A Brand of loyalty, one to one

In recognition of the in roads NLP is making, I had my first session of training at the Apple store. In a flick of a return key, your personal trainer can tell everything there is to know about you, since it is all stored on your hard drive. Within three minutes of meeting, my personal trainer had worked out that I am fascinated by narcissists, am going through an extremely ugly divorce, been burnt by the serial dater and like Prada. We are now very intimate. Apparently I am relatively normal. Some of the pictures that come up in the iphoto sessions are not ones you would show your grandmother.

Having discussed my in depth knowledge of Apple Macs and my bizarre thought process, he quickly ascertained that we would be building up a deep and meaningful relationship. I would be there for a lot of training and he would spend a lot of time having to research things that he was not sure about. It seems the things that I need to understand are not ones that most of the nation worry about.

Nothing changes.

The Apple one-to-one is an incredibly canny move. It would appear fantastic value. Indeed it is. At £79 per year you can access as much one to one training as deemed necessary. If needed, the potential is there to go in every day which would make Apple comparatively cheap when you consider the cost of a PC and some dreadful computer course. Yet it is not about value, it is about brand loyalty and it works. I am now converted and will never go back to the dreadful PC again. Not only that, I have probably been responsible for at least 3 laptop sales on behalf of Apple. They treat me nicely, I tell other people and they all want to be treated nicely. In a society where being treated really nicely is comparatively rare, the cost of a laptop is peanuts.

Genius.

Interesting though. Apple have keyed into human need and to the one thing most of us fail to get. Treat people nicely and you create loyalty. So simple and yet seemingly so difficult for so many.

I had a conversation today with someone that dislikes me so much that they are incapable of looking me in the face. They clearly hold me reasonable for every bad feeling they have. In doing so, it makes a future of civility almost impossible. Every single thing I say is taken as a criticism which means it is not worth saying anything. This can only result in a situation where no information is shared, which will breed resentment and exclusion. Resentment and exclusion will cause more hatred and so the cycle will go on and on and on. Cycle after cycle of self fulfilling prophecy. It is a pattern of behaviour I am growing tired of witnessing.

One of the things that I had to work really hard on last year was the theory that since I cannot change other peoples behaviour, I could concentrate on changing my reaction to it. I can do that and it does indeed make facing adversity much easier. You can only be controlled if you are willing for that to happen. Anger is a reaction that you allow to happen. No one can make you angry, it is a choice you make yourself.

All great stuff and all true. However, I also realised today that if the other person is not willing to control their own reactions and assumptions to situations, than neither of you will reach a place of acceptance because one party will make that impossible. When you have been made the visual scapegoat for everything that has ever gone wrong in someone else's life, then every time they look at you, you become the reminder of everything that went wrong in their life.

This is the point that you realise that nothing you say or do will ever make the situation any different and there is no point in trying. Having reached a place of acceptance, they are blind to the fact that it no longer has any affect. The only people it hurts is them and the innocent victims caught up in it all.

Holding onto anger, bitterness and resentment is staggeringly unhealthy and sadly a form of self abuse. There are choices. Holding onto feelings attached to the past simply means that you can never really have a future.

Perhaps they will reach that point. Perhaps one day they will be happy in their choices and stop making other people responsible for their decisions. It is only at the point that you are willing to take responsibility for the choices you make, that happiness can ever been attained. For me, choosing to get rid of anger goes hand in hand of letting go of expectation. When you expect people to behave in a better why than they do, disappointment will follow. When you expect people to behave in the way that deep down you know they will, acceptance follows.

Punishing others will never provide good feeling. Guilt generally comes from bad behaviour. Bad behaviour frequently comes from not liking the feeling of guilt. Tis so simple, stop the bad behaviour, behave in the right way and the guilt goes. In punishing others, people all to frequently punish themselves.

Pointless