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 have subscribed to the “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 precisely 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 your 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 junk food in all its manifestations.
So,
you should strive to know, as precisely and personally as possible, what you need
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 rationally can decide whether what they offer will contribute to your
health or will undermine it.
References
Business
Week (May 25, 1998). Steve Jobs interview.
Schmidt,
E., & and Rosenberg, J. (2014). How
Google Work. Grand Central Publishing
