References include "ENOUGH" By John Naish
When I wrote my first book, Innerwealth, scientists estimated that we were being bombarded by 3,500 sales shots every day. Companies spent around $400 billion dollars a year on advertising, specifically, or generally aimed at you. Advert spots on TV had gone from 3,000 to 8,000 in Britain alone and TV chanels went from four to 123 over the previous two years. Six trillion business emails were sent that year, ten million spam emails were sent each day. It was estimated that in one year each "wired" human was confronting more information than they'd digested is in the sum total of the past 5,000 years.
Success came to those who could spend the essential billions of dollars to research neuromarketing and find out how to get past your BS radar.
I have two sons, they are both highly defensive toward this neauromarketing. One son stays away from the internet and spends as much time in nature as possible, even listening to audio books instead of the radio in the car. The other son, a highly skilled animator, is just plain skeptical and super retro. (a great defense against the information overload).
We're being bombarded with, what could justifyably be called, corrupt marketing people, the advertising industry's pure and simple objective is to get you to buy stuff, without thinking. In other words, get into your brain before you do.
This bombardment into the subconscious brain is really affecting us. In fact, information overload, such as spending huge amounts of time on facebook and watching TV can, according to studies conducted recently, be more deranging to the brain than cannabis. Smoking dope knocks around 4 IQ points off the average person, while information overload knocks more than ten off our IQ.
The most frightening part of this "media" assault on our "freedom" is that it's addictive and self induced. Clincial tests show that we're addicted to info gathering. In surveys conducted accross a wide range of people from all sorts of demographics, 80% of people want more information and yet, those are the same 80% who also claim their lives are overloaded with information. For example: health food information has never been as prolific and yet, we're eating less of it. Our appetite for information does not, for sure, result in application.
Multi-tasking is an information overload coping mechanism. It's a way to receive data, get information without application. Simply, in Chris Walker language, people aren't turning up and it's any wonder.
Turning up, or having presence, requires ORGANISATION. And with overloaded, advertising infiltrated, information addicted brains, that organisation has gone out the window.
It's been replaced by moments of clarity, peaking through clouds of emotional depressions, frustrations and drug or alochol induced "RESET" nights. Ever noticed that the morning after a huge bender your brain can't think and everything is happening in slow motion? That's like meditation on pills a RESET for overloaded brains.
To suggest that 50% of relationship problems can be traced back to "NOT TURNING UP" is, I think, an underestimation. From my work with people and their relationships worldwide, I'd say it's more like 80% of all relationship problems start because one or both parties are not turning up....
Business productivity is going down. And the reason? People are not turning up.... why?
First because relationships are getting harder and therefore infiltrating the mind space of a person who is meant to be focussed and happy, with worry, anxiety, sadness and in some cases depression. Very little work based disolusionment and lost ENGAGEMENT come as a result of much to do with work: Really, find a low engagement level at work and you'll find a person whose home life is twisted.
What's also been discovered is that we are getting bored faster. We're adapting to this new information supply and the high that comes from comprehension (opiate release is 100% conditional on finding new, not celebrating old, information)
You may have heard that the opposite to happiness is not unhappiness. It's boredom.
Well, boredom is becoming easier to find, because we've adapted to a noise level in our brain that demands information, even if, as is proven by every study done on the topic, we're not absorbing the information we're getting. All we want, at a deep subliminal level, is the opiate release that comes with new comprehension. It's in our DNA.
If boredom is becoming easier to find as we adapt to this deluge of information, so, it explains 99% of what doctors and psychologists are diagnosing as depression. Boredom is the opposite to happiness, hence, the unhappy people we meet daily, are not depressed, they're truly just adapted to the information highway, and not getting enough stimulation of that brain area that releases the "high."
There are four stimulants that also trigger a similar high. Food (includes drugs and alcohol), greed, sex and spirituality. So, there's an epidemic of consumption, like never before of "opiate producing food (i.e sugars, fats and salt) - drugs (common at every youth party and event), greed (the me, me, me Anthony Robins achieve or die model), sex (the average age of lost virginity now 12) and spirituality (people seeking the adrenal bliss that comes in yoga back bends and meditative escape)
The solution as I see it....
I'm a nature guy. I think what creates the body, heals the body. Nature.
I've used my life as one long experiment, dancing with shaman, yoga till death, meditated to enlightenment. I've had accupuncture needles shoved through my heart, had shiatsu until I screamed in pain and gone on diets that would make Bear Grylls puke. All of which, I now call, SIDE TRACKS.
What we're looking for is an ANTI BORDOM, information gathering, mind control process that, at the end of the day, gives us presence in life, in other words, the shortest path to happiness available.
Step 1. It's not the gathering of knowledge that gives us a high, it's the organisation and application of it that stimulates the opiate. Organise....... and remember, disorganised knowledge leads to confusion.
Step 2. Make turning up at work, home, love, kids and life your 100% highest priority. Even go so far as to turn up in the future you vision. That's one of the most important elements of a vision quest that really works. You actually paint a picture of the future and feel, experience and witness yourself being there as if it were right now.
Step 3. Learn the art of dealing with emotion. Emotions are never, ever, never, ever, ever, never, turned up. 200% of all emotion is either in the past or the future. Emotionless is stoic -- that's horrible. Synthesising all your emotions can turn them into love and inspiration. So, learn the process of emotional management that causes love and inspiration to flow. That's called presence.
Step 4. Spend more and more time in nature. Neoruomarketing, has worked out that we make choices in our subconscious brain long before we start to use our conscious brain. Hence, triggers, brands, environments "talk" to us long before we've even begun to debate our choices and their benefit. That time in nature is a RESET button and does not involve listening to the ipod, throwing stones in a pond. You have to know how to TURN Up in Nature too...
THE IMPORTANCE OF TURNING UP
Well for a start it's the only real way to protect your privac. Your independence, intuition and subconscious are now highly penetrated by advertisers and persuaders and so, thinking your way through a circumstance is fraught with potholes. It's nearly impossible to know what you really think, we can only think that we think. It's getting harder to know if you think what you think, or only thought you thought what you think. People are messing with your brain and TURNING UP is the only real way to regain authentic contact with your true self.
As important as regaining contact with your true self, is regaining contact with other people's true self. Me might want to communicate, but what if the neuromarketers have penetrated the minds of those you love and lead? How do you get through that maze to have a meaningful relationship with them? The answer is, by turning up.
If you turn up, I mean really turn up inspired, all the masks people wear become transparent. Their subconscious and conscious thoughts become a thin cloud and at least you understand that their thoughts, words and ideas are not really who they are behind those subconscious veils. You must remember that 99.999% of people only think that they think... neuromarketing of religion, values, politics and products does the rest.
THE ANTIDOTE IS NATURE
Getting out, away from the TV, the ipod, the iphone, the ipad, the ipoo, the ipee, the iwish, is becoming, not a luxury, but a necessity.
Separate yourself from your digital world for an hour each day
Get into nature and try to connect with it each day by doing something that takes your breath away... literally.... (flush out your brain)
Read books on the topic you love (focus your reading on learning one subject well) Read book summaries, instead of books.
Treat every moment as a challenge to turn up mind, body and spirit....
Cut down the emotion, work out what emotions you want. Don't buy into other people's stuff.
