Dec 10 2011
Why we love buying but hate being sold to
Did you know that making a decision yourself is more important than making a good decision?
You would think that people want to make the best choice. Turns out that’s not true. We don’t want to make the best choice, we want to make OUR choice.
Why we love buying but hate to be sold to
We love to buy. We love to feel the rush of power and the rush of satisfaction as you get the next big item that’s supposed to fix your life and make things better. After all, that’s why we buy stuff, right? We only buy something if we believe that it can make our lives easier or improve it in some way.
We buy when we believe that the things we buy can add value to our lives, whether it be a laptop or pillow or chair (yes, i’m naming random things that are around me right now). It’s supposed to make your problem go away, whether that problem is smelling bad, or thinning hair or not being able to speak in public. We buy to make ourselves feel better.
So we love to buy.
But we hate being sold to.
The moment you sense a salesperson is selling to you just because he wants to make a sale, you immediately back off. You start saying NO. It’s because when you feel “sold to”, it feels like he “won” and you “lost”. It feels like the salesperson manipulated you and tricked you into buying something that you didn’t want or need.
It feels icky. It feels like you can’t trust the person. Now, if you can’t trust the person, how can you trust the product he’s selling?
We often and we always associate things. We look at an object and feel like it’s important to us, not because it actually has value, but because it has an emotion that we associated with it.
It’s like in The Little Prince when he says that his rose is special, not because it is special in itself, but because caring for it all these years and being close to it has made it special. When you attach emotion to your teddy bear, it becomes valuable to you, but only because you gave it value.
“You’re lovely, but you’re empty,” he went on.
“One couldn’t die for you. Of course an ordinary passerby would think my rose looked just like you. But my rose, all on her own, is more important than you altogether, since she’s the one I’ve watered. Since she’s the one I put under glass. Since she’s the one I sheltered behind a screen. Since she’s the one for whom I killed the caterpillars (except for two or three for butterflies). Since’s she the one I listened to when she complained, or when she boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing at all. Since she’s my rose.”
– “The Little Prince” By Antoine De Saint-Exupe’ry
So these products you buy from Mr. Person-you-can’t-trust will also just leave you hanging because you attach the idea of distrust to his products. You don’t trust his product to solve your problems either.
So here’s the thing; even if that product actually was the best product to solve your needs, you still might not buy it anyway.
We hate being sold to.
But there are other examples of when we’ll make bad decisions just because we don’t want to follow someone’s orders.
Why we’ll stop when someone tells us to do what we’re already doing
Has this ever happened to you? You were just about to do something when someone suddenly told you to do exactly what you were about to do anyway. Don’t you feel a sudden urge to just stop? It’s just like being a teenager all over again when your parent told you to do something and you’d go against them just because you didn’t want to do what they said.
It’s honestly a little ridiculous. You were about to do it anyway. You were going to do it for your own reasons to benefit yourself. But then they told you to do it and now you JUST… CANT… DO IT!
You can’t show them that they own you and that you’ll do what they say. It’s worse when it’s someone you hate. Then you’ll just start doing the exact opposite of whatever it is they say.
Sometimes, you’ll even go out of your way and do something that’s bad for yourself just to prove them wrong. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there. Unfortunately, it’s normal. It’s the basis behind the whole idea of reverse psychology.
The story goes that Winston Churchill would convince others that an idea he had given them had actually been an idea they had come up with in the first place, in order to make sure that it was implemented.
A man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it.
– Father Strickland, 1863
Would you prefer to make people believe that it was your idea at the risk of not having people implement such a great idea? Or would you rather go Churchill’s route and make people believe it was their own decision so that they would freely implement it? The truly great ideas need to be spread out so that people buy into the idea and make it their own. One of the greatest winning movements of this generation is the environmental movement.
People have joined this movement not because it was someone else’s good idea, but because they felt it was their own idea to go out and help save the world. But we still might stop if someone told us to do what we wanted to do anyway.
So the question that pops up is why do we stop?
We stop because when we make a choice… we want to be sincere.
Let’s deal with the idea of sincerity later on. Before that, let’s look at teenagers.
Why teenagers rebel
When we’re children, we’re at a stage where we fully trust our parents and trust them to make all our decisions. In fact, we usually feel so strongly attached to our mom or dad that we define ourselves through them. We don’t really have a strong self-identity yet.
But as we grow, parents, peers and society tell us and teach us that we need to make our own decisions and that we need to be responsible for our own life. So we tentatively try it out. We try to make our own decisions.
However, we’re still young at the time, and still not fully able to make decisions properly, so our parents always try to guide us and tell us what to do. At that point, a choice appears; do you follow the decision of your parents or do you make your own decision? Also, what happens when you both decide the same thing? Unfortunately, there’s no option there that says you can both come to the same decision because the very definition of it being your parents’ choice means that it’s not yours.
So we rebel.
Oh, not always, but we rebel. Whenever our parents tell us to do something, we feel like it limits our ability to grow into adults and make our own choices. The only way to feel like we are living our own lives instead of someone else’s is to rebel against our parents’ decisions.
So we have a dilemma. People tell us that teenagers should start to “grow up” and be more responsible. The meaning of responsible means that we should be responsible for our own decisions. And how can that happen when adults keep telling teenagers what to do?
Teenagers rebel because they don’t know their own identity. Yet.
Identity is the reason
Identity is the reason for all these things we do. Or, more accurately, the idea that we want to have a solid understanding of who we are and what our choices are.
When you make a choice, something happens. You start believing that you own that choice. That it’s part of you. That it’s part of your identity.
Yes, our minds are pretty easy to trick. In fact, we deceive ourselves all the time. In this particular case, because we’ve made the choice ourselves, we cling to it as part of us. If somebody tries telling you that you shouldn’t buy something that you want, or that something you bought isn’t good, you’ll feel at least a little bit insulted. WHY?
You feel like they insulted your choice and taste in products. You’ve actually attached your emotions onto this choice. In fact, you’ve attached yourself to that choice. That choice now defines part of who you are. And so, you want to make that choice yourself, because you want to define your identity by yourself.
What happens when you do what someone tells you? It’s as if someone is choosing your identity for you. Someone is deciding who you are for you. And that’s just wrong. Or at least, that’s how you feel.
So when you’re still at the stage where your self-image is fuzzy, like most of us are, you can’t take any chances with your identity. When you haven’t figured out who you are, you don’t want someone else to decide for you. When you haven’t found yourself or chosen who to be, you can’t let someone else decide for you.
Let’s get back to the teenagers we were talking about before.
When teenagers are entering their teenage years, they’re still testing the waters of their own identity. They’re still figuring out how to make a decision and whether they will actually like that decision; that is, whether that decision fits in with who they want to be. And normally, they won’t know if they like it until after they make the decision.
But what happens when your parents tell you what to do (even if it’s the best decision), is that even if you like it, it’s still not your own decision, so it’s not really part of you yet. Because of that, the only way to make sure that it’s your own personal decision is to do the exact opposite of what your parents tell you to do.
I know, it’s weird and twisted. But us humans are built that way.
Let’s move on to the idea of sincerity.
It’s also about Sincerity
As humans with relationships, we really really feel that sincerity is important. We always want to be ourselves. And when our self-image is fuzzy, it’s always best to remove all doubt. It’s that moment when you want to do something for a noble reason like love or gratitude, then one second later, your doubt kicks in and you start wondering whether you’re doing this because YOU want to or because someone ELSE told you to.
To remove that doubt, we immediately say no.
Imagine a country that was still in a time of war, where its borders were fluid and changed every day, to the point where even the leaders of the country are fuzzy about where the line is on the map. That country is you and the border is the border between your own self-image of your own choices and the influence of other people in your life.
When your border is fuzzy, the moment an influence (invasion) comes anywhere near your borders, you HAVE to push it back. You can’t accept anything nearby because you don’t know where your border is either. To be on the safe side, and to make sure that the influence didn’t cross your borders and get into your mind, it’s easier to reject all possible action that might come of it.
But what if the country were at peace? What if the border was clearly defined on a map? Then, wouldn’t you be able to place a proper immigration control at the borders? Any time an influence came near the borders, it would be fine. You could watch it from your side of the fence as it came closer. And closer and closer.
When it reaches your border fence, you can calmly allow it entrance to your country, but only under your conditions.
When you know exactly what entered your mind from outside, then you know exactly which thoughts are yours and which are from others. That way, you can always be sure that you are sincere when it’s your own thoughts that lead you to a decision.
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
– Aristotle
This is when you can take peoples’ influence, advice, peer pressure, social hype, etc, and stop it at the borders of your mind, extracting from it only the information that you find useful.
Did you know that right now I’m influencing you too? I’m trying to get you to see my perspective. If you can allow my words into your mind, and still feel calm and assured that YOU are still in control, then congrats; that’s exactly the feeling I’m trying to explain. It’s the same feeling I want you to have every time you feel pressured to do something. You are in control and you can reject or accept my words however you like.
Now, this might be easier to do in a low-pressure situation where I’m not actively or rudely pushing myself on you. The question is, could you cultivate yourself so that even if somebody is rudely or aggressively trying to convince or pressure you into something; you could still calmly choose with your own mind instead of automatically pushing back (or giving in)?
You can.
But it means you have to define the borders of your self first. You have to define who you are. This is slightly different from finding yourself or finding your life purpose. You often can’t do that until you stumble upon that one thing you can do that really makes you passionate. Defining yourself is more of defining the ground rules for what you feel are important in life and what you would most regret.
Don’t give yourself reasons to regret.
(I’ll deal with avoiding regret later in a post called [The mistake you can learn from and the mistake you can't] which I’ll post by the end of next week. This post seems to be long enough.)
Conclusion
The idea here, is that you want to be able to accept ideas from others and integrate them into yourself without feeling that you compromised your borders. We hate being sold to, and that includes selling us ideas, but that only makes sense if you forget that ultimately you have the power to decide to buy.
Remember that you always have the power to buy into any idea that comes your way no matter how much someone tries to sell you on it.
Nowadays, every time someone advises me or tells me what to do, I take it as just that; advice. If I follow it, it’s because I chose to do so.
If you can always choose to buy (or not buy) no matter how much pressure is pushed on you, then you will always make your own decision. And I hope that at that time, you can also freely make the best decision.
Make the best decision for yourself, no matter if it comes from you… or from someone else.
– 