Photos
Dr. Kalinda Rose Stevenson
Conscious Gift Giving During The Shopping Trance Season: Part II.
Welcome back!
“Giving Because You Have To”
Have you finished your holiday shopping? If you still “have to” buy presents for family, friends, and co-workers, I want to ask a radical question. Do you really “have to” buy these gifts?
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”
Nursery Rhyme
I understand the intended point of this old nursery rhyme. What people say can have no power over you unless you allow it. And yet, taken another way, the nursery rhyme is completely untrue. Words do hurt you.
I truly believe that one of the most liberating actions anyone can take is to be aware of language. The words you use shape your life in powerful ways. You really can change your world by changing the words you use. When you pay attention to your words and the words of those around you, you might be surprised at what you hear.
If you listen, you will discover that most of the language you hear is language of weakness rather than strength. Most people speak in ways that are guaranteed to rob themselves of power and choice. You can hear it especially at this time of the year, when people rush to and fro, driven by the language of “have to” rather than the language of choice.
In this season that I am calling the shopping trance season, you can change your experience of the holiday season by making a conscious choice to substitute the phrase, “I choose to” for the phrase, “I have to.”
You can use the writer’s research technique of going to the mall, not to shop, but to listen to what people say, to hear their words and their rhythms. At this time of the year, if you listen, you will hear people talking incessantly about what they “have to” do.
Try it with yourself. Put your attention on what you say to yourself and to others. Pick one person on your shopping list, and say out loud, “I have to buy a present for______.” (You fill in the blank.) Pay attention to how you feel when you say this. Now change the language. “I choose to buy a present for __________.” Pay attention the thoughts that come rushing into your mind.
I have already written that I regard the word “should” as one of the least helpful words in the English language (October 18, 2005.) “Have to” and its partner in crime “must” go beyond the idea of “should.” “Have to” moves you from expectation to obligation. With the language of “have to,” you not only “should” buy presents, you are obligated to buy them.
Let’s go back to the idea of hypnosis.
“The entire holiday shopping season demonstrates mass hypnosis, when skilled marketers poke our emotional buttons and tug at our deepest longings.”
Kalinda Rose Stevenson
The biggest fear people have about hypnosis is that they will lose control, and be forced to do what they don’t want to do. Yet, consider what happens when millions of people go to the mall each year for the sole purpose of buying presents for a long list of people because they think they “have to” buy presents for them. This truly is hypnosis at work.
Under the power of “have to,” the shopping trance season is not simply a gift giving season. It is a season of obligatory gift giving.
First, you have family obligations. Depending on your family, it might mean that you “have to” buy for everyone in the family. Or maybe your family puts names into the hat and draw names, so you only “have to” buy one big gift for one person rather than a slew of small gifts for everyone.
People feel obligated to buy for their families, even for family members they don’t see throughout the rest of the year. The need to buy for people without knowing what they like or want spawns unwanted gifts of neckties that the recipient would drop dead rather than wear and perfume strong enough to stop a skunk in its tracks.
Then there are work and social and business obligations. Do you “have to” buy a gift for a holiday office party? Do you “have to” buy a gift for your hairdresser, the news paper carrier, the staff at the doctor’s office? The list goes on and on. What about a gift for your child’s teacher? And if you are in business, do you “have to” buy gifts for your clients?
Obligatory giving has created an entire industry devoted to providing “appropriate” presents for people you don’t really know, or the person “who has everything,” or worse, the person you don’t like, but “have to” remember at Christmas.
What do you give to someone you barely know when you “have to” give? How about a fruitcake? Or maybe a gift basket filled with Harry and David fruit, or a bottle of Napa Valley wine with some Sonoma cheese? Or depending on your budget, you could buy Sees Chocolates or Godiva Chocolates or a Whitman’s Sampler from the drug store.
This type of gift giving can lead to interesting situations, when you give the bottle of Merlot to the recovering alcoholic, the chocolate-covered cherries to the person with a lifetime membership in Weight Watchers, and the fruitcake to the strict Atkins lo-carb dieter.
Mostly it means buying completely forgettable gifts at high cost for people you barely know, all because you think you “have to” give a gift at Christmas. To which I respond, “Bah Humbug!” No wonder Scrooge was in such a bad mood. Who wants to be manipulated into giving?
“If you are living out of a sense of obligation, you are slave.”
Wayne Dyer
How much of the stress of the holidays comes from your reaction to the burden of obligatory giving? Giving because you “have to” give is not gift giving at all. It is a payoff to satisfy an obligation.
An abundant life is a conscious life. If there is one conscious choice I would urge you to make during this gift giving and gift buying season, it is to be conscious of your language about giving gifts.
If you are feeling stressed by the insistent demand to go out and buy gifts for people because you “have to” buy them, I urge you to take the completely radical step of sitting down and asking yourself if you would buy the same gifts for these same people as a matter of choice. If gift giving is truly is a matter of choice, then use the language of choice rather than obligation. Say that you “choose to give” and do your shopping and gift giving joyously.
On the other hand, if you realize that you really don’t want to buy any of this stuff for any of these people, you have discovered an awareness that can set you free from the demands of the shopping trance season.
In either case, changing your own language from the language of obligation to the language of choice, from “have to” to “choose to,” will set you free to live an “Abundantly Alive Now!” life.
This article was originally published December 6, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-12-06.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Related posts
Conscious Gift Giving During The Shopping Trance Season: Part I
“Going Into The Red On Black Friday”
“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons.
It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store?
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?”
Dr. Seuss
Did you go shopping on Black Friday? Did you get up before dawn? Did you stand in a long line outside a shopping mall waiting for the doors to open at six A.M. for the Early Bird specials? Did you buy anything? Did you charge more than you can pay off when the credit card bill comes due? Maybe you didn’t do it, but millions of shoppers did.
The day after Thanksgiving is called Black Friday in the retail world.
“Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. Many consider it the “official” beginning to the holiday season. Most retailers will open very early.
Black friday is the day many retailers are thought to become profitable. Businesses once recorded losses in red ink and gains in black, hence the name. The tradition lives on in modern accounting software, even though the original reason – telling at a glance which handwritten notes represented gains and which represented losses – is obviously no longer an issue. However, employees of retail stores have for years used the term in a satirical way, to note the extremely stressful and hectic nature of the day.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday
On the day after Thanksgiving, merchants enticed shoppers with Early Bird specials, and promises of discounts and super deals. And the shoppers came in swarms, as they do every year. While the merchants go into the black, millions of shoppers go into the red as they hand over credit cards to buy mounds of stuff. Merchant profit is the result of consumer debt.
The question is, Why? What causes people to get up before dawn on a cold November morning, to stand in long lines outside shopping malls, waiting for the doors to open for Early Bird specials? What causes them to go into debt to buy gifts they cannot afford? Ask them and they will tell you that they are smart shoppers waiting to snatch up bargains.
But something much more powerful is at work on Black Friday than simply making good deals.
One thing I know to be true is that awareness is the pathway to abundance. An abundant life is a conscious life.
Yet, the holiday shopping season does more to plunge us into a collective state of non-conscious trance-like behavior than any other season of the year. Holiday shopping demonstrates a kind mass hypnosis afflicting millions of people, causing people to go out and buy and buy and buy, even if it means going deeply in debt to do it.
Here is an image for you. Imagine a gigantic puppet show, and millions of holiday shoppers dancing on strings manipulated by hidden puppeteers. Through powerful marketing, merchants created the modern shopping extravaganza that used to be called Christmas and now has morphed into a season called the Winter Holidays, a strange amalgam of Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanza, and the hybrid called Chrismukkah.
“Chrismukkah is the merging of the holiday of Christmas and Hanukkah celebrated in interfaith households with one parent of Christian heritage and another parent of Jewish heritage.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrismukkah
Who knows if American Muslim children will at some point have a uniquely Christmas-type gift giving celebration during the winter holidays? Whatever happens, the merchants will be on the front line offering gifts for sale, turning spiritual traditions into shopping occasions.
“From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it.”
Katherine Whitehorn
My point is that a spiritual tradition, Christmas, which was itself rooted in an old winter solstice celebration with pagan roots, has become the occasion for the merchants to create an equal opportunity extravaganza of gift giving.
Now, before I go any further, I want to make clear that I really do like the holiday season. I love Christmas trees, and Christmas presents, and Christmas with my family. I even enjoy shopping for Christmas presents at the mall. I am also very aware how easy it is to be manipulated by powerful images and suggestions about the need to go out and buy “stuff” for the holidays.
I have studied hypnosis, and even hold a certificate as a certified hypnotist, although I don’t practice professionally and don’t claim to be very accomplished. I do know enough about hypnosis to understand that hypnosis is not mumbo jumbo. Hypnosis involves careful use of suggestive language. People are not really controlled by hypnosis to do anything contrary to their own will.
You might not consider yourself hypnotized, but I can assure you of this. The marketers are as skillful as the most skilful hypnotists. They understand how to use words and images to persuade you. They understand how to evoke images and feelings.
The marketers know how to tap into the most primal human emotions of belonging, family, warmth, and love. They spend millions of dollars in advertising to conjure up images of the deepest longings of our hearts. They tell us that we will be loved, we will belong, we will be happy if we buy their stuff.
“Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special! How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer conglomerates. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously? It’s a beautiful world all right.”
Bill Watterson
The entire holiday shopping season demonstrates mass hypnosis, when skilled marketers poke our emotional buttons and tug at our deepest longings. The marketers appeal to iconic images of happy families gathered around the warmth of the hearth and the glittering Christmas tree. They know what they are doing when they show pictures of loving families basking in the warm glow of firelight, giving and receiving presents with heart-warming smiles.
The images convey the clear hypnotic suggestion that you too can have all of this warmth and love if you just pull out the credit card and buy more and more presents. This trance suggestion is induced by powerful marketing beamed into our TVs and on the pages of every newspaper and glossy magazine. The messages surround us, telling us to buy, buy, buy so that we too can be happy and loved.
If you prefer, you can call it marketing instead of hypnosis. The truth is that the marketers know what they are doing. And they spend millions of dollars to convince you that the way to happiness runs directly through the shopping mall.
All of this is hypnosis and you and I are sitting ducks for the power of these suggestions unless we become consciously aware of the fact that the marketers have put us into trance.
Even in the ChristmasHanukkahKwanzaChrismukkah shopping season, it is possible to wake up from the trance and give consciously from an awareness of abundance. The first step is to recognize the power of the trance and decide to give gifts because you choose to, not because you are hypnotized to shop.
This article was originally published November 29, 2005.
http://www.abundantlyalivenow.com/archive/AANN-2005-11-29.htm
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Related posts
Are Seminars Dangerous to Your Business Success?
Are seminars a powerful catalyst for business success? Or are seminars an entrepreneurial addiction that prevents success?
At their best, seminars are powerful catalysts for success. Especially for online entrepreneurs who spend much of their time working in solitary confinement in front of a computer, a seminar is a window to a larger world. At a seminar, you can meet other entrepreneurs. You can find joint venture partners. You can discover new and exciting technology. Some of the most successful online entrepreneurs claim that attending seminars was the most significant breakthrough factor in their success.
At the same time, the same qualities that can make seminars such catalysts for entrepreneurial success can also sabotage your business. The problem lies in the essential nature of entrepreneurs.
In his description of the E-Myth, Michael Gerber has taught us to think of three functions, often residing within the same person: the visionary, the manager, and the technician.
When a visionary entrepreneur attends a seminar, the experience is much like a child being set free in a toy store. The visionary entrepreneur gets new ideas, new contacts, and visions of new possibilities. The experience is wonderfully energizing.
The challenge is that a successful business needs more than an entrepreneur excited with new visions. Massive success results from focused and sustained action on the primary vision of the business. And this is where seminars can be the downfall of the entrepreneur. An endless stream of seminars, with their hot new technologies, new contacts, and new possibilities, can become an addiction for the entrepreneur who loves the excitement of new ideas.
One seminar can ignite new visions and possibilities. Multiple seminars can create so many visions and possibilities that the visionary entrepreneur keeps bouncing from one exciting new idea to the next, never maintaining focus long enough to turn any of the visions into reality.
Business success requires steady and disciplined focus to translate the exciting vision into measurable reality. In other words, the entrepreneur needs to go to work on the vision of the business, not come up with new ideas.
This entrepreneurial addiction to new ideas and the heady atmosphere of seminars is very real to me. I have just returned from yet another seminar. During the seminar, my mind was focused on exciting possibilities. At the same time, attending the seminar meant a four-day distraction from work on my business.
It happens every time I go off to another seminar. I lose momentum and lose track of what I was doing. I come back with new ideas, but the truth is, I don’t need new ideas as much as I need focused attention on the core vision of my business.
The most basic business question is the one that is hardest for many entrepreneurs to answer: “What business are you in?” Many entrepreneurs don’t know what business they are in because they keep bouncing from one hot new idea to the next. And since they don’t know what business they are in, they cannot be known for that business.
Having a clear core vision of your business is what will set you apart from other energetic entrepreneurs with more ideas than follow-through. Continual loss of focus on the core vision is the real casualty of too many seminars.
It is much like my son’s soccer team when he first started to play as a young child. Before the children learned positioning and strategy, they all moved as a group, chasing the ball up and down the field. As they learned to play the game, they learned to hold their positions and let the ball come toward them.
Success in business is much like success on the soccer field. It is not a matter of chasing the ball all over the field. It is impossible to maintain focus while bouncing from visionary idea to visionary idea. It is a matter of knowing your position, having a strategy, and maintaining focus on the object of the game.
And so are seminars powerful catalysts for business success or distracting addictions that prevent success? Seminars can be catalysts or they can be distractions. The critical difference hinges on your ability maintain focus on your core business vision.
WARNING: BEFORE YOU INVEST IN REAL ESTATE…
FREE “No Money Limits Consumer Guide to Real Estate Investor Training.”
www.nomoneylimits.com
© 2005 Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Debt or Alive, Inc.
2248 Meridian Blvd. Suite H
Minden, NV 89423
Related posts
Syndicate
Subscribe to this site's RSS feed.