Stop Hurting Me, I Don't Buy It!
The Secret To True Happiness
Gary Blum and
John Greenburg
Stop Hurting Me, I Don't Buy It! The Secret To True Happiness
Copyright Gary Blum and John Greenburg 2010
Published at Smashwords
Testimonials
“As a devout Pentecostal, I am in agreement that the avoidance of physical pain and the 5 FLUID Pains drives human behavior. I also agree that the Golden Rule is key to be the happiest you can be in this world.”
–Ruth Stowe, Akron, Ohio – property management executive and author of Visa Denied.
“I agree with the premise of Stop Hurting Me, I Don't Buy It: The Secret to True Happiness. While I was first learning about it, I walked into my house and saw my oldest daughter reading to her mother and her younger sister. It was a “snapshot of happiness” that brought it all home to me.
–Jose Gonzalez, Palm Beach, Florida – former personal trainer for Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige. Currently, a marketing executive for H2O Overdrive energy drink
“Gary and John’s book is right on time. Emotional pain… especially Loneliness, Insignificance and Disrespect… is what got me into the ring. Each time I fought, I imagined that my opponent was taking food off my family’s table and being disrespectful to them.”
–Riddick Bowe, Fort Washington, Maryland – two-time World Heavyweight Boxing Champion
“Having observed and known most of the renowned football players of the past seven decades, I can unequivocally state that Stop Hurting Me, I Don't Buy It is correct: Human behavior is driven by physical and emotional pain. They don’t play to win, they play not to lose. After all, the team that makes the fewest mistakes wins.”
–Jimmie McDowell, Belhaven, Mississippi – former Executive Director of the National Football Foundation and the College Football Hall of Fame. Currently, Executive Director of the All-American Football Foundation
“I agree that the 5 FLUID Pains explain human behavior. Even after having traveled the world, it has helped me to understand things that have puzzled me for a long time.”
–Martin Skylark, Panama – a sea captain who spent 57 years at sea and is the subject of Captain Courageous: My True Story
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my father, Lewis J. Blum, who died at the age of forty-nine because he didn’t understand an important truth: Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words are so painful that they can cause you to do things that will ruin your life.
I also dedicate this book to my two beautiful daughters, Nicole and Jennifer. Their words and deeds have shown me that I am not insignificant, I have not failed in life and I am deserving of their respect.
And finally, I dedicate this book to my wife, Helga. Over the course of our twenty-six year marriage, she has prevented me from experiencing the ultimate pain of loneliness.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by the Authors
1. This Book Can Make You Happier Than You’ve Ever Been Before
2. Which Comes First: Pleasure, or Pain?
3. What is Pain? What is Pleasure?
4. Loneliness: The Most Powerful Emotional Pain
5. Failure
6. Guilt
7. Insignificance
8. Disrespect
9.Distractions, Hobbies, Passions & Revenge
10.Addiction
11.Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness… And Yet We Need to Believe That It Does
12. What Does It Take To Be Truly Happy?
FOREWORD: WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK
It all started back in 1973, when I was fifteen years old. It was just before Father’s Day, and I happened to see an ad in a magazine for Chivas Regal scotch whiskey.
It was a simple but effective advertisement. It consisted of a photograph of several canceled checks. Under the canceled checks was the caption: “You can never thank your father for everything he did, but you can give him Chivas Regal.”
I had no idea what Chivas Regal was; and I wasn’t sure that even if I could find it, I could afford to buy it. There was one thing I was certain of, though: My dad was going to get Chivas Regal! It was the least I could do to say “Thank you” for all he had done: For all the sacrifices he had made, for all his hard work and for putting up with me.
My father had faced a lot of adversity as a family man. By listening to others who really didn’t know what they were talking about and because of some misfortune; he had put the family into personal bankruptcy; but I still loved him and respected him. I wanted to show him how I felt about him. I thought it would make me happy to buy the expensive scotch for him, and I knew it would definitely make him happy to receive it.
As it turned out, I couldn’t afford to buy my dad the Chivas Regal, so I gave him a Father’s Day card instead. I’ll never forget how happy and hopeful I felt when I saw the Chivas Regal ad, and then the horrible feeling that I was an utter failure when I discovered that I didn’t have the money to buy the present I so desperately wanted to give my father. It would have been the perfect way to say: “Dad, I love you unconditionally, no matter what.”
I channeled the anger and disappointment I felt into a desire to be in advertising. I believed that it was as honorable a profession as teaching, and that I could become successful by educating people about all the great stuff they could buy. In addition, I could make enough money to buy my dad Chivas Regal any time I wanted. Sadly, by the time I started making enough money in advertising to buy him that special bottle of scotch, he had passed away.
I kept that Chivas Regal ad and had it framed. That simple but effective ad now hangs in a special place on the wall of my office. It serves as a reminder of not just how powerful advertising and societal communications can be, but also the five triggers which motivate most human actions: The 5 FLUID Pains (Failure, Loneliness, gUilt, Insignificance and Disrespect).
As I grew older in the pursuit of my dream, I thought that by becoming an avid reader, I would gain an understanding of what motivated me. Once I understood what motivated me, I would then have an understanding of how to motivate others; so that they would take action by purchasing the products and services of my clients. I read the works of Plato, the works of Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Age of Enlightenment, Marshall McLuhan’s The Medium is the Message, Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince and the works of Sigmund Freud, to name a few.
After I finished college, I was still hoping to find the answers to what motivated people. I turned to less philosophical works, such as Og Mandino’s The Greatest Salesman in the World, John Caples’ How to Make Your Advertising Make Money and Tested Advertising Methods, James Webb Young’s How to Become an Advertising Man, Al Reis and Jack Trout’s Twenty-two Immutable Laws of Marketing, David Ogilvy’s Ogilvy on Advertising and most recently, Sergio Zyman’s The End of Marketing as We Know It.
These are all great books, and I have learned a great deal from them. I learned about the importance of getting people’s attention and how to achieve that objective. I also learned how to instill a desire to take action. These marvelous books dealt with the mechanics, science and strategies that are vital to effective persuasion and successful advertising campaigns, but they overlooked one thing: They didn’t explain how to create desire.
None of them, in my opinion, answered my question in a way that made sense. They couldn’t explain both rational and seemingly irrational behavior and more importantly for me, enable me to create effective advertising.
It was then that I experienced an epiphany: Ninety-eight percent of the actions we take are borne from the need to avoid pain, rather than the desire to seek pleasure, as is so often taught in marketing courses. The more I thought about it, it made perfect sense.
The need to avoid pain is hard-wired into all of us. Other than pleasure that is directly associated with some chemical reaction in the brain, how we define pleasure is learned through nature (genetics or “DNA”), nurture (the way we were brought up), societal communications (the media) and happenstance (the “element of chance”, “acts of God” or “paranormal occurrences”).
After this profound realization on my part, I became determined to write this book for the sake of my children and their grandchildren. My two kids live in a world of constant, never-ending real-time stimulus; bombarded by unfiltered societal communications from school, friends, television, radio, the media, politicians, pundits, public relations firms, bloggers, social media friends, content providers, “Internet trollers”, etc. I want them to understand how easy it is to be manipulated by teachers, friends, the media, advertising, politicians; even religious leaders. They must recognize and understand the true basis for their decisions. Ignorance truly can be blissful; but it can also lead you to buy things you don’t really need, believe things that aren’t true and act in certain ways because others make you believe it’s the right thing to do. I want them to understand that they don’t have to: “Buy it to avoid the pain of not having it”.
Lastly, I wrote this book in hopes that those fighting terrorism will come to understand that logic, money, threats of violence and all the things the gift of democracy could possibly do will never overcome the intense pain that would drive a person to sacrifice their life for a greater cause. Their efforts would be better spent putting into the minds and hearts of potential terrorists the reality that if they kill themselves and innocent people in hopes of reaching paradise, they will be shunned by Allah and forever condemned to suffering such horrible pain that it is beyond their ability to imagine it.
- Gary Blum
October, 2010
THIS BOOK CAN MAKE YOU HAPPIER THAN YOU’VE EVER BEEN BEFORE
If you read this book, you will become happier than you have ever imagined. You will understand what true happiness is, and you will understand how to become happier than you have ever been before. It will help you to understand everything about life because you’ll understand what defines true happiness at any given moment in time.
It also about hope, and about understanding what hope really is. It’s about having a dream and understanding what that truly is.
You will understand love. You’ll understand what makes a hero. You’ll understand what passion really means. You’ll understand what is truly inspirational and what inspires people; and why, after they reach their pinnacle, they don’t just stop, and why they keep on going. You will understand pain. You will understand why there is addiction.
If you happen to be wallowing in self-pity at the moment you’re reading this book, you’ll understand in that same split second how we can make you feel better than you’ve ever imagined you possibly could. And if you don’t want to feel better, you’ll at least understand what is happening and why you wallow in self-pity.
If you’re depressed right now and you’re taking pills because you’re not happy with your job and you think that you’d be happier working somewhere else, I’ll explain why you might not really be happier with that other job. It’s also possible that, through my explanation, you may become absolutely sure that something is so bad that you have to get out. But by understanding what will happen next, you’ll be happier now. You can “stop the clock and take a snapshot” so that you can be happy, be passionate and have hope. You’ll have more hope than you’ve ever had, and you’ll really understand what hope truly is.
You’ll understand the importance of smiling, maintaining eye contact, touching someone’s shoulder or giving them a hug; and you’ll understand the power of a smile, of eye contact, of a touch on the shoulder or a hug. You’ll not only understand that power, you’ll also understand that you can use that power. Whether you do it out of sincerity or do it to manipulate someone… well, that’s all up to you.
You’ll understand why diamonds are a symbol of love and why people say “Diamonds are forever.” or “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.” You’ll understand why you feel terrible if you don’t send out a birthday card. You’ll understand why we have these holidays that make you do things, and why we give gifts at Christmas time.
You’ll understand how advertising can get you to buy things you don’t need and can’t afford at the worst possible times. You’ll understand how it’s possible that you may buy something because, at the moment in time you decided to buy it, you thought it would give you great pleasure and then once you’ve bought it, you find that that it didn’t give you any pleasure at all. If you read this book, you’ll understand exactly what happened.
You’ll understand why you can buy a pair of shoes one day, find out they are “dated” and then need to buy another pair the next day, or why you buy a brand new car and within a short time, feel a need to buy another car. Or, why, for some people, keeping an old car is better for them.
You’ll understand why you will go to a bar and order the most expensive vodka, or why you taste a little bit of cheese and before you know it, you’ve bought a whole brick of that cheese.
You’ll understand why your kids will nag you to death to get them a certain toy for Christmas and when you give them the toy, they only play with it for a short time and then end up playing with the box it came in. You’ll understand how to bring up your children to become great readers by using positive reinforcement, rather than using pain and punishing them.
You’ll understand why, at the end of the day, whether she’s a stay-at-home mom or a career woman, your wife might feel the pain of not having gone in a different direction. If she’s a stay-at-home mom, she may feel bad because she has no job, is not making money and is “stuck home with the kids”. If she’s a career woman, she might be upset because she’d rather be a stay-at-home mom… and you’ll be able to understand all of that.
When something bad happens, we often say: “When one door closes, another opens.” That saying is a rationalization… and that’s fine… but you’ll understand what it really means.
In your heart, you want to believe that money cannot buy happiness, because everyone tells you that. And yet, you have to go to work thinking “Money does buy happiness.” Because you know that if you didn’t think that way, why would you work hard? By reading this book, you will understand why both sides of that coin are so important.
Whether you’re the wealthiest person in the world or the poorest, reading this book will impart all of these secrets to you. You will understand how you could be the wealthiest person in the world and not be happy. You might try as hard as you can to act happy… and that’s all right… but you will understand what you’re really looking for and why so many people go into philanthropy. You’ll understand that if you’re the poorest person in the world, maybe you can be as happy as the wealthiest person in the world if you take care of your base needs; but after a certain amount of time, you’ll no longer be happy and you’ll want to move on to something else. You’ll understand what true happiness is at a given moment in time and what defines it.
You’ll understand why you say things and wish you could pull them back… why you say something and then ask yourself “Why did I say that?” or “Why didn’t I say this?” You will understand social network Internet sites, like Facebook. You may choose to go on Facebook or not, but you will understand why you made your choice.
You’ll understand why people who were placed in the worst situations imaginable survived, while others died. Whenever people are thrust into life and death situations, those who survive always say something, but this book will give the true reason they were survivors.
Whether you believe in God or not, whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re healthy or infirm, whether you feel like you’ve had the best luck in the world or the most miserable luck there is, whether you’re in the United States or in darkest Africa, the principles contained in this book will apply… and it will give you an understanding of people throughout the world. When things don’t seem to make sense, it will all make sense if you apply these principles.
You’ll understand geopolitics. You’ll understand the concept of war and what it really is. Unfortunately, we’ll always go to war, but you’ll understand why this is so. And not at the topical level of “We’re going to war for oil.” You’ll understand the real base reason why we go to war.
This book can give you a clarity you’ve never had before. Things that didn’t make sense before will now make sense. When you wonder: “How could he do that?” or “Why would that happen?” the principles contained in this book will enable you to understand it. You will understand the element of happenstance, and how some things occur strictly as random acts. This book explains the paradoxes.
You will understand all that has happened in the past, all that is happening right now and how to change your future. You will find that this book is really powerful.
It is so powerful that you’ll understand why some people will not want you to read it, and they may argue to their death against it. Politicians won’t want you to read this book. Despots will not want you to read this book. Religious leaders may not want you to read this book. Psychiatrists might not want you to read it. Some will argue against the secrets contained in it. The reason for this is that a lot of the power they have over you may lessen or disappear if you read this book. This book could cause a lot of pain… for them.