Nudging yourself towards love
What do a fly in a urinal, an alarm clock that jumps off your bedside stand and dives under your bed, and parking places in Florence have in common? Even better, what do they have to do with your efforts to find love?
The fly, clock, and parking spaces are all examples of the new trendy trend “nudging.” A nudge is a gentle push, or when used as a verb: To push against gently, especially in order to gain attention or give a signal. Nudging is the hottest thing in getting people to make the right choices.
Some bright dude figured out if guys had a target to aim at in a urinal, “spillage” was reduced significantly. Ergo: The fly. A nudge towards aiming better. Take a look.
The clock actually does jump off onto the floor when the alarm goes off, and then proceeds to dash around madly until you get up, chase it, and turn it off. By then you are up. Might as well stay that way.
Parking spaces in downtown Florence, Italy, are the size of Smart cars, so no big vehicles can park there. Ergo: a nudge towards buying Smart cars.
Getting and keeping moving towards finding love can be terribly difficult for singles. Even if you are lonely and miserable, the anxiety of going out and looking for love can keep you stuck in singleness forever. Jumping in the seemingly icy water of dating, Internet or otherwise, can be too much of a shock to contemplate.
So how can you use the concept of nudging to get you and keep you moving in a direction that is likely to find you love?
I use the “slice and dice” method all the time, both with myself and with my clients. “Slice and dice” is chopping up a task into smaller and smaller bits until you can actually do one of the bits – and then another – without distress. Nudging is similar.
What can you do to give yourself a little push in the right direction? Not a big push that would scare you and stop you in your tracks, but just a little push that gets you moving.
Here’s a fabulous gadget, another alarm clock configuration, that would get me moving for sure: the SnuzNLuz Wifi Donation Alarm Clock. You’ve GOT to take a look: http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml You can set the SnuzNLuz to donate to your least favorite charity or organization automatically unless you turn it off beforehand!
Now, we are talking about getting you moving to find love, not waking up in the morning, so how could this alarm clock help? How about if you made a deal with yourself to do something, anything! Or take a particular step each day towards finding love? If you HADN’T done anything that day by 9pm, let’s say, the clock would automatically make your donation.
You set up a similar system without the clock: Write a series of checks to your least favorite organization in an amount that is significant to you, place each one in an addressed envelope, line them up on your desk, and put one in the mail every day you do nothing to find love.
