Image by markhillary via Flickr
There is something about the human mind that is very irrational. It has been proven over and over that humans are irrationals, hard to believe but true. A person can do something that seems logical to him but that is completely irrational for everybody else. There are hundreds of examples you can see all around you. When it comes to business, the irrational decisions you make will directly impact your business.
For example, if somebody were to offer to give you $75 per day with no strings attached and he was able to prove to you that he meant it, that there was no reason for him not to give you that money, that for whatever reason he wanted to do it and he was willing to sign a contract to prove it…
Would you take it?
Most people would say no, simply because we intuitively think that there has to be something wrong with the deal, that if “it looks too good to be true, it probably is”. As a non-native English speaker, I always struggled with that phrase. I understood it to mean the following:
”If it looks too good to be true… it probably is true”
I couldn’t understand why people used that phrase to justify their fears about deals, business propositions and plain scams. The purpose of this post is not to talk about scams, the purpose is to talk about the human mind and how it affects your business.
Men are naturally inclined to keep an eye on each other, making sure no one takes advantage of them. We are hard wired that way, just like many other mammals…
Have you ever seen what happens when you throw a loaf of bread into a group of doves? Contrary to what you may expect, the doves will actually leave the bread alone until one of the doves tries it out first. Then… it becomes a bread eating frency, every dove fighting for the loaf themselves. The other possibility is that no dove even touches it. You see, most doves are so used to eating bread crumbs that when they see a whole loaf of bread it doesn’t even register in their vision field.
Now if you try throwing just a bread crumb to a group of doves, then it’s instant frency. All the doves will try to fight for that crumb as if their lives depended on it. That’s the scarcity mindset embedded into doves.
My point is that scarcity is embedded into the human brain as well and we don’t think clearly when we believe we are in a scarce situation.
Now, going back to my $75 a day for free – if someone offered to make you $100 per day but wanted to keep $25 of that $100 – would you accept it?
Pay attention to your feelings at this moment, do you have a feeling that you are losing $25 or do you feel like someone is giving you $75 for free?
That’s the key to this story, there are 2 ways of seeing this situation, the glass is either half empty or half full. The way you feel about this example determines the type of business deals you feel comfortable engaging in. If somebody came to you with a business proposition like this one, to create a new source of income for your business, to improve or double an area of your business, and he wanted a piece of the increased profits – how would you feel?
If you concentrate on the glass being half full or in making that $75 you didn’t have before, you feel like you are winning. If you concentrate on the $25 you are giving away from your future profits, you feel like a loser.
Sadly many people chose to take the loser point of view, feeling at loss for the money they didn’t even make yet. So they feel the lack of something they already lack, and the scarcity mindset is the reason they do. The scarcity mentality locks you into a paranoid state of defense that stops you from receiving what’s already yours. If you fight to keep something that you don’t have, you let your imagination run in the wrong direction.
In 1992, brain scientist discovered what they call the mirror neuron, these are neurons that are in charge of mimicking the response they see in front of them. For example, they scanned people’s brains while watching a film of somebody moving their right arm and took an image of their brain activity. Then they made them move their right arm and took an image of their brain activity. After doing the same experiment over and over with different people, they realized that whether a person saw somebody doing something or whether they were doing it themselves, the same regions of the brain were activated.
If you see somebody angry and in a defensive stance, your brain mimics that state and you become defensive. You don’t have to realize you are doing it, the same way you were not concious of your breathing until you read that word just now, your brain carries a lot of unconscious activities without your knowledge. So you are imprinting on others at an unconscious level, the same state of mind and feelings that you yourself have moment by moment.
So if you approach a deal thinking that the other person is “out to get you”, then that’s what you are going to imprint on the other. Your voice will convey it, your choice of words will express it, your body language will show what you’re really thinking.
I recently spent some time watching the TV series “Lie to me”; the series is based on the research of Paul Ekman, a scientist that studied the effects on the face and voice tone of a person that is lying. His conclusions are that it’s impossible to lie and be 100% congruent with the lie. If you look right into the eyes of the person you talk to while telling a lie, your hands will start fidgeting, your eyes will start blinking too fast, your facial expressions will convey a different emotion or your voice tonality will change… there are many signs to tell when a person is lying.
Your brain has full control of your body and has developed over the years to be consistent and to work in a continual feedback loop. Your brain thinks and your body reacts, or your body reacts and your brain thinks.
If you take a defensive stance with your body, you’ll start getting the feelings of having something to defend yourself from, even though it’s all in your imagination. There was some research done comparing the performance of basketball players who only imagined themselves dunking balls versus basketball players who actually practiced dunking balls.
Both groups of players noticed the same level of improvement after a couple of weeks. The point I’m trying to make, is that if you practice being defensive you’ll end up defending yourself from imaginary causes. Worse than that, you’ll meet up with people that will interpret your defensiveness as a sign of aggression or as a reason why they should defend themselves against you or do a preventive attack.
I’m not talking about physical violence, because that’s the extreme, I’m talking about business situations, where your defensiveness will trigger the other person’s defensiveness and make you lose opportunities that are worth taking.
So relax, think about what you have to gain for yourself and start imprinting in others what you want them to imprint in you. Sounds like an old saying I once read in a book…
“What you give is what you receive.”
Have you ever had a scarcity “moment” that made you do the opposite of what was best for you and your business? Have you ever lost a deal because you were too scared to act? I’d love to hear your comments!
Santiago Demierre is the idea man behind Argentine Ant, a marketing strategy company that can grow your business for you on a 100% performance based structure, with no risk, no cost and little or no time on your part. If you want your business to grow exponentially in the next few months – Contact Santiago at Argentine Ant
