Assign Your Jewelry Catalyst

Understanding Affordance

Let’s talk about affordance. Affordance is a concept that expresses the mutual co-shaping of two systems in a common setting.

Say you, seeing a set of feather adorned earrings in a shop display. You zoom over and pick them up. What happens in that moment is that your nervous system was afforded the visual and tactile affect of these earrings. You feel elated, in awe, a desire to have them (insert whatever feelings you’d be having in this scene – you know YOU). In this setting – the feather earrings afforded you an emotional shift. They shaped how you felt at that moment (please bear in mind I’m simplifying the process for the sake of brevity).

Now in the context of using jewelry to facilitate the right affordance between us, so that I am reminded of my set intent, in the case of my example from step 1 – imagine I bought these earrings and intentionally decided that each time I were to speak publicly, I’d put my “confident speaker earrings” on. And each time their feathers caressed my shoulders or neck, my attention will be back on the embodying this confidence I committed to when I put them on.

This is exactly the power we’ll be leveraging in step 2 of our mini-experience.

Choose Your Jewelry for Its Sensory Input Power

So the piece of jewelry you choose to assist you in your step 1 decision has to be suitable for the affect you desire through the appropriate affordance (interaction) between the two of you.

Sorry but I can’t tell you what to pick.

Affordance is a subjective perception-guided concept that you need to emotionally ‘see’ through your filters. Here are some examples that might help if you’re not already certain of which piece of jewelry to choose.

• I often talk about this affect when I describe my pieces in my videos. For example, my Journey Line rings with their linear meandering and unpredictable design curves, afford you the notion and meaning of our journeys through life as humans. Ups, downs, curves, and U-turns. The fact that they are also textured gives them the extra pull – representing the bumps in life along the way.
• In a similar way – the feather earrings in my first example may afford you softness and the caress of love. Same for a piece that has heart shapes in it.
• A particularly colourful jewelry piece can brighten your mindset just because of its colours. A bright yellow piece can remind you of the Sun and bring lightness and sunshine or joy to your mind.
• If you want to feel grounded – perhaps a ring with a chunky/solid build, or larger brown/earthy stone could be a reminder to sit firmly in your core.
• Or, if you want to be more present – a piece that works well with my customers is what I call a ‘presence’ ring, or a presence bracelet. These are a ring or bracelet with a dangly part at one end. Each time your hand moves you get the tapping signal of the dangle on your skin – which immediately signals your mind a reminder of your intent to be present.

To be clear (and as you’ll soon see in the next step) this isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it tactic.

It’s a learnable skill. BUT it requires surprisingly little intervention from you, and it can be a lot of fun when you learn how to ‘play the game‘. You can go out into previously challenging environments and actually have some fun, by setting secret messages for yourself and by staying present, seeing them transform your entire perception of a previously unpleasant experience.

In general, when you’re choosing the ‘right’ piece of jewelry, you’ll look for it to give you the right emotional signals by either of these properties:

• its emotional or sentimental meaning;
• its shape, colour/s, length, weight, feel, materials.

As with your Powerhouse WHY – you’ll know you have the right piece when looking at it affords you the right catalytic meaning for your chosen goal. So just seeing it invokes the meaning you want reliably. I have a ring from my mom that does this. So each time I choose to wear it, it says CONFIDENCE to me, no quibbles.

Your senses are powerful input channels for your brain. They are how your mind makes sense of the world around you. They are how your mind puts together the meanings you assign to situations, people, places, and things. This is why I say that once you’ve learned how my method works, you’ll not be able to unsee it. This is why it makes sense that you learn how to leverage this autonomic superpower of our brain.

One last thing before I leave you to choose: it’s a little-known fact that jewelry worn on your hands and arms (so rings and bracelets), is typically more effective for giving yourself a desired message, than earrings or a necklace (unless it’s a long enough or large necklace that you can reach to and play with, or you can see). That is because these pieces are visible to you all of the time.

Use earrings, shorter necklaces or broaches, especially when you’re signalling a message to your external environment.

Now – have you chosen a jewelry piece for the thing you want to work on?

If yes – that’s your Totem. Feel free to share below what you chose and why.

Now let’s move to the final Step 3.