I may, or may not, have been referred to as frugal. Ok, definitely have.
Lack of dinero tends to drive frugality. But I’m realizing quality matters.
Perhaps it is the maturing taste that accompanies my maturing age, but quality has become a sought-after value recently.
Years of frugality leads to disposal junk. (You’re welcome local thrift store.)
Quality, on the other hand, is lasting.
Quality stays with you and helps define who you are.
I’ve been instinctively seeking greater quality, and then I happened upon a great post about the Priming Effect:
Priming: an increased sensitivity to a particular schema due to a recent experience. In other words, priming is when an experience or exposure to a stimulus puts a particular schema at the forefront of our mind. When this in turn influences our judgments and decisions, it’s called the priming effect. (Great explanation – including video)
Quality is everywhere. The words we use, the thoughts we have, the clothes we wear the food we eat, the pictures we see, the people we hug and the time we spend. Everything.
The world moves fast. Modern attention spans are short. It’s easy to lose focus on quality.
That lose of quality is changing who we are. Who we want to be.
A few quotes from the above mentioned post to help build some perspective…
Your visual cortex is only about 1/200th of your brain. Your auditory cortex is about 1/1000th. If you can’t even consciously fathom what these relatively small brain regions are doing computationally, what hope do you have of maintaining awareness of what the rest of your brain is doing on an ongoing basis?
Your conscious mind doesn’t have anywhere close to the capacity that would be required to intelligently monitor and maintain all the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that are constantly firing inside of you. Most of the time you’re not even aware of what’s happening inside your mind.
The reality is that different patches of neurons are processing different thoughts in parallel at all times.
Dude! We are SO cool.
Our bodies just work. And we have no idea how or why. It just is.
But here’s the magic. We can influence. We can drive.
We can work with our ability to “prime.” When we prime with quality, we’re more likely get quality.
In fact, we need to consciously prime. If you’re not aware of what is priming your world, then someone else is – Pepsi, Chevy, Facebook.
It’s a battle for your mind Neo. 🙂 But you’re in control…if you want to be.
Your brain is always bouncing around between linked associations. It does this in parallel, subconsciously, all the time. The vast majority of your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors occur without your conscious awareness or conscious involvement.
The lesson here is that seemingly subtle influences matter. If your senses perceive it, your brain is processing it. And this processing is seldom isolated. One little change in input can create significant ripples throughout your neural net. And this in turn can have a significant influence on the results you get to experience.
By exerting some control over our priming influences — which may involve just a few small changes that can be made within a minute or two — we can create a permanent and lasting improvement in different facets of our lives.
By giving your brain slightly different input on a subconscious level, you can enjoy some truly significant benefits on the results side. This is easy. It works. And there are many ways you can apply this for free.
Small changes. Big impact. I dig.
How do we put this into practice?
We need to consciously prime our world. Start on the inside and work our way out. Surround ourselves with the right thoughts, feelings, words, people and sensory input.
Start small and grow. Perfection is overrated. Take the next step and see where it leads.
Get primin’ y’all!
- Let Your Values Drive Your Choices: Blog post about a great approach to making decisions. Mi Padre preached the gospel of only making decisions you would be happy seeing in the newspaper the next day…more accurate than expected considering social media.
- Every decision is made within some type of constraint. Maybe it’s how much knowledge you have. Maybe it’s how much money you have. Maybe it’s how many resources you have. Why not what values you have?
- #1 Secret of Astronauts, Samurai & Navy Seals: Develop a practice to build calm mindfulness. Decision points are crucial and keeping a calm mind in tough situations makes an amazing impact. We need to train ourselves to make this happen.
- Meditation, spirituality, breathing, yoga, Tai Chi…it’s a long list. How are you going to prime your mind to stay calm when you don’t have time to think about it?
- One of my fav quotes – Thomas Jefferson: Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Side Note: This blog post mentions a book called Musashi. Supposedly the best samurai book ever written. 900+ pages. 6 months later, I’m almost at 700. It’s awesome. Well worth the time.
- 10 Regrets You can Avoid: Don’t steal paperclips from the office. Make good choices. Be true to yourself. See #1 & #2.
- Keep a quality journal
- Quality pens: The Best Pen evaaaaaa?! From Wirecutter.
- Quality mug (for your bulletproof coffee)
- Take a nap.
- Take distractions and negative vibes out of your view. Keep your world clean and happy.
- Keep your world smelling good.
- Quality tunes or background noise
- Keep some power words lingering in your view (whiteboard?): Flow, Focus, Success, Complete, etc.
- Clothes
- Food
- Technology
- Yadda, yadda, yadda.
You get the gist. Quality matters. And everything is quality.
Focus on the things that are important in your world, and make sure you surround yourself with quality. Spend time on the things that matter, the influences that make you the person you want to be.
The Putter: A Great Example of Quality
Quality…scissors. Amazing. I now want quality scissors. Who woulda thunk it?
Hat tip to A Continuous Lean
