Translator: Vanessa Soneghet Reviewer: Leonardo Silva
Thank you so much. It's a real honor to be here.
So, listen: here's a light, fun topic to explore for a Friday afternoon.
As a species I believe the human race is in danger of killing its own freedom.
(Laughter)
Doctor Viktor Frankl, psychiatrist and survivor of the Holocaust, said,
"Between stimulus and response, there is a space,
and in that space is our power to choose our response.
But in our response lies our growth and our freedom."
But if we're not even conscious
of why we do the things we do and how to control them for the better,
are we really truly free?
The seeming lack of conscious awareness of why we behave how we do,
and of the gap, the void, the space between stimulus and our response,
is having and adverse effect on the choices we make,
and that makes me genuinely concerned for the future generations of humanity.
Now, at one end of the spectrum,
someone cuts us up on the way to work while we're driving,
and we let it rile us and work us up,
we feel the stress and the agitation
and, ultimately, our mood impacts our behavior,
often for the rest of the day,
which, in turn, affects the consequences of how we choose to behave
and our immediate future.
"But it's not all about us though, is it?" It's something my wife tells me daily.
And our response to the stimuli we are faced with
affects those around us too,
it has an effect on other people's behavior.
And that's a real issue
because we tend to adopt the most common emotion which surrounds us.
We've all experienced that Monday morning moment in the staff room,
or gathered around the water cooler, looking at pictures of Julie's new puppy,
"Oh, look, Julie! Isn't he lovely?
Look at his little nose, at his cute, fluffy ears! Oh!"
In walks Sharon like a clap of thunder, with a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.
She's had a terrible weekend!
Her husband's run off with the postman,
her daughter's pregnant with her fourteenth child,
her son's been smacked off his face all weekend!
What does everybody else do?
She's slamming drawers and throwing things around.
What does everyone else do?
"Put the pictures of the puppy away... Shh!"
Because we adopt the most common emotion which surrounds us.
Now, throughout the years,
many social psychology experiments have demonstrated
that we are influenced by the behavior of others.
An authoritative figure dressed in a white lab coat
can make us respond to their request without question, for example.
And we're more likely to go along with the actions of groups of people
even if we don't wholly agree with their actions,
which is exactly why riots are so unpredictable.
But, every day, we find ourselves responding to technological stimuli,
without spending time in that space before our response,
without considering the consequences.
E-mails are sent on the spare of the moment,
opinions are announced on Twitter,
and love is won and lost with a flick of the finger on Tinder.
(Laughter)
And, yet, we do have a choice as to our responses,
but some are seemingly not able to make considered, well-placed choices
as instantly as technology is encouraging us to.
Our pace of life is increasing at an alarming rate,
exacerbated by technological advances,
and our ability to access multiple stimuli at anyone time
is greater than ever before.
Now, while it's a complicated area,
the overall consensus globally is that the diagnosis and treatment
of attention deficit disorders and mental health disorders
has been on the increase since the late '90s.
You see,
understanding behavior is as simple, pretty much as easy, as A B C.
The B stands for "behavior," that's the action:
the child that draws on the wall,
the colleague who hands in their work late,
or the dog that leaves a little "present" in your shoe.
And behaviors have a "consequence." That's the C.
And very broadly speaking, we punish the behaviors we want to see less of
and we reinforce or reward the behaviors we want to see more of.
However, the critical part of this ABC structure is the A,
which stands for "antecedent,"
which essentially means "the thing that happens before."
That is to say that every behavior has a cause,
the stimulus, the trigger, the antecedent.
Being aware of why we do the things we do is crucial to choosing better responses.
Now, if we were to all spend a little bit more time
in the space between stimulus and our response
in order to make more conscious decisions and choices,
it could result in behavior which helps us to achieve more positive consequences.
The alternative is that we stop making conscious decisions,
measured choices and controlled consequences.
Every day, whether we like it or not,
many of our responses are unconsidered, automatic even.
Yet, despite this,
we all like to think that we're in full control of our behavior, don't we?
The idea that other people are controlling the decisions we make
doesn't sit very well with us.
Automatic behavior, though, can sometimes be a good thing.
For example, if every time we were driving in the car and changed the gear,
if we had to think every time, life would certainly be much more stressful.
But it's not only technology that's eroding our ability
to be in control of our behavior.
It certainly is encouraging it and, if that continues,
we could well be heading towards an increase
in mental health and behavior issues.
Now, just when you thought it couldn't get any more gloomy,
there exists some more unlikely sources of people who manipulate our behavior.
At one end of the scale are retail marketers,
those people whose life motto is, "iLevel and bi-level,"
and who work their marketing magic on us
when we visit the local supermarket for a loaf of bread,
but leave with a sixty-inch TV, a chainsaw and $300 worth of food.
(Laughter)
Now, you might, for example, have noticed
how the layout of your supermarkets often changes.
By changing the placement of goods,
it forces us to pay more attention to what we're doing
and, in the process, probably buy things we didn't even notice before.
At the other end of the scale is something a little more sinister, though:
profiles exist based on the websites we visit,
the cars we buy and the newspapers we read.
So the organizations can influence our behavior and our responses
in their favor.
Now, it doesn't actually take much to get us to respond without thinking.
Consider the warning buzzer, when you don't have your seat belt on in the car,
irritating, intrusive.
But that one invention has saved countless lives
because our behavior can be so easily influenced.
So, could we reach the point where we stop thinking for ourselves?
Of course we could! We already have!
Every time we shop, every time we read a newspaper,
and when we listen to our election candidate speak.
(Laughter)
So what can we do about it to not only prevent the erosion of our freedom,
but to harness the understanding for our own benefit?
Well, I've been thinking about this for some time.
So, by the end of this talk,
you will have the information you need to greatly influence your future.
I'll be honest. I was expecting a "thank you."
(Laughter)
Here are three simple ways
that we can spend more time in that space before our response,
to help us to flip the switch on our behavior.
Number one: challenge the status quo.
One of my pet hates in life, along with kinks in hosepipes and wire coat hangers,
are people who have opinions about things they know nothing about.
And aren't they everywhere?
My neighbor once told me confidently
that the temperature inside your mouth is 85 °C,
because she read it on Facebook.
Everyone here stick out your index finger. Come one, put it in your mouth.
Is it burning? No? That's cleared that up, then.
(Laughter)
Don't just accept things the way they are!
Ask more questions.
We owe that much to ourselves as well as future generations.
Number two...
Two questions which will put us more in control of responses
and indeed of our freedom are:
"Why do we do it this way?,"
and then, "How can we make it better?"
Number three: find the gap.
Simply pausing before we respond
offers us an opportunity to consider the best response,
taking its consequence into consideration and literally changing the future.
The most appropriate response is often not the first one we consider.
If we remain less aware of the consequences of the decisions we make
and less conscious of our responses,
ladies and gentlemen, we are killing our freedom,
our freedom to think, our freedom to choose
and, ultimately,
our freedom to be able to flip the switch
and actively change our behavior for the better.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)