The first time I met the famous spiritual author, Swami Kriyananda, I admit, I was a little nervous. I had read about twenty of his books, so my first words were, “I really like the thoughts in your books.”
His answer astounds me to this day. He replied, “They’re not my thoughts. They’re our thoughts.”
And just like that, I was in, hook, line and sinker.
When we allow others to already be a part of The Big Dream – The Universal Dream of A Greater Tomorrow – then we stimulate their soul qualities. We give them credit for already being Their Best Selves. We are all so starved for people who see these higher qualities in ourselves, we would do anything to prove them right.
This happened to me the other day when promoting a “green” investment plan for consultants who worked at the United Nations. Instead of telling them about how much they would earn, we took a different tact: We told them that their investments would help create the world they themselves had always wanted.
And it turns out that millineals are already focused more on the good that they do than on the returns, a lot more than past generations.
So here’s a nice tidbit for anyone marketing to millineals: Appeal to their generosity, their empathy and their vision of a better future – instead of their egotism – and they will reward you a thousand times over with loyalty and gratitude.
But you can only do this if you believe it wholeheartedly yourself. Otherwise your voice doesn’t have the necessary gravitas.
It reminds me of a story about Gandhi: A mother asked Gandhi to tell her son to stop eating sweets. Gandhi told them to come back in a week. A week later they came and Gandhi told her son to stop eating sweets. When she left, one of Gandhi’s associates told him that the woman had had to travel a long distance to see him, two times now. Why couldn’t he have simply told the son to stop eating sweets last week?
“Because last week I myself ate sweets,” was the reply.
Joy Biscuits 