• by Jeff Einstein , August 30, 2004

Most of my columns to date have focused on the surrender of our personal power to our own addictions and obsessions. It's time to reclaim what is rightfully ours. Doing so will improve the quality of our work and insinuate the quality of life as the only rightful metric by which to calculate ROI.

The first step in reclaiming right thinking in our profession is to find a way to emerge from the overwhelming sense of deprivation that characterizes our work product, work habits, and personal lives. Only then can we step into the light of abundance.

Why are so many individuals so dissatisfied with their lives? Why does everyone else have more money, sex, and fun than we do? Because marketers and advertisers tell them in no uncertain terms that deprivation rather than abundance is the rule. Deprived, we tell them, is how they should feel. Advertising and marketing is all about promoting more as the solution to everything. More sex, more drugs, more rock and roll, more software, more money, more fun, more information. More everything. It feeds and promotes our sense of deprivation relentlessly. It does this only because we tell it to, and we tell it to only because we believe it ourselves, deep down in the very marrow of our bones.

As advertising and marketing professionals, we are especially vulnerable and susceptible to our own power of persuasion, simply because we immerse ourselves in it day in and day out for year after year, and because our livelihood depends on our ability to persuade others. To imagine - even for a moment - that we can emerge from it all without falling prey to our own propaganda is the height of folly, an exercise in sheer vanity, and constitutes massive denial of our own accountability and power. Indeed, the more dependent we become on our own mythologies - including the one that claims we are somehow immune to our own persuasions - the more strident we become in our persuasion of others, and the more likely we are to violate the sensibilities of the very people we seek to engage, and further betray our own diminishing sense of ethics.

The very first step in emerging from our driving sense of deprivation is to become aware of it as it occurs, both at work and at home. Here's how:

Keep a "Deprivation and Fear Journal" for three typical work days, from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to sleep at night. Your "Deprivation and Fear Journal" will consist of a sheet of paper with three simple columns: "Deprivation," "Fear," and "Time of Day."

Each time you feel deprived of anything - time, money, sex, power, love, intimacy - list it by name under the "Deprivation and Fear" column, then jot down the time of day the feeling occurred. Each time you feel fearful of anything - rejection, personal or professional loss, failure, your spouse, your anger, someone else's anger, expressing yourself, your health, your finances, your boss, your future - list it by name under the "Fear" column, then jot down the time of day the feeling occurred.

The only pre-requisites are a) to be brutally honest with yourself, b) to be meticulous about recording your feelings of deprivation and fear as they occur for the full three days, and c) not to judge or analyze your feelings as they occur.

Review your "Deprivation and Fear Journal" after three days. Certain patterns will likely emerge. Certain feelings of deprivation may ride shotgun with certain fears, or vice versa. Certain feelings may occur more frequently during certain times of the day. If you spot obvious connections between sequential feelings, circle them.

The "Deprivation and Fear Journal" exercise has manifold objectives: First, to demonstrate that we as marketers are at least as subject to our own work product as anyone else; next, to identify and isolate patterns in our feelings of deprivation and fear; finally, to act as a road map for how and where to introduce the antidote for both: gratitude.

More on the introduction of gratitude and how to analyze your "Deprivation and Fear Journal" next week. Many thanks as always for your gracious time, dear reader. Best to you and yours...

Please note: The Einstein's Corner discussion group at http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/einsteinscorner/ is dedicated to exploring the adverse effects of our addictions to technology and media on the quality of our lives, both at work and at home. Please feel free to drop by and join the discussion.