared hyper fast and caused many to worry if the human body was capable of withstanding the speeds they would go (barely 30mph in those days).
Irish Writer, Dionysius Lardner, wrote in 1830, ‘Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia’. Not to be outdone authors Edwin Fuller Torrey and Judy Miller wrote in ‘The Rise of Mental Illness from 1750 to the Present’, that trains were thought to ‘injure the brain’.
These above beliefs took root in the psyche of many travellers. The rolling and clanking of the train cars over the rails sent many people off them. The newspapers were often reporting individual cases of “railway madness” in the 1870’s. One Scottish aristocrat reportedly stripped naked and began leaning out of the window ranting in a crazed state.
The mind had been disturbed by something it had become scared of….that just wasn’t true. But, that’s how fears work, right?
Killing our best.
The historical stories above typify what is still about in today’s world. Namely, that we kill what we don’t understand, or through gossip, or from our own plain anxieties.
That may always remain so. There is, though, the more personal killing we all have participated in over the years. Killing our best.
How many great ideas have you had that you have ‘killed’ in your mind? Ones for a business or a lifestyle change for yourself that you ‘got rid of’? This is due to your deep inner fear that you will end up disappointed, losing, or most of all, embarrassed as it and you fail.
So, rather than letting it ever see the real light of day, you kill it in your head first. Often before any other human on the face of the Earth ever knew about it. I think we all have done that at some time or other.
It’s lunacy now to look back and believe a monkey could be a spy or train’s could stop us breathing. And that’s the call of this post – look back at YOUR history and see what you have killed that never deserved to be. Something that fear made you want to get rid of rather than welcome it and see what it really could be.
It’s time to get that monkey off your back and yourself back on track by no longer killing what could open up your whole world forever.
If you need to kill anything, kill the fears that won’t let your dreams live.
References – atlasobscura.com – ‘The Victorian Belief That a Train Ride Could Cause Instant Insanity’.
Hartlepoolunited.co.uk – ‘Hanged Monkey’.
Have you ever planted a seed in your garden? And then watched it bloom into something wonderful?
Well doing the same in life to match a need you have, can be life changing. And just as blooming beautiful.
If you do you won’t be alone. You will be in very good company.
In 1976 a Brighton housewife in England needed to earn some income for herself and her two daughters while her husband was away travelling in South America. Being a keen environmentalist she opened a basic shop (between two funeral parlours) with only 25 simple, natural skin care products in refillable containers reducing cost simply because she didn’t have enough bottles to use. It ended up being what others needed too and within six months a second shop was opened.
The woman was Anita Roddick and this was the launch of the world’s first environmental high street brand, The Body Shop. When she sold the business in 2006 the price tag was £652 million. One seed met her need and did so for others too. And that’s often how it works.
Does that ring a bell with you? Maybe this will help.
Ringing up the profits.
Some of the most amazing ideas and products have come out of pure need.
Jamie Siminoff was a self confessed tinker. Taking gadgets and tinkering with them to see if he could add something new. Or creating his own version in his garage at home for pleasure. Hidden away creating in his den he kept missing deliveries because he couldn’t hear his doorbell. Frustrated by this he decided he needed to build some form of wi-fi doorbell that would solve his problem as nothing existed on the market.
So in 2012 he set about creating the bell and decided to also add a camera so as not to waste walking round to the front of his house for some everyday delivery that could be left on his porch. He hammered out his prototype creation on his workbench and called it the Doorbot. As a result she tried out the device in their home. She loved it telling him she felt safer now she could actually see who was behind the door without having to open it. It was the famous lightbulb moment.
The US investors TV show Shark Tank also heard about it on the grapevine. The Doorbot subsequently featured in front of millions of viewers who wowed at how the doorbell improved home security. He renamed the product Ring and immediately sales went through the roof selling 170 million within three years. Just six years after putting together his contraption in his garage to help fulfil his own missed delivery need, he sold the company to Amazon for $1billion. Perhaps the quickest growth of any business from nothing in history.
Needs must.
Often we see a need as a problem. An issue or challenge that’s stressing our life. Not so Anita and Jamie. They dropped a seed into something to fulfil their need and turned them into gold.
View your need or reoccurring snafu in the same vane. Take a logistic approach in your mind.
What skill do you possess you could put to use to meet that need?
Is there an interest or background knowledge you have that might be your route to a big breakthrough?
What need is actually your invitation to put something about you to good use?
We always assume amazing life change comes via a lottery win or a tragic event. Something unexpected that flips life 180. Therefore when an issue blocks us we don’t see that as the very opportunity we have waited our life for now showing itself. A need that we already carry the seed within to beat.
Take another look at your so called need. Maybe it’s what you always needed to discover how amazing you are.
What need in your life now needs what’s in you?
References; Anita Roddick – various sources, see mostly https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-stories/dame-anita-roddick-entrepreneur-activist-and-campaigner/.
Ring – Jamie Siminoff – ‘The Secret Genius of Modern Life – BBC TV.
Have you heard of a Mission Statement?
It’s the corporate equivalent of a big vision for a company or product. A giant, bold phrase that acts as a powerful aspirational target. It also helps embed a huge slice of meaning and purpose. It brings the whole endeavour alive and dripping in focus and possibility.
There are many well know examples. Let’s start though with one of the most famous in history.
In 1975 a small computer based start up was founded in New Mexico, USA to explore the potential of building small computers generally for business use. Combining the words microcomputer and software, Microsoft was born. The fledgling industry was in its infancy and growth was minimal. Five years later in 1980 joint founder, Bill Gates, decided they needed an overall vision to drive thinking and planning for the future. It was then that the famous mission statement was coined that would define their work and development…
‘To have a computer on every desk and in every home around the world’.
Mega bold and perhaps somewhat crazy in those days when there was no real personal computer market. But that’s what it was designed to do. To set their minds on actually creating a computer that would create that market. One where they would be the leaders.
Roll on a few decades and what name is synonymic with the personal computer? And found in homes all around the world? Yep, Microsoft. Mission accomplished.
The guiding mental light.
The Mission Statement acts a guiding light to the mind. It zeros pure focus and attention onto the final outcome it states. No going off at tangents. Not wasting thinking on the irrelevant. Silly airy fairy planning gone. There’s the aim. Mentally and physically get it in your sights and go after it.
Other highly successful companies have also won through employing a defined Mission Statement.
Coca Cola chose something (unsurprisingly) sweet – ‘To refresh the world’.
Nike took a different leap by making us all equally athletic – ‘Bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world. If you have a body, you are an athlete’.
McDonalds chose instead to drive the experience that their food creates – ‘To make delicious, feel good moments easy for everyone’.
And finally take a look at online used clothes/items platform Vinted‘s brash, confident statement – ‘To make second hand the first choice worldwide’.
Each one very different but perfect for them and for their chosen market. But the Mission Statement doesn’t just have to be uitilised by the business community. It’s a first class mental tool for adding meaning, purpose, and streamlining the mindset. And it also gives a life going nowhere a very big somewhere to end up.
Your mission is…
Companies have a chosen sector – finance, automobiles, cakes, gin and the like. Take a cue from this and choose your sector for your mission. For example mine could be writing, or blogging, or books, or very simple psychology which stimulates my mind to drill down and be exact at how or what I want to be/achieve within it.
My Mission Statement therefore could be – ‘To be the world’s foremost writer on the power of the inner mind sharing how anyone can create an extraordinary life for themselves through their thinking’.
It states writing (which I love), the mind (what I write about) and two end results, world’s foremost writer, and anyone creating an extraordinary life from reading my words.
Therefore each post I write must encompass these on every occasion. Anyone anywhere can read and understand them and put them to instant use in their own mind.
So, over to you. What life sector matters to you that needs a PERSONAL Mission Statement? A pure individual life aim or major plan that captures fully who you are. To complete and fulfil yourself. Small and basic won’t do (to learn how to bake a lovely cake isn’t going to change your world).
That’s your homework here. Zero down to where you want to accomplish something of a deeper nature. A self realisation at your very best level come true. Set that higher bar and then craft your Mission Statement to capture it in bold words. Words that will instruct your mind the only direction you are going to go from now on. Meaning becomes a mission becomes your mastery.
Just like Gucci who embeded their thinking into this – ‘To become the leader in the luxury market at a worldwide level’.
Life itself is a mission, so make the most of it and turn it into your statement. YOUR MISSION STATEMENT!!
Words are everything
They are how we communicate. How we get what we need, asking for help, connecting with others, and solving problems to mention but a few. Without them we would never understand each other. And, most telling, ourselves.
The words we speak have HUGE meaning. It’s not just what we say but how we say it.
And words have even helped bring down Governments and altered the balance of power. That’s precisely what happened in the UK at the end of the 1970’s.
In 1978 the British economy was struggling with over 1.6m people out of work. The ruling Labour government itself was struggling to stem the tide. The opposition Conservative party wanted to appeal to the nation in a big way to win back power as a General Election was predicted by 1979. It chose to employ the creative minds at the Saatchi & Saatchi agency to come up with a memorable campaign idea. They did this amazingly in a clever and brilliant reframing of words.
In an infamous poster and series of magazine ads they featured a long snaking line back into the distance of jobless people queuing for their dole (unemployment) money with the slogan ‘Labour isn’t working’. A stunning double meaning in one.
The result? The Tory party swept to power in 1979 with a 43 seat majority under Margaret Thatcher. The genius reframing of words also reframed the mentality of the public because we all think in words more than images. But with the two combined together, no-one could forget it.
Reframe for gain.
I am an avid runner. And runners often play the reframe game. Not to show off, but to encourage their inner thinking about their achievements and spur them on to even better results.
Recently my running club took a trip to Benidorm for their half marathon. It was humid and a tough little course and even though my time was decent it was a little way off my usual. But I was proud of it given the conditions and route so I happily announced to all who asked how I got on that ‘It was my International PB (Personal Best)’.
Sounds good, huh? Well, I had never ran an international event before so whatever my finishing time, it was bound to be a PB. But that’s the point. I reframed it to feel good about the result. It also fosters self-encouragement, and to harness determination to achieve faster on the next one abroad. No harm done and a win-win in mindset and spirit. It’s how many club runners roll.
And that’s how the reframing works. Its paints a different picture in your mind. To take situations and to reposition the outcome or scenario in a way that introduces the beneficial flip side out of it. Not to mention the fact that it might even drive you to what you should be doing anyway. Take a look below to see this at work.
How to reframe.
Here’s a couple of reframing examples for you that show you how it’s done.
- You have been turned down again for promotion. REFRAME – It’s proof that it’s time to recognise you are far more adept and talented than where you currently work, and now you are going to go after that dream career move you really want.
- Another wrong relationship ends. REFRAME – no longer will you date girls/guys just to have a partner, from now on it’s only the ones you are really attracted to that you haven’t had confidence to get to know before.
- Bank account all empty again at the end of the month. REFRAME – You are worth so much more as a person but first you are going to spend less on things that don’t matter and grow some investments with big goals at the end of them.
Effectively this is the turn around factor. Like the Conservatives turning around something bad (they were not in Government and the unemployment levels were growing) and making into some thing good for them, and soon after for the nation itself. You can mirror that too. At the same time you reset your words on a given situation, you will be resetting your mentality as well. The first automatically updates the second.
It’s said the mind plays tricks but it can also be tricked. Reframing is the trick to play. A winning trick.
Change the words, changes the thinking and perspective, And that changes your small beliefs into bright new elevated ones.
Reframing is retraining for gaining the good times back (and yes, a double meaning for my running intended!).
To boldly go where no man has gone before.
The words of Captain Kirk at the start of every episode of the original Star Trek.
His and his crew’s boldly would be to undertake a five year mission into the deepest uncharted areas of space to discover new worlds. A trek that had not been achieved before. While that is just a TV series, achieving the previously unachievable truly is mind over matter. Or anti-matter if you are on the Starship Enterprise.
Mount Everest stands 8,849 metres high. The highest mountain in the world. To date 7269 climbers have summited at the top of the world on the mountain. But, it wasn’t always this way. Prior to the first time it was conquered there had been some 14 expeditions that had attempted to reach the top but all failed. It was considered too difficult, too dangerous, and unachievable.
Then along came Edmund Hilary. He was having none of it. On May 1953 he achieved the unachievable and became the first person to successfully climb the highest peak above sea level on Earth.
People were amazed. He was asked many times not just how he did it but most of all, why. His immortal reply, ‘Because it was there’. The comment was in honour of British climber George Mallory who tried to mount Everest in 1924 but was never seen again. He had been asked the same question back then and gave the same and original response.
Why aim to achieve the unachievable in anything? Because it’s a personal belief that a) it is possible and b) that they are the person to do it.
Shoot for the Moon.
There is another famous belief quote from Norman Vincent Peale which goes, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars’, In short, have huge thinking and belief in it and yourself.
That was something flowing through a young student at Purdue University in Indiana, USA in the last 1940’s. A teacher had begun asking students gathered in class what they aimed to have as their career when they completed their studies. The usual replies (for the time) centred around becoming a bank manager, setting up a restaurant, opening a haulage business and other accepted ‘good living’ roles for the future such as lawyer or real estate agent.
Finally the question arrived at the young student. His reply…..
‘I’m going to land on the Moon’.
The class broke out into heaps of laughter. The other students ridiculed the young man and the teacher rounded it all off with the words….
‘Neil Armstrong, you have to learn that if you want to have any sensible future at all, you will need to come back down to Earth pretty quickly’.
Imagine hearing that. To most people this public humiliation would have ended their goal then and there. But not Neil Armstrong. In his mind that unachievable feat was very achievable. Just because 1940’s contemporary minds and technological know-how had felt it beyond human capabilities, Armstrong strongly believed it was only a matter of time in the years that followed that the answers would be found. And he was going to be right there involved so he could lead the way.
That school laughter turned to worldwide cheers and admiration when he touched down and walked on the Moon surface twenty years later. All that his mind felt true HAD come true. The unachievable to everyone, had been achieved as he said it would. As the old adage goes, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it’.
So, maybe it’s time you climbed your own metaphorical mountain in life. Or reached for your own moon.
Because that IS what achieve-meant!
PS; The story about Neil Armstrong was actually told to me AT Purdue University on one of my two visits.
