Tuned In - Ideas Worth Listening To

The Naked Truth

"Whomever loses the bet has to walk naked in the mall parking lot!" It was a statement that took the radio game to a new level of excitement. Mo and Sally had played "Battle of the Sexes" consistently each week where listeners would compete in an on-air trivia contest to determine what sex was smarter on a particular morning. The winner would receive a specific prize and help one of the morning team claim bragging rights for their gender with an on-going tote board of who had the most victories.

The game was a regular feature on the show and had stuck to the same format until the announcement on this particular morning. The score was dead-even between the sexes and our morning team decided to up the ante...really high. It started on a Monday when Mo announced the new spin. If the women won more each morning than the men this week, Mo would have to take the walk of shame in front of anyone that showed up on Friday at the busiest mall in town. If the men won, it would be Sally walking naked in the parking lot. Did I mention it also happened to be located on the most congested street in town!

No one could believe it. We had calls from angry mothers protesting the idea. The police department warned us that walking naked was a crime in the state and someone would be arrested. Even churches protested the thought of children listening to such a spectacle with innocent ears. The buzz seemed bigger than we ever imagined with some people routing for Mo or Sally because they liked the idea of seeing them walk naked, while others were just disgusted by the entire idea.

In the meantime, the Battle of the Sexes game continued each morning with the women scoring a victory on Monday and Wednesday. The guys countered with wins on Tuesday and Thursday. It was a tie with only Friday morning to go. You could almost feel the entire city on edge on that final morning when the game began. It was down to five questions and two contestants holding the fate of the show in their trivial skills. The game seemed to drag on forever with one correct answer after another for each side until everyone was ready for the final moment. The last question was announced and by a mere second, the guy answered the question. Mo was the winner and Sally would have to walk naked at 5pm that day in the heart of rush hour when the most possible people would see the show.

The scene was set for the afternoon walk. The station vans surrounded a spot in the mall parking lot that was right next to the major road taking people home from work in a heavy commute. A tent with side walls was erected in the center to serve as a staging room for Sally to prepare herself before stepping out for the whole city to see. As the time clicked down to the scheduled moment, more and more people arrived to witness the event. There were news crews, a police team ready to take action on their earlier promise and many spectators hoping for a peek.

When the time reached the top of the hour, Mo made an announcement to the crowd to get ready and instructed a team of volunteers to open the tent to reveal Sally walking naked. The rubber neckers in traffic had caused a major jam and the crowd was fighting for a perfect vantage point. Sally stepped out fully clothed walking a beautiful puppy on a leash. It was then the morning team revealed that the dog's name was "Naked" and Sally was doing what she had promised by losing the bet...she was walking naked.

The spoken word is a great magician. Especially when its teamed with your own perception and beliefs of how you view the world. Everything in life exists that way...how you personally see it. If you have a belief then to you it's true. When all of the listeners heard that Sally was going to walk "naked," their immediate perception was a woman without any clothes on strolling through a public lot. However, our intent on executing this idea was to bring awareness to stray dogs and cats who needed a home. Just by telling listeners to adopt a pet, it wouldn't resonate with them, because they had heard that message the same way so many times before.

We needed them to see it differently, so they would have a different attitude about it. By changing the surroundings associated with a perception or belief, you can change what you see. The way to over come limiting beliefs, negativity or doubts is to start seeing things differently. It starts with the words you use with yourself and others about these areas of your work, your money and your life. Words have the power to unite and also divide; words can heal, but also wound; words can bless and curse; reconcile or antagonize; enlighten or delude and mislead; reveal or hide.

All the limitations you experience are from your own conditioning. When you begin to see, hear and speak about things differently, you can see that things you believed were impossible, are very possible when the conditioning is no longer in the way. This is the beginning of you becoming Tuned In and achieving your unlimited potential.‏

Tuned In is my personal mission to have the world look at radio differently. It's why I say at the top of the blog, the concept of using broadcasting and radio as a metaphor to have you look at yourself may seem bizarre to some, but I feel it's an elegantly simple concept to explain why things are the way they are. It's a connection through something you already know, but with an emphasis on you and the content you broadcast each day from a strange but strangely enlightening angle.

Radio is something you take for granted because it's always just been there. It's something you do while doing something else. You never really thought about it until there were more choices like MP3's, iPod's, satellite radio and so on. You also think and act in the same way. You have beliefs and perceptions that have been with you since you were old enough to even think about it. It's the discovery of self-observation that allows you to look at things differently and understand the value of looking inside to reveal the tremendous gifts you have to share with the world.

Do it and you too can walk naked through the busiest streets and most crowded markets too...and like Sally, always with your clothes on.