More than a decade, really. When I started writing this blog in 2006, my phone looked like this. Although that technology now seems hopelessly dated, I think the ideas about advertising to ourselves have held up pretty well. At that time it was often necessary to geek out a bit with our technology to make […]
This advertising method is one of the easiest you can possibly do–just print out a copy of your statement and place it someplace you will see it often. The article goes on to explore why we might still have resistance to doing something that easy to help ourselves achieve a goal.
TBYB!’s favorite way to deliver personal ads is to insert them in a slideshow that plays automatically somewhere in my life. I’m currently using a Roku screensaver to display my slideshow. Frankly the screensaver app is not even that great, but the fact that it shows in the room where we spend most of our time every day makes this a very effective delivery system for personal advertising.
Some interesting developments in the evolution of technology, positive feedback about personal marketing, and a good rest have motivated TBYB! to start publishing again on a more regular basis.
TBYB! has always been about the fight to resist corporate influence in our lives. Specifically, we’d like to wrest back control of–or at least participate in–the unconscious discourse in our own heads.
More than anything else, Take Back Your Brain! is a site about seizing your power to create the life you want. What is the desire that has been whispering to you for several months or years? I’ll bet you know what it is. Go ahead and write it down right now in a place where you’ll see it every day. Illustrate it if you can. Then let that “ad” encourage you to be a willing participant in whatever shows up for you next!
In my experience, regularly exposing yourself to any photos of you doing something you want to participate in more often, such as exercising, with normalize that activity and make it more likely to happen. However anything you can do to engineer your photo so it looks like the outcome you want to achieve is already true will make it even more powerful.
Steve’s “Belief Board” is hung on the wall in front of the desk where he works, so he exposes himself to the messages it contains for several hours every day. It’s in his field of vision, yet off to the side, so that it’s normally visible but not the focus of his conscious attention.
Several people have told me lately after discovering this site that they’re really excited about the potential of personal marketing so they’re going to start using Post-It notes to influence themselves. I’m very happy they’ve decided to try personal marketing and curious to learn about their results, but I always want to tell them that it works even better–much, much better–to use pictures.
Make sure to frame your ads as affirmative, rather than negative statements, and to include pictures if possible. Keep in mind that commercial advertising always seeks to emphasize benefits, and to tailor those benefits to the target demographic.
Lynn is a geek from Seattle, USA who is fond of electronic gadgets and is particularly interested in how they can be used to remind us to do things that are more interesting and important to us than going to meetings.