Youth and age... ya?

I was old when I was young
you were twenty-nine.
I remember well
my beard tickled
your breast
so close to mine.
I'm so much younger now
you are younger still.
My beard is gone
and so your hair
Infants in the womb
we start it all again.

Dreamkiller

You come to me with a plan, big or small, I'll shoot it down. It's not something I plan, or even want to do, I just do it. Reflex. In fact, I probably love your idea, and would love nothing more than to see it come about. I want the jeweler to make pretty things, the costumer to clothe the masses, and the healer to fix the world. Really.

I'm not naturally a cynic. I trained myself to this unintentionally. I've seen so many people with big, pretty ideas start, half-heartedly, hesitantly, maybe with some help here or help there... maybe... and then, nothing. Abandoned. So any positive emotion, any ideas or effort that I threw there way, abandoned as well. Selfish of me, no? But true. It's how I feel.

And if you're gonna walk away anyway, why should I give you something good?

But there it is, in that sentence. Presumption of failure. You're going to walk away, so why should I give you anything good. Thereby hangs the problem. I don't want you to walk away, I want you to build your million dollar sand castles, but I can't bring myself to believe you will.

I know you can. That's something else entirely. If your idea is so based on air and smoke that it stands about as much chance of happening as a combined Gingrich/Gore presidential bid, I don't feel anything at all. It's the ideas that have a chance, even a small one, that I'm afraid to invest more than the bleakest of emotions in.

So, knowing this, I should stop. And I will. Really.

Or so I hope. See, and here's the thing. I don't have big ideas. I'm a small picture guy, really. But I love big ideas, projects, I love being involved. But one can stand idealistic coitus interuptus only so long.

Regardless, I'll make a pledge: When I catch myself shooting you down, I'll stop. Maybe even apologize where I realize I might have done real damage.

That's a pledge to myself, really. It makes my life less too, knocking people down.

But here's a question for anyone who has ever faced my or anyone else's negativity about your ideas: Did that really stop you? It's a hard-ass world out there, and if something so small as my opinion stopped you, were you really dreaming big or just fantasizing?

Sales

I've been in sales as part of my income since somewhere around August of 1995. I've sold handmade items ranging from costuming to junk jewelry and I've always been pretty good at it. The interesting thing for me is that I really don't sell anything. I've never thought it was a good idea to try and talk someone into buying something that that they might now want. I've always thought of my sales style as one of holding a customers attention long enough that they come to realize that whatever item it is that's holding their attention is really something they want. I let the customer sell it to themselves, with a little song and dance to hold them their while they do it. The song and dance is service, assisting with trying things on or giving a litany of potentially interesting information, sometimes just telling them to take a walk around and see what else is around and giving them some places to go for comparison. Sure, they might find something else they like better but it is a rare customer who forgets the guy who told them what else was out there, potentially losing a specific sale. Maybe they don't buy from me today or ever, but at the least they'll bring their friends.

So I don't sell... or more to the point, I don't close sales. A nudge or two here and there, but no pressure. At least, not usually.

Times are lean, so the news media and everyone around me wants to persist in saying. Lean, lean, hungry... which leads to greed and to a loss of that perspective that I feel has served me so well over the years. I realized that this weekend when some of the customers were leaving me feeling wrung out and in some cases outright used... was I being used or was I using them? The two usually go hand in hand. If I need something from you, you have control over me, a lever, an in... Where if I can take or leave whatever it is you're offering and the same applies to you, then we're equals and can behave as such.

It's not so much sales or Capitalism that leads to evil, it's the sense that he who takes the money wins and he who spends the money loses that causes problems. Money is a means to an end, not a goal in and of itself. While the things I sell are not necessary to life, they should add to someone's happiness... if they don't, and if I know they potentially won't, it really behooves me to let that sale go. If they come back on their own, they'll be happier and so will I.

It never fails to make me smile to see someone proudly wearing something I sold, something I made, or even just a product that I'm affiliated with and proud of in its own right. I often see things that were made by one of my companies that I work with and know that I likely had nothing to do with the item in and of itself, but it makes me smile just to know that in some vague, peripheral way, I had something to do with that tiny increase in their overall happiness with life.

I'm writing this to remind myself. I feel like I've somewhat forgotten this, and instead of focusing on how I might make someone's day better, I've been letting the unhappy people make my day worse. I need the sales, it's true, and times are a little leaner and meaner than they have been. Still... it's not worth being unhappy, or the potential of buyer's remorse to try and break through the resistance that some people develop towards ever being happy with the money they spend.

Scott Adams

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/07/hypnosis.html

Just found this article today and found it a pretty clear and clean description of hypnosis. I had no idea that he was trained in hypnosis and find it very interesting that he uses some of those skills in creating his comic strip.

There's a lot in the article that I would say differently and his techniques for working with hypnotized subjects are very different from any I've chosen to use, but still totally worth reading.


Need to hypnotize someone soon. Feeling the bug. Anyone around Michigan tense and needing to take a quick trip somewhere's?