HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I’ve resorted to reading over 350 fairytales in the last year and even read over 200 versions of Cinderella for a client. Who knew there were that many? Some had her wearing glass slippers, grass slippers, ballet shoes, squirrel fur (metaphor for the vagina), while other versions ignored the shoes altogether and had her leaving bracelets, rings and anklets behind.
Some of her other names are Cenerentola, Aschenputtel, and Cendrillon.
Many of these century old stories are far darker than the Walt Disney versions. Evil is a much better word for them.
Yes, as useless as this fairytale reading may seem for an advertiser, brander and designer to do, it has a lot to offer in understanding what is deeply embedded in the unconscious minds (subconscious)* of clients, friends and family members. The real benefit for you is that Fairytales may tell us a great deal about what has influenced on a deeper level at a very young age and how we have carried this tale for a lesser or larger portion of our lives.
* The Neurochemical differentiates these terms:
• Subconscious to describe what the mind records unfiltered, also the prefix ‘sub’ meaning, ’below’,
• Conscious to describe what we are able to recall, remember and/or utilize,
• Unconscious to explain feelings and emotions outside of cognizant or rationale reasoning, also the prefix ‘un’ meaning the ‘lacking’ or ‘absence of’.
.
I suspect that many or most people are still trying to reach their destiny and life purpose through their youthful fairytales. It’s an odd idea but the premise is: “we are all attempting to fulfill our lives through childhood stories, myths, legends and tales.”
.
If I hadn’t gotten over 250 valid responses from clients, friends and family members and knew something about these people’s lives on a personal level, I’d probably never written an article like this for fear it may be perceived as insane quackery.
.
What do Fairytales do
- Fairytales naturally transcend ethnicity, culture and social diversity today much like our youthful free-thinking and free-wheeling childhoods. These stories were told to us when we were at a very young and impressionable age. Somehow over decades, these stories still stick and often with startling detail.
- Many of the older fairytales (myths or legends) have only a few images and pictures in their pages, so these stories begin to develop a fascinating and vivid visual process in a child’s brain [ Alice in Wonderland.PDF ]. The physical characteristics of each (ie., how they moved, spoke, thought) is vastly different from person to person.m based on their experience.
- Fairytales are the core of early visual creativity sparking the imagination which is infinitely more convincing than verbiage.“Subjects given a doodling task while listening to a dull phone message had a 29% improved recall compared to their non-doodling counterparts”.‡
‡Applied Cognitive Psychology (2009):
(http://phys.org/news/2009-02-doodle-doodling-memory-recall.html). - Fairytales, myths and legends bring to our awareness places and societies otherwise separated by income, race and religion (remote viewing). They are NOT biased nor limited by prejudice and cultural points of perspective in children.
- Fairytales are told to us to entertain and teach important life lessons; morally, ethically and culturally providing safety and social compliance through metaphors.
- When fairytales are read to children as bedtime stories they go directly into the subconscious where many believe they either lie dormant or just disappear as distant memory. Ask most parents and they may tell you that they’ve read their son or daughter one story (out of all others) 100 times more often. Has the child determined that “This is the story of how they want their life to play out?”
- Fairytales enter our dreams. This is where, according to the Neurochemical, we are both subconsciously and unconsciously cognizant of sublime and banal time and creatively manipulate time and space in our independent worlds.
- Appear to be memorized with a sharp clarity, unlike actual life experiences. They are probably recalled so easily because of their concise structure which has a sharply defined beginning, middle, end, with a morally sound life lessons placing behavioral and cultural restraints for optimal social cohesion.
.
What Is The Subconscious Mind?
The subconscious is far more powerful than your conscious mind. It is often considered the hardware of a database for everything we hear, see, smell, taste or touch. This is also a metaphor. Meaning, it holds everything we percieve experience holistically and unbiased although we later filter what we deem important and useful. Can we actually control our behavior, break bad habits, usurp unwanted feelings (emotions) to align everything we see and do with a new belief system by repetitively hammering away at these issues subconsciously? Perhaps.
.
Here are some of the rules that supervise the metaphor-altering subconscious mind:
Rules of the Subconscious Mind (Sm)
- Sm does not differentiate between visuals and real-life circumstances.
- Sm perceives that time moves faster.
- Repeated circumstance deeply affects the Sm.
- Sm ‘feelings’ causes physical reactions (emotions).
- The Sm always prevails in conflicts with the conscious mind.
- An idea or belief remains until it is replaced by a new one.
- Conscious efforts trump subconscious auto-responses and stimuli.
- Suggestions (hypnosis) are used to “program” or “reprogram” the Sm.
.
A very dear friend of mine mentioned this as her favorite fairytale growing up.
The Pied Piper
It is folklore teaching a lesson of what happens when you don’t do what you say you are going to do. It is also a story of revenge.
THE BIG QUESTION:
How does this benefit the business owner or entrepreneur in generating more business?
I’ll tell you.
Fairytales seamlessly delve into a darker and deeper, often hidden, motivations and actual life purpose than most people realize. There appears to be a subconscious longing to fulfill these tales in many, if not most adults.
I’ve asked over 100+ people (business owners, friend’s and family) what their favorite fairytale was growing up. I was then able to apply their tale directly to their current, previous and past situations (business or otherwise) looking to assit them with their future circumstance. Oddly, their favorite story or fairytale is usually consistent and reliable in understanding their deeper motivations and even their occupation in almost all circumstances (98%).
Being a natural skeptic, I initially suspected that it was just accident or causality, dismissing it as mere entertainment and delightfully oassing the time.
Psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Carl Jung’s believed that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality (also see the Axiom of Causality).
After the first 30 people were asked, I began to realize that their favorite childhood story also gave me access toward helping them resolve some of their current issues and life circumstance. This somehow revealed their true, hidden motivation behind what they were (actually) saying and if it conflicted with what they ultimately wanted from an end result.
Sidebar
Last in this foreword, as you may or may not know, the Neurochemical system aims to uncover hardwired “human default patterns” which are useful in what we can predictably expect as responses from audiences and markets. Fairytales helps but is NOT the end all. It does, however, lend itself perfectly toward developing a concrete method for extrapolation and examination. It also acts as a practical, real-time catalyst in ad, brand, communications and design applications because nearly everyone in American knows the basics and morals of these fairytale stories. So, welcome to the Neurochemical.
The Neurochemical: Fairytales
First I’ll reveal my own favorite childhood fairytale:
In short:
Jack’s mother asks Jack to sell a cow.
Jack is stopped by a man who convinces Jack to give the man the cow for five magic beans.
Jack’s mother is NOT happy with the trade, throws the beans out the window and sends Jack to bed without dinner.
Jack awakens the next morning to a sky bound beanstalk. He climbs it to the clouds and finds a huge house there where a giant who has been stealing cows and little children from villages lives.
First Jack steals the giant’s gold. Then he steals a goose that lays golden eggs and lastly, Jack steals the giant’s singing golden harp.
Said giant chases Jack down the beanstalk. Jack chops the huge stalk killing the giant, saving the village’s children and cattle from theft. Finally, he is gifted the King’s daughter’s hand in marriage. She was a hot little number.
[ ^ Oh, I made the last sentence up. The hotness was assumed, no? 😀 ]
On the Importance of Fairy Tales in > 
. . .
So, let’s see how this applies to your life, business, and relationships:
Why is it that when you give people sound and vetted advice they may or may not take it?
There never seems to be any rhyme or reason to when, why and where people will take advice and when they won’t. You may as well just throw dice and see what they do. It’s a crap shoot. It’s nearly impossible to guess what the outcome may be and what they will actually do.
People are hell bent on doing things their way and it almost doesn’t matter if it is the wrong or the right way—as long as it’s their way.
Why? What gives?
When presented with a wise decision that may lead to faster health, happiness and prosperity, some of us may decline the proposition or choose our own path and own way instead. You, as someone who just wants to help goes through the bother of really thinking about what it is that will resolve the problem offers to help. Then they opt to use a less optimal decision! How come? WTF? Are they IDIOTS???
No, not necessarily. You know that they AREN’T idiots, per se. They’re simply writing or rewriting their favorite childhood fairytale.
Well, they won’t tell you is that they’re writing their own fairytale—”real-time”—and are going to write it into their life mission according to their own rules. We are drawn to trial and error and what we have (right or wrong) is a story to tell.
This theme has been the repeated case in 98% of the people I’ve asked in the last year.
Yep, it blew my mind too.
Test it yourself. Make sure you either know or have read their fairytale. The smaller details of the stories matter. Also know what version they read themselves or which ones were read by their parents.
Test it. You’ll see what I mean. It’s a little scary.
Is there a wise decision in all this? What’s the “takeaway?”
Yes, there is something you can do. The answer is that this is happening in their subconscious and tapping into this is pre-eminent in understanding the deeper meaning of someone’s life purpose and personal mission. Their plan or strategy is how they are subversively planning to execute this deeply embedded subconscious story—be it failure or success. Usually, success.
I have a proposition for you and why this repeatedly happens with entrepreneurs and professional and people in your personal life; family friends and acquaintances. I will also ingratiate you with how to respond when these occurrences occur and how to optimize your advice efforts moving forward.
The Problem:
I started an experiment about a year ago and began to ask everyone I knew ‘What was your favorite childhood fairytale?‘. Interestingly enough, in asking well over 100 people over the last 12 months, no two answers were exactly the same. The Wizard of Oz came up pretty often but, one was Dorothy, another was the Scarecrow and one was the Tin Man.
[ Oh look, the lion looks like a hipster with a man bun. 😛 ]
The Solution:
So now with this new knowledge, what can you do?
LISTEN to them!
Without telling them that you know their story, observe and loosely see where along the their lives they are adjacent in this fairytale (beginning, middle, end). They’ll tell you if you ask. Some people will need to be pushed and prodded into revealing what story they may or may not have forgotten, CONSCIOUSLY. Once you find out what that story is, read it. It will take a few minutes of research and looking online.
Then, see if the story has a “helper, guru or guide” who helps the hero (ine) when they stumble or where they are stuck. This helper is you. If the story doesn’t have a helper, guide or guru, then they may feel like they are cheating their story. They’ll need to fulfill their mission or life story on their own. Advice is futile. Not only that, it is counterproductive.
Jimmeny Cricket and the Blue Fairy helped Pinocchio at points in time. The wife of the giant helps Jack in the Beanstalk hide from her husband when he says: “Fie fi fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman“. You will find that nearly every story, and not just fairytales, written by our species goes through this process:
• a mission is lead by a passion
• a hero under takes a mission
• an antagonist attempts to stop the hero
• the hero runs into a problem, needs some help (this is where you come in).
• the hero, their guru then overtake the antagonist and complete the mission.
The story ends when the great challenge that was faced earlier has been overcome by some stroke of genius, wit or luck (gift from God, a touch of magic, a blessed sword, the fitting of a glass slipper, etc…).
You can probably find their story here where there is 200 of them:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/GrimmBros
by the
The Brothers Grimm:
Destroying childhoods and determining people’s life paths for Centuries…
[ Popularized stories such as “Cinderella” (“Aschenputtel“), “The Frog Prince” (“Der Froschkönig“), “The Goose-Girl” (“Die Gänsemagd”), “Hansel and Gretel” (“Hänsel und Gretel“), “Rapunzel“, “Rumpelstiltskin” (“Rumpelstilzchen“),”Sleeping Beauty” (“Dornröschen“), and “Snow White” (“Schneewittchen“). Their first collection of folk tales, Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), was published in 1812. ]
Well, let me know what you thought about this fairytale idea. I’d love to hear what your favorite was. Write, text or e-mail me. I’ll answer.
BinkNyc — Strategic Publicity 