Do you ever feel the tyranny while in the checkout line at the grocery store? Those fabulous looking people on the magazine covers? Then the diet ads promising to make you look like the beautiful people? And then the dessert magazines so you can put on a few pounds to lose?
Top that off with a healthy dose of gossip about the beautiful people and the picture is complete.
We all know that the magazines covers are there to sell the magazines. However, selling them by triggering our insecurities and then selling us stuff to move away from the insecurity in the form of diets, exercise plans, comfort food and gossip is just mean. However, nothing we say is going to change the magazine covers.
So it’s time for a little Verbal Aikido in the checkout line. Verbal Aikido is taking words (and pictures) meant to make you less flexible (I need to buy a diet, exercise plan, dessert recipe or gossip mag!) and spinning that inflexibility into a more flexible response.
It starts at the top of the matrix diagram and the five senses.
As you push your cart up to the line there are the magazine covers. Soon your eyes are scanning the photos. Cleavage probably catches your eye first (both guys and girls are drawn to cleavage), and then the rest of the body (abs, butt, etc.) and then the words about how to look like that.
All of that information is racing down into your mental processing and then to a response. If you are an advertiser, you want the response to be fear and insecurity. Either you feel you will never look that good and no-one will find ever you attractive, or if you happen to look pretty good already, you fear you will lose it. Next comes the solutions (away moves) to the fear and insecurity: diets that work, exercise plans that work, etc. Or, to hell with those and go for the comfort food away move (the dessert magazine covers). The effect of the insecurity lingers long after you leave the store because the magazine covers have set you up to fight with your insecurity. That fight will will eventually wear you down.
The first step in Verbal Aikido is to know that sensory to mental to insecurity response process is going to happen because it happens in less than a second.
The second is to know that the advertisers are just taking advantage of your background insecurity. While this may sound strange, think about it a moment. If we were not all insecure, then we would be walking into all kinds of danger and getting killed right and left. If we were not a bit insecure about our relationships, we would be trashing them and not having babies and raising them. That background insecurity keeps us safe, procreating and raising. As long as the insecurity does not get out of hand, it’s a good thing. Sadly, the advertisers are driving our insecurity to unhealthy levels.
So next time you check out the magazine covers in the checkout line you can thank them for reminding you of that very important insecurity in your life.
You might also notice how your insecurity helps you move toward who and what’s important to you.
And that’s Verbal Aikido in the checkout line 🙂
Be well,
Kevin
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