81. Your Perception Of The World
What a vegetable peeler can tell us about human behavior
I wrote a piece a week ago about vegetable peelers. Boring subject right? That’s what I thought too.
In my little pea brain, vegetable peelers are a fairly mundane product. I don’t talk about vegetable peelers at cocktail parties or discuss them around the virtual water cooler at work - and I’m completely the guy that brings up random things to talk about.
If I’m going to be honest with you, which I tend to be, for the past 40 years I’ve thought they were called carrot peelers. I suppose my family ate a lot of carrots back when I was learning the names of kitchen utensils. It wasn’t until last week that I learned they’re called vegetable peelers. Color me enlightened.
The point being, I went through a significant part of my life not caring much about this particular product.
You can imagine my surprise - and gratitude - when I got a meaningful amount of feedback after I posted last week’s newsletter. People wanted to express to me their thoughts about their own vegetable peeler decisions.
Who knew.
There’s A Vegetable Peeler In All Of Us
I have a friend who is a very simple, straight forward type of person. She is no-nonsense, not about being flashy, not someone who cares much about what others think. She is herself and is comfortable in her own skin. She swears by her metal, no-frills $9 vegetable peeler.
I have another friend who likes the finer things in life. He wants things that are best in class, money is no object. He loves his uber-fancy $17 peeler that is so much a piece of art that people comment on it at dinner parties.
Most other responses gave me different variations on the above themes that I shan’t bore you with. However, what I’ve realized with all of this, is that you can really get to know a person’s personality by the vegetable peeler they keep.
You guffaw, I know. But this is more important than you think. Stick with me here.
It’s Your World As You Know It
We all experience the world in our own unique ways. We create our own perceptions of our experiences and then we gather evidence to validate those perceptions.
If you are always looking for humor in situations, you will always find it.
If you feel the world is conspiring against you, you will attach yourself to all the evidence that proves how unlucky you are.
If you decide to dislike somebody, you will find all the reasons why they are a bad person and few of the reasons for which they are good. That’s just the way our brains work.
In the business environment this plays out time and again. If, for instance, you don’t want a colleague to succeed, you will continually find ways in which they fail in order to make you feel good.
When I interview potential employees, one of the most important personality traits I am attentive to is whether they are an inherently a positive or negative person. Because here is the thing... an employee may be a productive part of the team in regular times, but if they are an inherently negative person, somehow some way that attitude will impact company productivity. It usually happens when times get challenging and everybody needs to step up. It is those that are negative who tend to drag others down rather than lift them up in the time of need.
When it comes to client-facing employees, a negative attitude is a recipe for failure. If an account manager convinces themselves a client is difficult, I will guarantee that their negative perception will inevitably cause you to lose the business.
The client may claim that all is great, but the employee’s negativity will seep out in unintentional ways. Nine times out of ten, that negative employee’s clients will not admit challenges - they may not even notice it enough to indicate the issue. But months of small comments or bad attitudes will wear down a relationship and, before you know it, that client has validated their perception and moved their business to your competitor.
This is the point where you’re probably wondering what this has to do with vegetable peelers. I will tell you.... but you’ll have to wait until next week. (You VIPs will have some more in a few days)
If you feel like you know where I’m going, please point it out in the comments. I bet you don’t see it yet.
Other Random Things To Know
I keep stumbling on things that I want to share but aren’t worth a full post. So I’m trying out this new section. Please use the rating on the bottom to give me your thoughts.
Another Great Slogan: Great slogans are ones that associate a brand with a feeling. I hope you continue noticing that since we discussed it last. Even the California Milk Advisory Board understands that a slogan with emotion can sell more milk. Their widely successful slogan associates happiness with eating cheese.
Great cheese comes from happy cows. Happy cows come from California.
If you’re interested, you can read more hereBurnout: Working from home can mean no work-life boundaries, which often results in longer hours working, which often results in employee burnout, which happened a lot during the pandemic. Here is a great article from Forbes about dealing with employee burnout.
Getting a good night sleep: Interesting fact - snails can sleep for up to three years at a time. Makes you want to take an extra dose of melatonin tonight, eh?
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