My favorite word today

My favorite word these days is resonance. If you think about making an impact with your blog, a speech, a date, a presentation or a sale, what makes it special and memorable? It's because either the product, person or experience has triggered an emotional response that far exceeds the initial contribution. By evoking a response beyond your own expectations, you are essentially, "WOW"'ed.

Resonance is when the effect is greater than the sum of the individual contributions. It is a heightened emotional response.

The problem with emotional resonance, it is a temporal state. Something that resonates once will eventual stop resonating over time even if you apply the same conditions over again. Unlike the physical world where you can recreate the resonant conditions at will. So you have to keep working at it. New cars, new iPods, new movies, new ideas because we become bored the great becomes good and eventually neutral.

For me, it means whatever I do, I need to figure out my audience and look for the one key element they care most about and make sure my conversation or product is in a position to create a response that resonates. It could be a color, a touch, a word, fulfilling a need, a smell, an aspiration. Could it as basic as that?

Why I like it?

It takes two or more to resonate.

Resonating alone is like the sound of one hand clapping.