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My general theory of life is that, deep down inside, we all know
the person that we want to be. If I ask you who's the person you want to be,
you'd probably tell me a beautiful story... A person who works hard,
very energetic, great with the family, in perfect physical condition, works out...
What happens in life? Why don't we become the person that we know we want to be?
Why is it that by February the gym is empty?
Why is it that 92% of all New Year's resolutions are shot in almost no time?
Millions of people are depressed. Employee engagement's near an all time low...
What happens? If we all know the person we want to be,
why don't we become this person? Well, as we journey through life,
we're constantly bombarded by triggers. One way to look at life is--who's
in control? One theory of life is the theory of internal control.
This is epitomized by the motivational speech. You know, Jimmy was poor, Jimmy
was sick, Jimmy was tired, Jimmy couldn't get a date... But he worked hard and
now he's in perfect shape and has three wives. The ultimate example of
this is a famous book called The Secret, one of the more ridiculous books ever
written. In the book The Secret, there's a message that if I envision it, it will
happen. And they interviewed all kinds of people, and they said things like,
you know, Joe had cancer and he envisioned it would go away, and it did, and
Mary wanted to be a movie star, and she envisioned she would become a movie star,
and she did. And Jimmy wanted to be the basketball champion, and he envisioned it,
and it became true. There was one minor problem with
their research--they didn't interview the dead people.
They didn't interview the basketball team that lost, and they didn't interview
the thousands of movie actresses in Hollywood who were waiting on tables.
Well, this is called a survivor bias in research.
The reality is, I'm a believer that you should envision a positive life, and
it does help, and it's a good thing to try to do. But to naively pretend just because
I envision something that it's going to happen is a little bit ridiculous.
The opposite school is external control.
This is epitomized by B.F. Skinner, the famous Harvard psychologist.
What does he believe? Exactly the opposite--that, basically,
we're totally controlled by triggers in our environment,
that we are like the Pavlovian dog or the rats in the maze... That the stimulus just
basically controls us in ways that we understand or that we don't understand...
Well, my philosophy is somewhere in between--it's mutual creation.
What does mutual creation mean? I am creating my world, and,
at the same time, triggers in my world are creating me.
And by understanding how these triggers in our world change us,
we can learn to do a few things. One, we can learn to anticipate.
Anticipate the triggers that are going to set me off in the wrong direction...
We can learn to avoid the triggers that really are going to push us where we don't
want to be. For example, if you don't want to drink, don't hang around in a bar.
Or, if we can't avoid, we can learn to adjust our behavior.
We know the trigger is coming, we can learn to adjust our behavior to function
in the best way that we possibly can. If you look at triggers,
I'm going to give you a positive example and a negative example.
They illustrate how triggers impact our behavior and how, by becoming aware,
we can change the impact of triggers. First, a negative example...
In my classes I teach people, do you believe that we should ask for input?
Oh yes... Should we encourage people to express their opinion?
Oh, definitely, it's very important. Should we punish the messenger?
Never, never, never... And people really believe these things. Then I said,
Let's do a case study. You go home, you get in the car to go to the store,
your husband, wife, friend, or partner's with you in the front seat.
You're driving to the store, that person in the front seat goes, Look out,
there's a red light up ahead. Did you say, Thank you, or did you say something that
sounded like, What do you mean there's a red light ahead?
Don't you think I can see? I know how to drive the car, why don't you be quiet and
let me drive? Well, how many of us have ever exhibited Plan B before and
screamed at that other person? Just about all of us...
Why is it our behavior is exactly the opposite of what we know our
behavior should be? Why? There was a trigger.
The trigger produced an impulse and the impulse led to a behavior.
The goal of the book is, there are always going to be triggers.
A trigger will always produce an impulse, and that impulse will lead to behavior.
If we can do something different, we can change the cycle. There is a trigger,
there is an impulse, then there's an awareness. After we become aware,
we realize I have a choice. And then our choice will start to drive our behavior,
not our impulse. Let me give you the positive case
study. I teach my class at Dartmouth, and one of the things I teach is--don't
always try to win and don't always try to be right, and...
I use a case study that said, How many of you have ever had this happen before?
You have a hard day at work, a hard day... You go home, your husband, wife, friend,
or partner is there, and they say, I had such a hard day today,
I had such a hard day... And we reply, You had a hard day? You had a hard day?
Do you have any idea what I had to put up with today? Do you think you had a hard
day? Well, [SNAP SOUND] that competitive trigger kicks in, and all of a sudden we
have to prove we're more miserable than the person we live with.
Well, I gave this example at Dartmouth. A guy raised his hand. He said,
I did that last week. I said, What happened? He said, My wife looked at me...
She said, Honey, you just think you had a hard day, it's not over.
Well, let me give you my positive case study.
I got an email about a year and a half ago that's in my book Triggers.
If anybody watching this tape would send me such an email, I'd be real
happy about this whole project. And the email said, I know you don't remember me.
I was in your class about five years ago, and I want to send you an email today and
say thank you. He said, Yesterday my wife called, and
I was having a hard day at the office, I was under a lot of pressure... And
I was busy, and she called up and started talking about
what a terrible day she'd had. And I was just getting ready to point out how
her problems paled in significance to my own. But he said, For
some reason I remembered your course, I took a breath and I thought about this...
This is not the enemy, this is my wife. And I said, I love you, thank you for
all the sacrifices that you've made for the family. He said, I went home.
I spent $25, I bought some flowers, I gave her the flowers, and I said,
I love you. And I said, That's the best $25 I've ever spent.
Thank you very much. Well, the next time you feel that impulse, breathe,
and realize I have a choice. Become aware of what's going on around you and
realize, I have a choice. And let the behavior be driven by the choice,
the person you want to be--as opposed to driven by the environment,
the person the world around you is making you become.
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