Image by Jerzy Gorecki on Pixabay.
I say: “This is nonsense.”
This is a common ploy in marketing, especially for people marketing their own services. I call this the “Here’s what I did” claim in advertising.
For instance, when I first started on the Internet, I attended a webinar. A coach talked about inviting the town leaders to breakfast in his home. I knew I could never do that. I can’t cook breakfast or anything else. My home isn’t receptive to guests. At the time, I had a large fuzzy dog and two fuzzy cats. No way could I have a guest-worthy home.
One woman talked about giving talks in her living room. Still another business owner talked about speaking in bookstores; he’d started years before, when bookstores were a thing.
I hear this in personal contexts too. Recently I saw an article by a 75-year-old who made a cross-country trip. “I wanted to encourage others to do this,” she said. I hate to drive and I don’t have a car anymore; I was SO happy to get rid of mine. And if you’re not a good driver (I never was), people shouldn’t encourage you.
The problem is that today the individual has become the ideal. We generalize from one person’s story. We meet a 90-year-old who consumes an ice cream sundae every night. It’s presented as inspiration when actually he’s one of a kind. We hear about one person who solved a midlife crisis by vacationing in Tahiti. A friend tells you she eats one meal a day or stops eating at 5.
What if we read about someone who embezzled $900K and went to Federal prison? Or someone who entered a religious order? Or someone who joined a group?
We’d say, “How interesting.” And we’d stop there.
That’s how to receive most “Here’s what I did” stories. They’re usually one in a million. Not likely for us.
