ADT & CBD OIL ??

??Below is chapter six of my book, Just Ideas. For the last six months the book has only been available on BN.com but I am happy to announce that it is now available as a FREE audiobook available on Spotify and YouTube! ??

If you like your home alarm system, then you're gonna love CBD Oil...

Why do people who live in gated neighborhoods spend money on a home alarm system? I’ve heard the clichés, “better safe than sorry,” or “I want to be on the safe side,” but I struggle to find the logic in the purchase. Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it seemed like everyone was in consensus that the suburbs in South Tulsa are the safest part of the city; life is sheltered and predictable. Yet, thousands of these residents make sizable investments in home alarm systems like ADT Security. One ADT commercial shows a scene straight from a suburban nightmare: a mom and her young daughter walk in on a burglar trying to steal the living room television after trashing the place and cracking a framed photo of a loved one. The mom, with the help of a somber soundtrack, explains that the emotional toll was far greater than the physical damage. She goes on to say that what the robber really stole was their peace of mind. The mom concludes that the time to think about ADT is not, “after something bad happens, it’s before.” A line delivered with a clear tone and a latent insinuation—it is not a matter of if your home will be burglarized, but when. However, research on the matter tells a different story. The key findings inform us that regardless of where you live within a city, the risk of having your home burglarized is tremendously low. In Oklahoma, you have a 0.73% chance of having your home broken into. Moreover, communities located closer to the suburbs had a lower chance of being burglarized, and homes in a gated neighborhood carry significantly less risk than homes in non-gated neighborhoods. In these nice neighborhoods, locking the doors is security enough. Nevertheless, ADT will continue to grow because what they are really selling is fear, and we’ll always buy it.

Fear is certainly not a one-dimensional idea; it manifests in thousands of ways for thousands of different reasons but all fear does have a foundation: the angst of what is unknown. A persisting human dissonance is the desire to fully understand what is around every corner, and the reality that we never will. This issue underlies all our conventional fears: A child is not afraid of the dark, they are scared something could happen with no forewarning. A person nervous about traveling on an airplane for the first time is not afraid of the act of flying, they are fearful of what might go wrong. Fear serves its purpose in keeping us safe, but it is this dissonance issue that so often grips the mind and appoints fear as the governing body. That governing body, which thinks irrationally, will cause us to behave reactively, instead of proactively. Urich put it aptly in the nineteenth episode of the podcast. “The human animal is smart enough to be scared but not smart enough to be smart.”?Why is this poor decision-making behavior a consistent by-product of fear? Our foundational fear of the unknown begs to be satisfied—it does not matter if it is an irrational decision, it’s a decision all the same. It will provide the rapturous feeling of being in control, the remedy for the unknown.

This control euphoria is most amplified in the case of someone who hoards. Hoarders exist on a spectrum. On one end you have the compulsive hoarder. These are the folks who are up to their eyeballs in garbage and junk, and maybe you have seen them on Hoarders: Buried Alive. On the other end, you could find the mild hoarder who keeps a messy home and refuses to part with their busted toaster, even if gifted a new one. Regardless of where they fall on the spectrum, the common mark of a hoarder is their plea that everything they own is worth keeping or serves a purpose, even if it is inherently obsolete. Any suggestion that they should clean out their home is taken as a threat against their very personhood. These people do not fill their homes with clutter and garbage because they are simply unorganized or messy. Rather, it is how they gain a faux sense of control over their lives through their belongings. This insulates them from the uncertain world they fear, and satisfies a desperate need for the impression of control.

When we gain control over a situation or ourselves, it is as if we found a brown paper bag to hyperventilate into. The bag itself does not do much, but it helps to focus our attention on settling down. Driving around town, I have found it is nearly impossible to go more than a few miles without finding at least one corner store selling CBD oil. When you walk into one of these shops and browse the different oils you are sure to see gospel-level advertising for the benefits. The Food and Drug Administration does not regulate CBD oil and the Federal Trade Commission has had to send dozens of warnings to certain producers for lofty claims such as the oils were good substitutes for prescription medication or that they could prevent serious disease. Because of this, it is becoming less common for producers to make unsubstantiated claims and more common to craft vague benefit lists. One such company lists on their website that CBD oil can offer, “possible therapeutic benefits” and that “its possible effects can be subtle depending on the user.” The “therapeutic benefits” the company touts revolve around assistance with stress management and anxiety, but even this claim is marked with an asterisk that reminds us the FDA cannot agree with the information. So why would someone decide to try it out? CBD oil is less like a miracle cure and more like the brown paper bag. We can breathe again because it gives us something tangible to have control over and to take comfort in. To loosely echo the famous Henry Ford, whether we believe the oils work, or do not work, we are right.

ADT grasps our fundamental fear of the unknown, but even more so they understand that their alarm systems will satisfy our need for control, a need we cannot allow to go unfulfilled. This is why ADT and these CBD retailers do not have to fret over lame burglary statistics or unsubstantiated health benefits. They simply have to frame their product in such a way that suggests you can reclaim control over your life. A weak sales pitch when we realize that our lives will always feature uncertainty and struggle. The people who readily sign on for these products (and others like them) are behaving in such a way that is not too dissimilar from the hoarder. When someone hoards, they are both relieving anxiety and creating it. The accumulation of random things satisfies their instinctual impulse for control, but the consequences of a dirty home (and the accompanying guilt), perpetuates their psychological discomfort. Similarly, when someone calls ADT after the commercial airs, they have not really taken control over the situation, they have given in to their fears. They are relieving and creating anxiety at the same time. To gain control is to relinquish it. If we can be honest with ourselves, accepting that our foundational fears will inevitably underline our decisions, then we can let go of their influence and begin to claim true authority over ourselves. An authority that will cultivate a sound mind from the richness of a more peaceful heart.

?? Check out the Just Ideas audiobook on Spotify or YouTube today!