Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life (10 page)

Metaphors in several popular self-help books compare the mind to a fertile garden. The owner diligently uproots the occasional weed of negativity to replace it with a flower of positivity. New Age xylophones chime in the distance, hummingbirds flutter overhead, and readers everywhere reach for the stomach medicine.

In reality, we live in a complex, noisy world where negativity is all around. Controlling one’s state of mind is more than keeping up with the weeding. It is like defending ourselves against the venomous plants of John Wyndham’s 1951 novel,
The Day of the Triffids
.

When I was a child, those monsters terrified me. Whenever I think of negative media, that is what I imagine. For the uninitiated, triffids were tall plants with a deadly, whip-like, poisonous
sting that enabled them to paralyze their victims and feed on their rotting carcasses. Advertising agencies must love that image. The marketing manager’s sensational, 3-second headlines grab our attention, and hold us immobile while whatever message, subliminal or otherwise, is inserted into our neurons.

Everywhere you go, they lie in wait. Along the freeway, triffids crawl over advertisement boards to tell you how overweight you look today, how unattractive your bald patch, acne, or wrinkles appear, and how much better you would feel if you took out another high interest credit card for the joy of the reward points and to pay for the cosmetic makeover that you desperately need.

In the airport, they slither from television screens with messages of fear and doom. Behind newspaper stands, they spew out gloom about an economy on the brink of collapse while the rich, fat bankers escape. “Who in their right mind would go against the crowd and want to reinvent themselves in such a climate? What mad individual would think of starting a company now?” are the opinions you hear just after another great idea for a company of your own popped into your head.

In fact, as previously mentioned, sixteen of the thirty companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average were started during a recession. These include Procter & Gamble, Disney, Alcoa, McDonald’s, and Johnson & Johnson. After every recession, there is an upsurge in the pioneering spirit that is unique to America. I started my first company right in the middle of the 2001–2003 recession. There is no such thing as a bad time to start over.

When discussing the influences of media messaging with any group, I always get the same reaction. Everyone in the room knows what I am talking about. No one disagrees with me. Then, each person looks accusingly at everyone else. I can tell that each person thinks he or she is the only one immune to the influence. That is how we react to any form of propaganda. We
recognize that our enemies use propaganda against us, so we filter that out. We don’t expect propaganda to be coming at us from within our society, so we innocently let it in, and it can impact how we react as the next story shows:

Liverpool is a city of fewer than a million residents, but it boasts the eighth richest sports club in the world: their main soccer team. Soccer is like an elixir that runs through the veins of everyone.

A few years ago, a tabloid newspaper printed front-page photographs of a famous soccer player as he left an alleged brothel.

The day after the tabloid photographs, a local radio station ran a report in which two witnesses recounted having watched the soccer player and his fiancée arguing in a city center park. They told how the soccer player pleaded his innocence, but with front-page photograph in her hand, the girlfriend screamed accusations. In a gesture of anger, they said, she wrenched off her engagement ring and threw it into the flowerbeds.

That afternoon, the same radio station transmitted a live report from the park, where police had been called to quell a riot. After hearing the first bulletin, a crowd of enterprising locals, wielding spades, forks, and metal detectors, descended on the area. The flowerbeds were churned into a mud bath. Turf war broke out as, like pioneers in the Gold Rush, people staked claims to different patches of garden. A dozen victims were rushed to the hospital with head injuries from spade duels. One opportunistic youth relocated a bulldozer from a building site. He was arrested not just for the theft but for charging the others by the hour for his digging services.

Later, it emerged that the first bulletin had been severely edited. The reporter’s full story included the news that once the soccer player had left, the girlfriend returned to the park to retrieve her ring. The editor thought it an unnecessarily long piece of journalism, and cut the story off at the point the ring
was discarded. The radio station made a formal apology, but more than sixty budding entrepreneurs spent the night in jail.

No one is immune. I am suggesting that you be aware of the potential negative impact on your mentality of not controlling sensory input. Be selective. Remember, small changes in behavior produce big changes in outcome.

        Because we want to reduce the release of stress chemicals on our neurons, and almost all news stories are about something frightening and negative, avoid watching or listening as much as you can. You will be surprised to find that you still remain informed because it is impossible to escape completely. That is okay. What you are trying to avoid are the negative emotions that accompany the sensational headlines; if you find that you can’t switch off the channel, then at least mute the volume. After a few months, you will find this is liberating. Some people describe it as a weight being lifted from their shoulders. That is because they no longer have all that fear and anxiety increasing their stress levels, and destroying their neurons.

        Different things will be a source of fear for different people, so you have to be selective. For instance, if I see an advertisement today for a credit card, it does not bother me because I am no longer worried about debt. Twenty years ago, however, my internal stress reaction would have been very different when the emotions of debt were being spewed from the television. I had to learn to tune those out of my life.

        
Think about how you respond internally to certain types of commercials, and how that might impact your neurons. At the very least, mute the television and look away when any of those advertisements come on. Your life is at stake, so why risk it? For your favorite programs, use the DVR, and fast-forward through the commercials that might affect you.

        They are not all bad, of course, and many are pure entertainment. I always get a laugh out of the quack ones that sell miracle metal bracelets without ever making a medical claim. “I used to have arthritis and now would never be without my bracelet” or the countertop ovens that have such poor insulation “you can even boil up some vegetables just by placing a pan on the top.” The point again is to be selective; small changes in habit result in vast improvements in outcome.

        My favorites are the cigarette advertisements from the first half of the twentieth century. When advertising was unregulated, those companies could make any claim they wanted. “Seven out of ten doctors recommend our brand of cigarettes” is a classic. The best I ever saw was a magazine page that showed a cartoon drawing of a double-decker bus hurtling toward a naïve couple who smiled at us from the page, unaware that in just a few seconds they were to be crushed. The tagline was
Go on . . . have a smoke!
The inference was that we could get run over by a bus at any moment, so why not just enjoy oneself. Apart from the absurdity of it, what made me smile the most was that the advertisement did not favor any particular brand of tobacco. Smoke anything, it screamed . . . a chair leg, the bus exhaust . . . just smoke something before you die!

        We all know that people’s mentalities can be easily manipulated because we can see it in everyone else. The danger is we never see this same vulnerability in ourselves. If the knowledge that all network news and newspapers are merely tools of someone’s propaganda is news to you, start to read alternative versions of events as presented by independent journalists. Here are the two I follow most closely and recommend for their politically neutral and objective investigative journalism:

        
   John Pilger (
johnpilger.com
)
: Pilger has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous awards in the United States and Europe. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as the
Guardian
, the
Independent
, the
New York Times
, the
Los Angeles Times
, the
Mail
&
Guardian
(South Africa),
Aftonbladet
(Sweden), and
Il Manifesto
(Italy). He writes a regular column for the
New Statesman
, published in London. In 2001, he curated a major exhibition at the London Barbican,
Reporting the World: John Pilger’s Eyewitness Photographers
, a tribute to the great black-and-white photographers with whom he has worked. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize for “30 years of exposing injustice
and promoting human rights.” In 2009, he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. His latest film is
The War You Don’t See
(2010).

        
   
Greg Palast (
gregpalast.com
)
: He is the author of the
New York Times
and international best sellers,
The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
and
Armed Madhouse
. Palast is Patron of the Trinity College Philosophical Society, an honor previously held by Jonathan Swift and Oscar Wilde. Palast directed documentaries covering the US government’s largest racketeering case in history and the investigation of the
Exxon Valdez
disaster. He is the recipient of the George Orwell Courage in Journalism Prize for his television documentary,
Bush Family Fortunes
.

        Any time you catch yourself reading a sensational headline, make a point of retreating to the private mental place you have created. Force yourself to smile and contemplate that pleasant image or memory. It is essential to counter the energy drain that just occurred when you let something fearful into your mind.

        Do not pick up that gossip magazine at the grocery store checkout counter. Don’t read the cover headlines. Hard, isn’t it? Those gossip triffids screech the loudest, and they have you corralled into a small space with no escape. Those publishers pay a lot of money for that prime space. They are, however, poison to your state of mind. When you read the headline about that A-list actress who has put on the pounds, your mind triggers images and emotions about weight gain but not about
her—about
you
! The thought “weight gain” goes out into the universe, and guess what is coming back to you? If you slip up, quickly imagine something positive. Perhaps see yourself as the slim, fit, attractive person you desire to be. But it is so much easier on your mentality to avoid looking at those gossip magazines in the first place.

        Recently, I was sitting in a hotel lounge with a business associate. He watches television news avidly and, like many people, he believes that his favorite channel has no hidden agendas. We have had fun discussions about that. I point out that the owners of the channel are also one of the biggest manufacturers of war machinery and weapons in the world. He insists that if there were something to criticize about a certain foreign policy, the channel would do so. The fact that they never have and instead promote certain conflicts with catchy ticker headlines eludes him.