Take Back Your Brain!

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can advertise more publicly for our goals since seeing all of the highway signs I wrote about in Road trip: Adopt a highway.

I’ve been experimenting with wearing a T-shirt that has a picture of a hike I want to do in a couple of years, and have found that it’s a great way to prompt others to ask me about that goal. I also use my refrigerator for public advertising at home. (Note of caution to significant others…that works! :) )

Alerting the people around you to your goals has many positive benefits:

• Someone else now holds the idea of you doing this thing in their mind, in addition to you.
• They are likely to ask you about it, which gives you an opportunity to talk about your goal.
• It creates the opportunity for them to inform you about resources they know about and offer other forms of support.
• It activates the psychological principle of consistency.

Postage stamps with a custom picture on them are a great way to activate all of these benefits, especially at a time of year when many of us correspond with people we care about, and who care about us. (Sorry I’m telling you about this a little too late to implement the idea on your holiday cards, but what if you sent out your thank you notes stamped with a picture of you doing your #1 goal for 2008?)

Where to get custom stamps

Here are a couple of the most popular places to order custom postage stamps online:

PhotoStamps

PhotoStamps - has very clean, easy interface. Upload a photo from your computer and use online tools to rotate, zoom and add whimsical borders.

The stamps are a little expensive - at 84 cents each (for 40 or more) they are a little over twice the price of a normal first class stamp - but depending on your goal the opportunity to advertise about it to everyone you know may be a bargain.

Zazzle

Zazzle - If you have a Flickr account, Zazzle is the way to go. Zazzle will put photos from your Flickr account on stamps and all kinds of other useful schwag. It can also upload a photo directly from your computer, if you prefer.

Once you’ve chosen a photo you can add a text message to it, with lots of options for changing font, size, alignment, etc. This is a great opportunity to add a headline - especially one that uses the kind of powerful persuasive language I described in Punch up your headline with Phrases that Sell. The photo above is the same one I used to develop the ad in Write a headline for your cell phone ad, with the addition of a better headline.

Prices are a little better at Zazzle - as little as 14.95 for one sheet of 20 first class stamps (74 cents each), a couple of bucks less per sheet if you buy more. They also have free shipping with if you order 3 sheets or more.

What picture should I put on the stamps?

Any goal that it would be helpful to have the people around you believing in along with you is a good candidate for your stamps: a trip, a challenging adventure, a graduation, a marathon, a home, a job, an RV.

Ideally the image will be a picture with you in it, already living your #1 goal. See the Put yourself in the picture series for some great tips about how create a photo of yourself inhabiting your future reality now. Seeing yourself already doing it is powerful stuff, all the more so when you invite others to join you in that vision!

Related articles

• Road trip: Adopt a highway
• How I got an RV with my most successful ad campaign
• Get the t-shirt
• Punch up your headline with Phrases that Sell
• Put yourself in the picture with Photoshop
• Put yourself in the picture to get a job
• Put yourself in the picture
• Use ads to focus on the outcome you want
• The psychology of persuasion - consistency
• Refrigerator makeover update: who could say no to that face?
• Extreme makeover - refrigerator edition
• Advertise your way to paradise