If you know what you are looking for, Google and the Internet have made it possible to find information about it—whatever it is—in a matter of seconds. If you want to improve your life you can search for help in dealing with any problem you could possibly have and find thousands of sites offering help in less than a second.
Because that is possible, people who offer solutions to common problems put the words and phrases that people are likely to search for (such as “improve self-esteem,” “end procrastination,” “overcome fear of public speaking,” and “how to improve relationships”) in the title of their articles and sprinkled liberally throughout the articles. That technique improves the likelihood of those articles showing up when people search for the words and phrases contained in those articles.
But what if you offer something of value that most people don’t even know exists?
You can’t ask people what they want
Steve Jobs explained years ago why he didn’t believe in focus groups—where potential customers are asked what they want—as a way to determine which products to develop. He said that if Henry Ford had asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses and more comfortable carriages; they would not have asked for a car.
When Apple started selling the first iPhone hardly anyone was looking for a way to surf the Internet with a pocket device. Few people could even imagine such a thing was possible. When the iPad was first released most technology reviewers said it would never sell because no one needed such a device. As of October 1, 2013 over 170 million iPads had been sold and that doesn’t include the tens of millions of additional devices that were developed and sold by other companies after Apple proved there was a major market for such devices.
There can be an existing demand for the benefits offered by a new product or service, but people rarely are looking for a specific product or service before it is ever offered. Think telephone, television, computer, airplane, camera, etc.
Some of us create what no one is looking for
Seth Godin wrote a brilliant post the other day in which he pointed out:
“And this is the challenge every organization faces in the uber-indexed world we live in. … Once we know what we want, search finds it for us. … [creators] have to dream for people who don’t have the guts or time to dream for themselves.” (Emphasis added.)
The topics on this blog
Relatively few of my blog posts contain searchable terms because relatively few people are searching for what I tell people is possible.
If you think that fear of rejection and worrying about what others think of you is human nature, you are unlikely to search for a way to stop fearing rejection and worrying about the opinion of others.
If you think that getting into an altered state of consciousness in which you feel anything is possible and that you have no limitations requires years of meditation, you might search for “how to meditate,” but you won’t search for a process that will enable you to enter that state in a matter of minutes
Hardly anyone searches for how to eliminate beliefs, because most people don’t think it is possible to permanently eliminate beliefs.
Few people search for how to quickly dissolve meaning (which I’ve written about extensively), not only because they don’t think it is possible, but also because they are unaware that much of what they think is reality is really meaning that exists only in their minds. Even students of Buddhism who understand that our suffering is the result of meaning we give to events think that the best we can do is not allow ourselves to be totally taken over by our meanings and the emotions they cause. But stop giving meaning to events altogether? Impossible!
As a result, the words and phrases that people frequently search for won’t lead to most of my blog posts and the words and phrases that would lead to my posts are rarely searched on. (See an earlier post for more on what we don’t know we don’t know.)
It’s one thing to give you what you ask for. That’s certainly worth doing. It’s quite another to give you what you really need but don’t even know you want.
What you can expect from me
My commitment to you is to continue to help you realize behaviors and feelings that you think are human nature (because it seems as if almost everyone has them) are not human nature; they are the result of beliefs, conditionings, and the meaning you give events moment by moment. Moreover, I will continue to help you understand that you don’t need to live with those negative behaviors and feelings any longer—that they can be permanently eliminated. Finally, I will continue to explain how to eliminate beliefs, decondition conditionings, and dissolve meanings.
I am committed to having this blog show you how you can free yourself from your stress and suffering and create unimagined new possibilities for your life.
Thanks for reading my blog. Please post your questions or comments about how we can’t search for help we don’t know exists. Your comments add value for thousands of readers. I love to read them all and I will respond to as many as I can.
If you want to help your friends who are not even looking for help either because they think their problems are just human nature or because they don’t think there are any solutions, please share this blog post with them by using the buttons located below.
If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com where you can eliminate several limiting beliefs free.
Copyright © 2014 Morty Lefkoe
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I went for professional help to deal with anxiety; I knew from my experience with your process that once I figured out my underlying meanings and beliefs I could eliminate the anxiety altogether. I’m 90% done, with a few more to go. I have a fraction of the fear I used to carry around. But the medical profession doesn’t even realize it is possible. They speak as though anxiety is something you have to learn to deal with or take drugs for. And get this, one professional told me anxiety was a good thing and that I should learn to make the best of it and face the “fact” that I’ll never be good at public speaking! Hah, what a riot. They’re living in a world that no longer exists for me. I know I create all my meanings and beliefs, and I know I can get rid of them. I know because I’ve experienced it; but they can’t speak my language of possibilities, only one of continued limitations and learning to “cope”! Thanks Morty, you changed my life.