Bananas

I called into Sainsbury’s this morning; they must have at least ten different types of bananas to buy. Some of them are exactly the same only packaged differently. Essentially of course they are all the same, all bananas. When I go for the spinach again there are several opportunities to purchase differently packaged amounts and differently grown alternatives of the same product. Look throughout the store and virtually every product can be purchased in various guises. Do we really look and appreciate all the things we have in this first world country? I suspect not for most of the time. The reality of all these choices is in fact something that most of us just take for granted along with so much these days, but when do we stop at choice and start make decisions? I tried to weigh up the price of one banana against another by its weight in kilos and gave up miserably within minutes. When I visited the Co-op later I did an easy sum on the weight of confectionery and found that the large Christmas boxes of favourite sweets now available is actually more expensive than buying the single bars and that’s without the weight of the tins.

Packaging is obviously a massive factor in pricing, I’ve recently been trying to get some advice on making and marketing a product and again not succeeded in finding the right people for the job. So much relies on personality even if you get all the components of a deal right. There’s no substitute for experience and in so much as the words create the thread on which we string our knowledge it seems this will always be the case. Many of us now use language which isreally poor and gives a limited understanding to the receiver. There are certain universal words that achieve more than most written words ever could. Last weekend I attended a Wilson Luna event in London and although for the most part I was feeling out of place, the learning was wonderful. His language did eventually grow on me by its sheer simplicity but I still don’t hold with bad language in any guise. I must be very old school. The thing is though if we want to change our lives and shape our destiny, we need to consciously select the words we use. Tony Robbins says that we need to constantly select the words we are going to use and consistently strive to expand our level of choice.

The whole world seems to be going bananas though! I wanted to keep my construction industry gold card after it expired at the end of June.I had to take a health and safety test where they asked if I could read when I went in. The bizarre thing is that it’s probably quite normal for a lot of people to say no to that question which beggars belief of what everyone has been doing at school. What kind of a society will we become if large numbers can’t read? I suppose we will always need menial tasks doing for which we will need less educated people. However, as Confucius said “without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men”. The very language we use will shape the patterns of our life and ultimately our destiny. Spending time with people who speak well should increase our empowerment, enhance our understanding and enlighten our course of action. The opposite I fear is what is happening in reality to a growing number of people today.

Languages for me have always been a hard subject; I even struggle with strong accents. As the multi-culturist society becomes more prevalent the difficulty of communication must also become even more pronounced which leads to further misunderstanding. Surely it would seem to make sense therefore to reduce the available choices of products in favour of clarity for the end user. At the same time to be able to have variety in everything is so indicative of what we collectively have created for society and really we should be very proud, grateful and appreciative of what we can have, particularly when such a large percentage of the worlds’ population live on a mere pittance of a couple of dollars a day. Anyone that has travelled outside of a resort holiday to see the way most people have to live can verify the truth of how fortunate we are. Often when we do see these things it’s hard to detach ourselves from our emotions to make clear decisions. Powerful people can put themselves in a better state by spending less time on the problem and more time on the solution.

Whatever problems we may face there is always someone who is in a worse situation and we really should be able to learn about the state we’re in rather than get frustrated or angry. We really need to be committed to our goals to be able seperate ourselves sufficiently to put ourselves in a better state of mind where the solutions will come out rather than dwelling on the problems. We have to treat each problem as a challenge and when we see a task as daunting we have to find inspiration from anywhere we can to drive us forward so we don’t give up. A positive word from a friend can be more than enough to spur us on to success,so if you can be that person who delivers the positivity your rewards will be manifold. Seeing the alternatives are all well and good but knowing your bananas and always being able to see the positives are worth far more.

Endeavour to know see everything positively.