Happy Halloween!
I hope everyone out there celebrates today by dressing up in costume, eating way too much candy & learning something.
Wait, what? Learning something? While that is not a typical Halloween tradition, there is no reason we can’t make it one here at Attention Land.
And what a better way to do so than with another installment of Five Things We Can Learn From Everyday Objects.
In honor of today’s holiday, let’s take a look at Halloween and see what we might be able to learn.
Five Things We Can Learn From Halloween
1. All You Have To Do Is Ask
Kids across the country will come home tonight with a pillowcase full of candy. The great part is that any kid can achieve this. You don’t have to be the cutest, the biggest or even have the best costume. All you have to do is ask. Just knock on the door and say those three magic words: trick or treat.
As kids we have no trouble going up to strangers and asking for candy. Somewhere along our timeline, things change. In business, adults can be afraid to ask. The fear of rejection looms large. That is hard to overcome, but the good part is that much like as a child, we don’t have to be the cutest or biggest. All we have to do is ask. Studies show that one of the biggest reasons people give, is because they were asked.
2. You Can Pretend To Be Someone Else (Occasionally)
I remember being excited to dress up as a Ghostbuster or a Ninja Turtle as a kid. It is fun to pretend to be someone else for Halloween. But that fun usually is contained to Halloween. If I were to dress up as Michelangelo (the turtle, not the artist) during the rest of the year, I would just get funny looks and it wouldn’t feel as special. Kids need to be themselves 364 days of the year and reserve the pretending to be someone else to Halloween.
There are certain days that we all feel like pretending to be someone else. I wish I could mimic the writing skills of James Patterson or the tribe of Seth Godin. But things would get old quickly if I spent the whole year pretending to be those writers. To be successful, I need to be me and reserve the pretending to Halloween.
3. Turn Scary Into Merry
As we learned from this week’s Wonder Why Wednesday, Halloween started, in part, because people believed that the dead returned as ghosts. That had to be terrifying. But during the course of history, that scary feeling transitioned into a tradition of getting candy. Halloween must have had great PR to undergo such a remarkable change.
What scares us? If you are like me, there are many situations where fear finds a way to creep into your mind. It won’t be easy but if we can find some way to turn that scary into something fun we will undergo a remarkable change in our own lives.
4. Stand Out
Spoiler alert…you are going to see about a million Elsa costumes today. Girls of all ages are going to dress up like Elsa, from the hit movie Frozen. The first couple Elsas will be fun, but after Elsa #15 you will get bored with that costume. Nothing against Elsa (I really enjoyed Frozen), but the costumes you remember (and talk about on Saturday) will be the ones that stand out.
Is your business, or book, or podcast an Elsa? Are you just like everyone else? If so, you might want to think about a new strategy. The best way to be remembered, and talked about, is to stand out and create something no one else is doing.
5. It Does Not Have To Cost A Ton of $$
Last night I saw a local news segment dedicated to cheap last minute costume ideas. They came up with some great ideas that were easy and inexpensive to throw together. They proved that a great costume doesn’t have to cost a bunch of money.
Same goes for your dream. You don’t have a big budget to be heard, read or found. Your work shouldn’t be shoddy, but it certainly can be economical. We are lucky to live in a time where things can get done for cheaper than ever. Use that to your advantage.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
