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 – Spirituality.
The world used to be a more religious place. Religion played a regular part in the majority’s lives week in week out. But that has been on the wane as spirituality has seen a huge upswing in popularity. And that’s why this week at SuperMind Thinking we’re going to take a good mental look at it.
- Religion meant followers believed in a heavenly idol that was worshiped as it saw over our lives. Spirituality though supports a different notion. We are spiritual beings who carry special gifts and came to Earth to use them. If that is true, why have we been given these abilities rather than God?
- Under the spirituality banner comes everything from the spirit world to tarot, angel therapy to past lives. Is it all becoming kooky or are there one or two key truths to focus on with spirituality?
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once said, ‘We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience’. So this week’s big question. What experience ARE we all having in living as mortal beings?
- Thought – spirituality is a change in what we believe from years gone by, so perhaps it is really just another step in human development of our minds and psyche rather than some mystical understanding in us. What say you?
- Spirituality revolves around the belief that there are other unseen worlds beyond this mortal one and other powers we possess other than our physical ones. What if this were true? Why did we never know before? Why at this point in time are we now becoming more aware of this?
Another great SuperMind Saturday. Thank you for being here for the Saturday SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power. Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let’s work the SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
You’ve got a problem. A pretty sizeable one.
Regular wisdom would teach the answers lie in tried and tested approaches. Time honoured proven routes to turning things around. Stay sensible, play safe, look at the pros and cons, work out the bottom line and start there, that kind of thing.
Now these no risk trouble shooters may indeed get you out of trouble. The flip side is that they keep the wolf from the door in the short term, but longer term gains are never usually found in that strategy.
What is needed is a braver approach. A more radical game plan. A counterintuitive one.
Take the video rental business Blockbuster. In the 1980’s as the video business boomed their profits rocketed. But as the decade wore on profits began to reduce as the business stalled. A fresh promotional campaign was required. And that’s exactly what they came up with which seemed like they were shooting themselves in the foot.
Originally offering overnight video rental for £4.99 on average, they decided to offer THREE films for £10.00. A saving of nearly £5 or 33% for the customer on the top titles. Surely it was crazy as now customers could effectively watch an extra film for the same price as before. That would kill their income. But they knew differently, and knew a little but more about psychology it seems.
Give Them What They Want.
Blockbusters were convinced that the offer would encourage people to get together as friends, couples, and families and ‘make a night of it’. Where someone had previously intended to grab the latest hit movie, they never really got round to it. Now the offer was too good to miss. Gather the gang and celebrate over a video. Or three.
But what about the lost revenue from the extra giveaway video?
They had that covered too. Their counterintuitive reasoning was spot on. By turning it into a big night in folks also ordered in food and drinks and enjoyed home style party nights. And when that happens you watch a film, then you get the food and eat that, washed down with some soda or Coke, and you getting chatting and enjoying each other’s company.
And guess what that means? You never actually watch that third video. So what do you do? You take out the offer another time and start all over again. You pay the same £10 and by the way while you are at the store you see offers on snacks and chocolate and drinks, so you heave them all into your basket too as hell, easier to get it all in one go in one place, right?
The chief approach was to give the public what it wants, but in a way it sits up and takes notice on how it gets it. This counterintuitive idea to grow the Blockbusters brand worked a treat as one video rental had turned into 5 or 6.
Why? Because it wasn’t just the regular weekly customers who jumped at the chance to see 3 titles for a smaller charge. Added to that the infrequent customers became more active and wanted a slice of the pie too upping their rental activity. And finally new customers, not really movie watchers at home, were also drawn into participating as they had heard about the buzz and the bargains and got curious.
Zag while others Zig.
To gain big dividends means thinking what others aren’t. Others who are following the normal formulas. The ‘stay-in-the-box’ believers’
In 1982 Levi’s ran a highly lucrative advertising campaign about being different. When jeans were being synonymously associated with being blue, they brought out jeans that were black. In a serious of ads featuring this new look to denim they added the famous strapline, ‘When the world zigs, zag’. It created roaring trade for what had been a slowly dying brand. The ads eventually had to be taken off air as they could no longer meet the sky high demand.
Levi’s like Blockbusters took the counterintuitive road to glory.
They did the very opposite to what was seen as sensible or sane or even realistic.
If you have a similar challenge in your life or business, group or sports club, then why don’t you zag a little bit more with your thinking and ideas.
Because who ever said jeans have to be blue and that videos have to be rented one at a time?
Only those who never reaped the big dividends!
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 – death.
If there is one thing guaranteed for all of us on this planet, it’s that we will die. No-one leaves the Earth alive. Now that should make us appreciate life. But no. It’s the very opposite as most people are bothered about, and plain scared of death. So, this week on SuperMind Saturday let’s take a mental look at the grim reaper’s end game.
- The author Mark Twain said, ‘The fear of death follows from the fear of life’. He suggests that we are scared to die because we haven’t done enough with our life. Is death, then, merely a fear of having not lived sufficiently or meaningfully?
- Thought – maybe we are not so scared of dying but HOW we will die. That the reason for our death is horrible or painful with suffering and not simply just slipping away at an old age.
- If there was no death perhaps we would all go mad as life just doesn’t stop, there is no end point. We might not be able to take situations that just go on forever. Could death actually be a means to encourage us to love, create, connect, give and the like as we only have a finite time?
- We have birthdays to mark the start of life and celebrate them every year. But the day someone dies is more sombre. Why can’t we have a yearly commemoration day on the day they passed away to equally celebrate them being in our lives and who they were? What are your thoughts?
- Death, the final curtain. And so it all ends. That is the popular view. But that view and the word death conjures up all manner of dread. As we can’t alter this ultimate outcome for all of us wouldn’t it be better to promote another word that defines when our mortal life ceases. What word would be more calming and less panicky that we could all use instead in death’s place?
That’s it this week my friends. Thank you for being here for the Saturday SuperMind time. Keep asking yourself these through the week to open up more of your mind to evolve its untapped power. Consider more, reflect more, think more, activate your connection to your personal mind more. Let’s work the SuperMInd and Super Think!
See you next time for more super thinking.
Have you ever said that famous phrase about chance and luck?
You know the one when you hear about a big lottery jackpot going begging this week? Or that some downright gorgeous celebrity is single again and looking for a partner?
As soon as you hear about either you say the immortal words, ‘Chance would be a fine thing’. A kind of spell wishing it could happen to you because, well chances are, it won’t. Nor ever will.
Or will it???
Alistair from Bishopbriggs near Glasgow was elated to welcome his new baby and first child with his wife Sally-Anne on what was a very special day. It was special because that day was Christmas Day. And what made it even more super special was that the couple’s surname WAS Christmas. What are the chances of that? A baby for Mr and Mrs Christmas on Christmas Day itself?
Well, the odds of that happening were calculated at over 3 million to one and as such the story made the BBC national Christmas night news that evening in the UK in 1993.
That’s how chance works. It exists everywhere all the time but we are so focused on the odds of some random or amazing event even existing at all, we dismiss it as weird, a freak, or unrepeatable. Yet chance turns up again and again if you start looking for it.
Getting in the swing.
Fancy a round of golf? If you do, like most golfers you would dream of hitting a hole in one. The chances of that are around 12,500 to 1. Or in other terms, you would have to play every single day for over 34 years to be in with a chance of sinking one. The odds seem stacked against you. So just imagine being a pro and competing against the toughest courses and opponents each week.
Not a problem for English golfer Dale Whitnell who this February hit not just one, but two, hole in ones in the SAME round at The South African Open in Durban. He had never previously achieved a single hole in one in all his life until that point.
The combined odds of this feat according to the National Hole-In-One Registry? Wait for it! 67Million to One. And yet it happened. Chance would be a fine thing hey!!
Call it serendipity. Call it a fluke. Call it a stroke of luck. Call it the law of averages that it would happen one day. Call it what you like but the chances of anything happening increases because there are those who are prepared to believe and try. And that’s where most of ALL of the inventions ever created by humans on this planet from the motor car to the mobile phone to cures for disease have originated from.
Studies have shown that the calculated chance of landing a man on the Moon back in the early 60’s was a minute 0.0017%. Yet it was achieved in under a decade because President Kennedy believed it was possible. In turn NASA minds, previously convinced it could never be achieved, set about super thinking to make that belief come true. As you know, it sure did. And guess what? They even played golf up there!!!
Chances are, you see, that what we CAN do far outweighs anything we can’t. If you believe enough, and turn your mind to it, YOUR moon is in reach too. If you chance it, that is.
Then chance would be a very fine thing indeed!!
There is a well known wisdom about belief and proof.
It says that ‘For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible’.
That is quite true. Belief and its resulting proof is a personal thing. What one person sees as clear and obvious proof, another can’t recognise or accept at all. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but proof is in the mind of the believer.
A little example to reflect this.
In my years of writing I have read countless books, blogs, social media posts etc and have come across the concept of CANI a number of times. CANI is short for Constant And Neverending Improvement. The ideology behind it is that we can and should always be looking to improve, get better, evolve key areas of our life and self through slight but ongoing measurable steps in advancement. In short, never stop working, trying, pushing to upgrade.
But also on my radar over the years was another concept – IKIGAI. This is a Japanese term which means ‘reason for living’. Its basis is to find a personal passion, often simple in nature, that delivers purpose and joy. It teaches about going within to find the core fundamentals of yourself.
CANI – keep developing and seeking improvement.
IKIGAI – discover what makes you feel alive and just enjoy it.
Two belief systems advocating different directives for living.
Who is right, who is wrong?
Both of the above have fans and devotees. Both could cite, quite rightly, proof that their system by which to live is the way for us all to live. This would be held up by the sheer number of others who agree with the principles and show that they happily/successfully live by them (likes/shares/follows/comments).
Now this is not hard in our modern world. With a 24 hours, 365 days per year, permanent internet available around the globe with social media pages and groups on almost any subject, it’s never difficult to connect with enough others interested in the same subject as you.
I undertook a very brief experiment while writing this blog post – in the space of 10 minutes I came across groups and communities who believed that Elvis Presley is still alive. there is a Loch Ness Monster, the best dogs are Dachshunds, starvation diets are good for health, that NASA are working with aliens, and all manner of religious denominations and conspiracy theories, all with thousands of fans and more. All who could equally argue that this ‘proves’ their belief is correct.
So, who is right and who is wrong?
Well if there is one truth it’s the paradox that there isn’t one truth. There are many. And the ones we each individually believe and live by are personal to us even if a few other humans on the planet get that too. They aren’t right anymore than you are wrong if you believe otherwise.
The real right and wrong would be to believe that finding examples of what you believe anywhere means the proof is out there. It’s right as a human to feel you are not alone in believing what you do. It’s wrong (in my view) to search for so called proof to make yourself feel better about it, or to prove others wrong.
What you believe, you believe, and that’s it. And I believe it’s everyone right to be able to think that way too.
But, you don’t have to believe me, do you???
