Every day you are
besieged by people who think they know better than you. That conviction is especially strong among
marketers, and others intent on selling you an item or service. Three leaders of the most powerful companies
on earth subscribe to that “we know them better than they know themselves" attitude. One was the late Steve Jobs
of Apple who in a 1998 Business Week interview said, “A lot of times, people
don't know what they want until you show it to them.” The others are Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg of Google who, in their
2014 book, How Google Works, wrote,
“Giving the customer what he wants is less important than is giving him
what he doesn’t yet know he wants.”
Obviously all three
of the aforementioned technology titans are correct to a point: one certainly
cannot want something until she/he becomes aware of it. Moreover, marketers, and others who sell,
sometimes must presume that they know what you will want, otherwise they never
would invest the time, money and other resources to develop innovations.
This blog, however,
is not so much about marketers, and others intent on selling you an item or
service, as it is about you. and your awareness of what you want. More
specifically, it is about what you must want to become healthier.
Let's suppose for
the moment that Jobs', Schmidt's, and Rosenberg's beliefs can be applied to
your health-namely, that you actually do not know what you want
health-wise. Now, of course, you know in
a very general sense. For instance, you
would like to have an optimal weight, blood pressure, and blood sugar
level. But to achieve and maintain
health, you must know more than those health dimensions, and know how to fight continually to maintain a comprehensively healthful lifestyle. That stance, in turn, requires you to know which
specific health obstacles impact you, personally.
If you are content to laze about, over-eat, and over-work, you do not
truly know with sufficient specificity what you need to be healthy.
Presuming that you
know clearly enough what you want, you then can turn you attention to what Jobs, Schmidt, and Rosenberg types presume that you want.
More important than those three, of course, are the marketers and
sellers of "junk foods," edible and inedible. Junk food can come in many forms, such as
mindless television programs that keep you sitting on the couch for hours, or
rabble-rousing politicians who add to your stress. You need to know how to resist the junk food in all its manifestations.
So, you should
strive to know as precisely as possible what you, personally, have to know and do to be
healthy. With that secure base, you can prioritize your goals and be more
discriminating when marketers and others, intent on selling you an item or
service, try to exert their influence on you.
You then will know whether what they offer will contribute to your health or will undermine it.
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