Selling Coffee to the Japanese and
Creating the Life You Most Desire
What does selling coffee to the Japanese marketplace 30 years ago have to do with creating the life you most desire? The answer to this question lies in the story of how we are coded in our culture by a variety of influences. For our purposes, think of coding as the unconscious beliefs and thoughts you have taken on that you are unaware of. These thoughts and beliefs limit our experience of life and our self. Every experience we have in our life lives as an energy signature creating resonance or dis-resonance with our goals and dreams. Coding comes in a variety of ways including that which is facilitated via the marketing of products to a particular culture. The messages we receive by commercials give us the impressions that we need drugs to live a good life or that if we are not experiencing what is portrayed on the tube or in print advertising that something is missing. Coding is dependent on the notion of external reference, meaning that we are defined and made whole and ok by things, people and events outside of us.
I recently read a fascinating book by G. C. Rapaille called The Culture Code. This revealing book tells of how Dr. Rapaille was able to help Nestle both introduce coffee to the Japanese culture and create a code in Japan for coffee. Nestle was trying to get the Japanese to embrace coffee and was doing so by trying to introduce coffee as a competition for tea. They were failing and hired Dr. Rapaille who studied the Japanese culture and discovered there was not a code for coffee in Japan. So, he assisted Nestle in creating one. In other words the Japanese culture was systematically programmed to embrace coffee as Nestle created a code for coffee in their culture. It happened over a period of years - it began by introducing coffee flavored desserts to children and the marketing followed these children into their teen years and then introduced a coffee flavored milk drink for teens. This was followed by the introduction of coffee to this group as they became adults. The result? …from 0 - 1/2 Billion pounds in sales in 30 years!
These are very impressive numbers. Dr. Rapaille works with 50 of the top fortune 500 companies to learn what the codes are culturally for experiences in different cultures and then marketing campaigns are designed around the codes. Coding occurs at the survival level, at the level of the reptilian brain. Rapaille states in his books and interviews, "the reptilian always wins!" Consider this quote taken from his website where the 3 brain model is being described. "People process information in a certain way which dictates their reactions/behaviors. The three brain theory is crucial to the understanding of archetypology. Everybody has three brains: The reptilian brain, the limbic brain and the cortex. The reptilian brain deals with instincts. We have no control on this part as it deals with our basic survival. This is the part we’re trying to tap into during our discoveries. Once you have discovered the "reptilian hot button" associated with a product or concept, you cannot lose! The limbic brain acts as both a gateway to emotions and a filter for memory. The logic of emotion imprinted in this part of the brain is what "attaches significance" to the information processed. This is the Cultural Archetype decoding center of the brain. The cortex is associated with intelligence. The strongly imprinted code, imprinted earlier in the limbic, cannot be overridden easily by the cortex. This is the part of the brain other market research techniques such as focus groups tap into. But remember "don’t believe what people say!"
The fact that the imprinting can’t be overridden easily by the cortex is demonstrated every year when New Year’s resolutions are made and broken a short time later. This is also evidenced when we intend to change something in our lives and find that our patterns of reactivity interfere with that intention. When you look at the research Dr. Rapaille has done on cultural coding the reasons for this difficulty become more apparent.
More from Rapaille’s website: "This collective cultural unconscious can be further defined as a pool of shared imprinting experiences that unconsciously pre-organize and influence the behavior of a culture." And so it is we are programmed from our earliest experiences and this programming often holds us in patterns of immobility. The programming comes from the collective and also from our parents, teachers, society, advertising and life learning experiences. It comes from our unconscious belief of not being good enough and from our basic fear of change.
So what does this have to do with creating the life we most desire? What does this have to do with how we are in the world? Until we move beyond the conditioning and beliefs of the cultural collective we cannot create things to be as we wish them to be. While reading The Culture Code, I was fascinated to find that Americans have no cultural belief in perfection or that life could be perfect! How sad for us that we don’t embrace the possibility of perfect as something we can experience in our lifetimes. Perfection is in the essence of every moment when we choose to be present to what is and embrace the idea that "now is new." Fortunately, the powerful process of The Rockit Method™ of Consciousness Shifting can separate the emotional imprint and the associated significance we have attached to it. It can erase permanently the fears that drive our behaviors and limiting beliefs effectively neutralizing the charge. This allows us to move from the fear and limitations we have taken on that have nothing to do with who we are, to the place of embracing the essence of who we really are. The end result - peace happiness and joy!