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By: Brianna Valleskey
[TRANSCRIPT} Today, I’ve been thinking about thinking. A little meta, I know. But bear with me on this. I’ve been thinking about how our internal dialogues define us. Being conscious of the inner monologue in my head has changed a lot of what actually goes on in there. I used to be really mean to myself. I was cruel in the way I talked to myself, the way I thought about myself. I was hyper-critical about everything I said and did. I was always comparing myself to other people. And God forbid I make a mistake, because that was literally the end of the world. And this made me miserable, because our thoughts create the reality we live in. Our thoughts become our intentions, which become our actions, which becomes our reality. So I was self-perpetuating my misery, and it was awful. It wasn’t until someone told me, “Wow! You’re really hard on yourself” that I was like, “Oh my God. You’re right.” Since then, it’s been a process of unlearning all of those terrible self-talk, inner dialogue habits, and re-learning how to be nice to myself. And in case anyone else is going through, or has gone through something like this or is just thinking about how they want to make changes in their internal dialogues, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve learned. How to Create a More Positive Internal Dialogue 1. Meditate on the good stuff. What are you grateful for? What makes you happy in life? What gets you excited and energized and passionate and obsessed? Focus on that. Think about how you can do more of it. Talk about it. The universe reflects what you put out into it. So if you focus on those things — be grateful for them — there will be more of them in your life. Or at least you start to recognize them more because you’ve taken an attitude of being more grateful. 2. Don’t let the little hater get you down. The little hater is the voice in your head telling you that you aren’t good enough, skinny enough, pretty enough, rich enough, smart enough, etc. etc. Screw that guy. Listening to him (or her) will only keep you from doing the most important things in your life. Every time I write a blog or make a video, the little hater tries to tell me that I shouldn’t because people will think I’m dumb or my ideas or dumb. But who cares? Sure, some people will probably think this is dumb but that’s ok because for me to be a life-changing force in some people’s lives, I’m probably going to be an idiot and a loser in other’s. I’m not going to let that stop me from bringing my art into the world. 3. Be f*cking nice to yourself. I’m serious. When you start to get mean in your head, think about if you would say those things to your family or your friends or your significant other. And if you wouldn’t, then don’t say that shit to yourself. Because loving yourself means treating yourself like someone you really love. So cut the crap on the rumination and instead focus on how fortunate and grateful and loved and fabulous you are because we’re all on our fascinatingly unique path and comparing your progress to someone else’s is like comparing apples to broomsticks. I don’t know what that means. Anyway, recognize your innate value as a human being and talk to yourself in a way that you would want someone else to talk to you. That’s what’s going to create the reality you live and exist in every day. If you have any thoughts on creating your inner dialogue, I’d love to hear them. You can also check out a few books that have helped me learn more about loving myself below.
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 By: Brianna Valleskey
Marketing is much older than we think. Some people argue that the discipline emerged after the standardization of quality products halfway through the 20th century forced companies to find other ways to distinguish themselves from competitors (see: brand management). Others note that market research was first identified as a business activity in the early 1900s. A few even assert that marketing has been around since Gutenberg’s moveable type enabled the earliest print advertisements. These claims, however, depend highly on one’s definition of marketing. The American Marketing Association describes it as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Quite a mouthful. Investopedia provides a more clean-cut explanation, where marketing is “everything a company does to acquire customers and maintain a relationship with them.” But my favorite comes from researchers and textbook authors Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong: “Marketing is the social process by which individuals and organizations obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others." In this sense, marketing began millions of years ago. Hundreds of millions. With plants. The Ancient Origins of Marketing As Hope Jahren explains in her book “Lab Girl,” the primary purpose of sex on planet earth exists is to mix the genes of two separate beings and produce a new individual with a gene code identical to neither parent. “Within this new mix of genes are unprecedented possibilities, old weaknesses eliminated, and new weaknesses that might even turn out to be strengths. This is the mechanism by which the wheels of evolution turn,” Jahren writes (poetically, I might add, which is a difficult feat in the realm of science writing). She goes on to describe that sex requires touch, where the living tissues of two separate individuals must come into contact and then attach. This is a problem for plants. Since they cannot move, many plants can (and still do) scatter their pollen on the wind in hopes that any amount will land on a female flower -- an incredibly inefficient process. So nature came up with a solution about 135 million years ago, biologist Dave Goulson describes in his book, “A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees.” “Pollen is very nutritious. Some winged insects now began to feed upon it and before long some became specialists in eating pollen. Flying from plant to plant in search of their food, these insects accidentally carried pollen grains upon their bodies, trapped amongst hairs or in the joints between their segments. When the occasional pollen grain fell off the insect on to the female parts of a flower, that flower was pollinated, and so insects became the first pollinators, sex facilitators, for plants,” Goulson writes. “A mutualistic relationship had begun which was to change the appearance of the earth. Although much of the pollen was consumed by the insects, this was still a vast improvement for the plants compared to scattering their pollen to the wind.” A mutualistic relationship? That sounds like individuals and groups obtaining what they need and want through creating and exchanging value with others. Evolution & Adaptation Goulson offers even more: “Insects had to seek out the unimpressive brown or green flowers amongst the surrounding foliage. It was now to the advantage of plants to advertise the location of their flowers, so that they could be more quickly found and to attract insects away from their competitors. So began the longest marketing campaign in history, with the early water lilies and magnolias the first plants to evolve petals, conspicuously white against the forests of green.” Plants began marketing themselves millions of years before our first ancestors walked the planet. Our verdant, immobile fellow beings were the earth’s first marketers! It’s no wonder that studies show interacting with nature can increase creativity. And I’m sure there’s much more we could learn from nature. So the next time you need a little creative inspiration, talk a walk through a nearby park or conservatory. The fresh air, quick exercise and presence of the world’s most experienced marketers will surely spark something inside your mind. I also highly recommend you check out this excerpt of Goulson’s book that was published in Scientific American a few years back. Save the bees. |
AuthorFearless Thoughts are my insights on marketing, entrepreneurship, startups, business growth, creativity and whatever else comes to mind on any given day. Writing is how I make sense of the world. Archives
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