Kiaran Finn on Life Matters!

Bored? Fake interest. Insecure? Fake confidence. feeling dumb? Fake thinking like a genius. Beliefs aren't real, they're filtered reality. What's interesting is that when we fake enthusiasm in even the most tedious of endeavours we become....you guessed it, enthusiastic. Likewise when we wish to impress but feel nondescript and unworthy, nothing works better than acting impressed. It's a myth to believe that anyone has a status superior to yours. It's a belief and can be altered. Fake it, not until you make it, (there is no making it) but until you wake up one day and realise it's no longer fake.

There is probably merit in not getting too invested in what others think of us. Books have been written such as Mark Manson's "The Subtle art of not giving a F***!" that support this philosophy. However when you see this pervade business interactions it boggles the mind. ​We get harried. We have bad hair days that spill out into our business dealings. We get overwhelmed. We get complacent. The most common poison I see in business is 'perfunctory service' a label I'm assuming is an oxymoron. It's so hard to to earn a prospect, think marketing, branding, merchandising, and a multitude of other investments and we can blow it in a split second. We're tuned into recognising good service but even more acutely tuned in to perfunctory interactions. Usually it's poorly trained or monitored staff but it's always the owner's responsibility to recognise and respond. The reason it's so insidious is because it's just below the threshold of tr

International Best Seller! Are you impressed?...... Really? ........Why? Social credibility is a things these days. It's measured via LIKES and SHARES and positive commentary. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the Wizard of Oz! Every published author it seems has attained best seller status. The invisible small print may indicate a sub text such as 'best seller in a bookstore that sold one book last week'. Animal Farm was an actual best seller, a feat I imagine 99% of readers under the age of 40 today would find bewildering. When we scale embellishment too far we risk being unmasked. It's a common marketing tactic to author and then purchase the requisite number of books to hit #1 for at least a week. A brand can then be build around this lie. Even those who achieve the status of popularity are still only popular within a niche - for instance there is a niche for flat earth adherents, but I'd question the merit of 'crushing' it. Is popularity reall