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On Saying “No” and Building Empathy . . . In Memoriam, Alan RIckman

Do you still use New Year’s resolutions? Or do you have any alternatives to them, as you seek to establish and achieve goals in your personal or professional lives? By late January, the gym I’ve belonged to for a decade will get “back to normal,” after newbies have given up on their 6:30 am exercise. Meantime, I have to arrive very early or very late to get the machines I most want to use.

Writer Daphne Gray-Grant wrote in her blog last January 5th that although “45% of Americans” make new year’s resolutions, “fewer than 8% manage to keep them.” I’d imagine that the statistics for Canada (with our long, cold winters) are not much, if any, better.

So what alternatives do we have, if we still want to make and achieve goals that will chart a potentially better course of behaviour for us (be it work, exercise, hobbies, leisure) in 2016?
Gray-Grant recommends “if/then statements” as a way to talk to ourselves about our activity and motivation.

So a writer like me may say: “If I haven’t drafted my blog posting by 4:30 pm, then I must write it before I can read for leisure, tonight.”

Or here’s one more reminiscent of Seth Godin: “if my prospect hasn’t replied to my email by tomorrow noon, then I will definitely call him early tomorrow afternoon.”

Psychologist Peter Gollwitzer says that if/then statements work by getting us to consider “contingencies” (what psychologists like him call “implementation intentions”). “Contingencies” are a future event or circumstance which is possible but cannot be predicted with certainty. The term also refers to a provision for such an event or circumstance—what we can do, Gray-Grant says, “when things go wrong” or other than we hoped.

She blogs on (and tested) this concept of contingency, observing that when we make an if/then statement, our brains immediately begin checking our environment to find the “if . . . [like] a dog seeking treats.” Once we’ve found the “if,” the “then” follows automatically, without our having to think or track our goal. The identification of the “if” doesn’t require us to have willpower to complete, as part of an if/then statement. As Gray-Grant observes, the statements “allow us to conserve our self-control for when we need it and compensate for it when we don’t have enough.”

So we can set up goal-directed behaviour as a response “to a particular future event or cue.”

Gray-Grant concludes that by “deciding in advance when and where we will take specific actions, [we] can double or triple our chances of success.”

What do you think of using if/then statements to attain goals? Try practicing some statements for a few days and let me know: do they help you to exercise and apply your self-control, as an entrepreneur, writer or artist?

And here’s to a happy, healthy and successful 2016!

Happy Holidays to all readers and visitors! My blog will return in two weeks’ time.

Getting Past It: Five Creatives Face Adversity . . . I’m happy to update you that today, my new eBook of this name has become available online!
Saskatoon designer and artist Kat Bens and Toronto based designer Oliver Sutherns have collaborated with me to produce an electronic collection of interviews with five Creatives who have battled adversity in their lives.

One interviewee faced nearly certain death from a heart attack brought on indirectly from faulty cancer treatment. Yet he moved on with painting, doing business and travelling . . . .

Another responded to the trauma of losing jobs by teaching herself HTML and volunteering “tens of thousands of hours” on a far-reaching anti-domestic abuse network for women . . . .
And more . . .

The phrase “Getting Past It” refers to the losses, traumas and other challenges that these people have “gotten past,” as well as any assumption we often make that life ends (i.e. we get “past it”) at age 40 or 60 or 100.

The issue is not whether these creative people dealt with adversity, but how, and the extraordinary achievements they’ve made, along the way. The stories are compelling and may inspire others in our community to facing adversity in similarly quiet, unsung lives.

The collection makes a great holiday gift or stocking stuffer!

The eBook, the first in a series to come in the future, is now available for purchase on the home page of my website at elizabethshih.com

I hope to hear from you and Happy Holidays 2015 to all of my readers!

I can recall a couple of separate occasions as a freelance copywriter when I have not “won” a contract, because my style was refused in favour of what Montreal copywriter Nick Usborne calls “blunt force trauma” (i.e. very short, punchy copy) . . . .

A couple of months ago, Nick blogged on the importance of recognizing that “really good copywriting is also really good writing.” He cited the example of Susie Henry, a copywriter in the UK during the 1970s whose style was conversational and as attentive to “flow and pace [and] rhythm” as “a good sonnet . . . [or] a great novel.”

Nick observes that the finely crafted copywriting of a genuine writer “sadly . . . seems to be falling out of fashion.” He describes the “blunt force trauma” approach and style that has recently begun to replace it as “attractive, because it tends to deliver results faster,” with its “Buy NOW!” and “FREE!!” and “Don’t miss this opportunity!”

Marketers who claim that the conversational approach doesn’t work forget that writers like Susie Henry have written copy that has been highly successful for the companies she wrote for.

Here’s Nick:

“If you are at a party or in a bar with a group of people, who do you REALLY pay attention to . . . the loudmouth or the really interesting person who speaks so softly you have to lean in to hear what she is saying?” He asks: which “brand” (either conversational or trauma-centred) would you trust and follow? And, “who would you invite back to dinner at your home?”

If, like Nick and me, you’re a conversational (copy)writer, or someone who hires us, never fear! The blunt-force approach doesn’t work in all contexts or in all times. There are many contexts in which less garish, in-your-face marketing wins the day.

Marketing legend Seth Godin implicitly agrees. In his November 8^th (2015) blog posting, he writes that “the simple way to get better at business writing” is to “write like you talk.” He says that “effective business writing” won’t say “effective January 1, 2015, we have ceased operations. For further information, correspondence should be addressed . . . .”

Instead, it will say, “We closed this store last year. Sorry for the hassle. Please call us if you have questions.”

Similarly, the effective business writing Godin refers to won’t sound like “ATTENTION SHOPPERS! We’re now CLOSED! VISIT OUR WEBSITE to ORDER . . . . Don’t miss out!”

Advertising legend Bill Bernbach’s philosophy (and David Ogilvy’s, too) was, as Nick Usborne says, that “good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling.”

As you decide how to market your services or products over the long-term, which approach to writing will you use (or will be used by your writer)?