Transcriber: S Ying Reviewer: Hiroko Kawano
This is my friend right here.
His name is Tom Hartman.
Tom is over 400 pounds,
just barely got divorced,
has very little confidence of what we're just talking about.
And he has a very persistent brother.
His brother has been trying to convince him for a few years
to come to a motivational conference, actually by a person named "Zig" Ziglar.
And this is a couple of decades ago.
After a lot of prodding, Tom finally gets convinced,
and he goes to this "Zig" Ziglar motivational conference,
and he is not comfortable in that environment.
It's the last place he wants to be.
He's around all sorts of people who are motivated and excited.
He sees this guy up on stage, cheering, rah-rahing.
And he's just very uncomfortable.
And he's very resistant, actually, to what's being taught.
But over time,
just listening over the first 90 minutes -
Zig is up there, teaching about self-image
about how you see yourself
and about how most people view themselves in a very powerless way.
They have a very negative story about themselves.
And how your story about who you are and how you see yourself
is generally a direct correlation with how you perform in the world.
How you see yourself is how you act.
And he was listening to these ideas,
and he was hearing about how Zig was talking about
how it's important to go from powerlessness to powerful,
where you see yourself not from your current circumstances
but from the circumstances that you hope to have.
And a lot of his shells got broken down during those first 90 minutes.
And actually after the first session, he asked his brother, he said,
“Is it alright if we go and buy some of the tapes that are in the back?"
Because there were tapes that he could buy near the end.
And he couldn't afford it; he had no money.
He was pretty much out of a job, just got divorced -
his whole life was kind of in shambles.
His brother really liked the idea of him getting the tapes,
and so his brother got him the tapes.
After the conference,
he ended up listening for five hours that day,
seven hours the next day,
and ended up listening over and over and over.
He was listening to the things on repeat, essentially rewiring his belief system.
There's a really good idea that your input shapes your outlook
and your outlook shapes your behavior.
And so he was changing his input.
Rather than listening to the radio,
rather than listening to things that were kind of low energy, low level,
he was just listening to stuff
that was completely retraining him to see himself differently.
Because of this input, he decided to do something very bold.
And the bold behavior that he did
ultimately led him to having a peak experience.
And that peak experience altered his identity.
And there's a lot of really interesting science
behind the bold behavior that he did.
So ultimately what happened was after about a week of the Zig conference,
he got the idea that he wanted to go and buy some suits.
He bought two very nice fitted suits -
he actually had to put a down payment on these suits, over $700.
And he had them fitted -
obviously, he couldn't have them fitted on himself -
but he bought two smaller suits.
And the person selling the suit said, "Tom, who are you buying these for?"
And he said, "Well, I'm buying them for myself."
And the guy who was selling the suits had to hold back the laugh
because he just couldn't believe it.
You know, Tom was still over 400 pounds at the time.
But what's very interesting about this behavior
is that Tom was investing money into his future identity.
He was not investing money into his current identity.
And he was actually saying in a very real way, with his words,
what he was going to do.
There are a few things that are very powerful about this.
Number one is the story he was telling to the clerk
was a story based on his future,
whereas all of the stories he'd previously been telling people
were based on his past.
He was explaining himself in former conversations,
"This is why I am the way I am."
Now his story was "This is who I'm going to be."
And there's a lot of really interesting science behind the idea
of spending money on your goals.
So for the last four or five years,
I've been getting my PhD in organizational psychology,
and one of the research studies that I did
was studying the difference between want-to-be entrepreneurs
and actual entrepreneurs who had been successful.
And I asked a bunch of questions,
trying to figure out what's the difference between these two populations.
And one of the questions that I asked
the want-to-be entrepreneurs and the actual entrepreneurs was
"Have you ever had a point-of-no-return experience?"
And almost all of the want-to-be entrepreneurs said, "No."
A lot of them hinted to the idea that they hoped to have that experience one day.
Almost all the entrepreneurs said, "Yes."
And not only were they entrepreneurs.
I asked lots of authors, professional people at all scales.
And they all said, "Yes, I've had them,
and at multiple stages have I had a point-of-no-return experience."
So my follow-up question was "What happened after that experience?"
And actually, I was interested firstly in "What was that experience?"
"What was the point of no return?"
"What created that shift?"
Then my next question was "What happened after?"
But I was kind of surprised.
What often created a point-of-no-return experience
was making a financial investment in the goal.
So I interviewed like a 17-year-old entrepreneur, for example,
and his point-of-no-return experience
was when he and his friend were both seniors in high school
when they put their money together, their savings.
They invested $10,000 into a huge shipment of shoes
because they wanted to sell shoes.
He said his point-of-no-return was, first, when they spent the money
but, second, when a huge truck came
and offloaded basically a mountain of shoes.
He said he realized that at that point, he couldn't go back.
He couldn't give the shoes back.
He had this mountain of shoes now completely filling his garage,
and basically, at that moment, his identity shifted.
He said at that moment, he realized that he was running a company,
that he was leading a company.
And from that moment forward, he acted from that leadership role.
So he put himself in, essentially, a position where he had to move forward.
That's why it was a point of no return.
Because in a lot of ways, he couldn't actually go back;
he couldn't actually give the shoes back.
But what was more important about the point of no return
for this 17-year-old and for Tom Hartman
was that there was an identity shift.
There's a really good quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he says,
"A mind stretched by a new experience can never go back to its former dimensions."
So this episode of Tom led to, actually, a more profound peak experience
that gave him the realization that his identity had shifted,
that he was no longer the person he had formerly been,
but now he was this person who he envisioned himself to be.
So Tom was hanging out in a grocery store.
He was actually in an aisle, looking for food.
And a four-year-old girl walked by with her mom,
and the four-year-old girl said, "Mom, look there's a fat man."
And Tom swung around, and he looked, not sure who she was talking about,
and he realized that there was no one else on the aisle.
And it very quickly kicked in: "This girl is talking about me."
And he just started laughing.
Like this was the first moment where it just hit him.
And he was just laughing, laughing ...
and then, eventually, a tear came to his eye.
And he realized at that moment
that he no longer identified as a person who was overweight.
And at that moment, he realized that he was going to succeed.
Fast-forward 18 months. Tom Hartman has lost 175 pounds.
He now weighs 225 pounds.
He has started and successfully created a company and is becoming very successful.
He's become far more spiritual.
He's changed in every area of his life.
He's a totally different person.
How you do anything is how you do everything.
And in a lot of ways,
Tom Hartman's example is pretty much a very clear case
that things like fad diets, a 30-day diet,
trying something for a year,
is not a way to change your behavior,
because changing your behavior has to be first a shift in identity.
When you shift your identity first,
then the behavior that is up here where your goals are
is in alignment with your identity.
If you keep your identity down here and are trying to act up here,
then you're acting in conflict with how you see yourself.
And that doesn't work.
So kind of to portray this example or to take this idea a little bit further,
I want to introduce you to a person named Elko.
Elko is an entrepreneur from Amsterdam.
He's 38 years old, and he, as well, has struggled with weight his entire life.
And he's always had a bad diet.
And he's always had a story in his head that was planted in there from his mom.
His mom told him when he was a teenager
that they are the kind of people
who always are going to struggle with weight and with food.
That was the idea he had in his mind.
He actually also had the idea in his mind
that he was going to be able to potentially willpower his way
to holding off just self-destructive behavior
until about his 40s, 50s or 60s.
But then at that point, it would just go all downhill.
And because of his bad eating habits, he actually struggled to sleep.
He couldn't sleep very well.
And so one night, he was up all night, struggling to sleep,
and a thought came to him.
And he said, "What would happen if I went back to eating nature?"
What if I just went back to nature and just ate clean?
And then a second thought popped into his head.
And that thought was "What would happen if I did this for the rest of my life?
Rather than thinking, "What if I did this for like 30 days?"
or "What if I did this for a year?"
The question that really seized him was
"What would happen if I did this for the rest of my life?"
And as soon as he had that thought - he's sitting there, laying in his bed -
all of a sudden, he has like this vision, this picture in his mind,
of himself in his 90s.
Totally vibrant, totally healthy.
He sees himself with his kids, his grandkids.
And at that moment, he just makes the shift.
From that moment, he saw what was possible.
And so he just committed to it.
This was over a year ago.
And Elko has not touched any bad food.
Literally, he's one of the healthiest people I know.
He hasn't touched any bad food since then.
He lives under the mantra
"100% commitment is easier than 98% commitment."
That's actually a quote from Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen.
But that idea is also actually backed
by a lot of very interesting science and psychology.
So again, the quote is
"100% is easier than 98%."
And the reason why this is so important
is because if you're only 98% committed to something,
what that means is that you're not actually truly committed.
You're not actually fully there.
You haven't actually made the decision.
And if you haven't made a decision about something,
what that means is that you're not actually sure what you're going to do.
If Elko was only 98 percent committed
and he was in an environment where his favorite dessert was served,
then he would have to play a tug-of-war in his mind about what he was going to do:
"Do I eat it this time? Do I not eat it?"
And that, right there,
that mental tug-of-war is called "decision fatigue."
Basically, the idea of decision fatigue is -
it's another word for willpower -
but it means you haven't yet made a choice
and you're not actually sure what you're going to do,
and because you're not sure what you're going to do,
often the situation wins.
One of the most consistent things that's found in social psychology
is that, generally, people are the byproduct of their situation.
And the reason for that is because people are not decided.
Michael Jordan actually had a very powerful quote.
Michael Jordan said,
"Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again."
And kind of the Latin root of the word "decision"
means that once you make a decision,
you have to actually cut off alternative options.
And so because Elko made a 100% commitment rather than a 98% commitment
and he also shifted his identity by asking himself -
he didn't ask himself the question
"Could I do this for the next 30 days?"
Because if you think about it, if you want to do something for 30 days,
then you definitely haven't changed how you see yourself.
You're saying, “I think I can do this for about 30 days.
But once 30 days or a year is over,
I go right back what to doing what I was,
but maybe then I'll have a little bit more control."
That's not what happened to Tom Hartman.
That's not what happened to Elko.
And as a result, those two people -
they made a fundamental, a permanent shift.
And because of that permanent shift, their behavior just went in line.
I actually told the story of Elko to my friend.
His name is Nate Lambert.
He was actually one of my professors.
And Nate has also struggled with his weight his entire life.
And Nate and I were doing a one-year sugar-free fast
because Nate wanted to go sugar-free.
Again, he'd struggled with his weight his whole life.
And I knew it's a lot easier for me to do something
if someone like him is already doing it - he's a very motivated individual.
But it's also easier to do something like that in twos.
But after hearing Elko's story, I talked to Nate and said,
"Nate, why would you do something for a year -
for someone like you,
who knows this is going to potentially plague you
for the rest of your life?"
He's like 38 years old.
He struggled with this his whole life.
I said, "Why would you just do this for a year?
What's going to happen a year from now?"
And I told him
about the idea of 100% commitment is easier than 98% commitment
and the difference between decision and decision fatigue.
Decision is the opposite of decision fatigue:
once you've made the decision,
you no longer have to play the mental tug-of-war.
For example, if you make a decision about when to wake up the next day,
you don't push the snooze button.
If you haven't made the decision the night before,
when the alarm goes off, you're not really sure what you'll do.
Willpower often does not work.
And so because of that epiphany, that idea,
Nate just sat with his wife,
he made a list of the pros and cons of going refined-sugar-free
for the rest of his life.
He asked himself,
"What would happen if I did this the rest of my life?"
The list of cons was there, you know.
There were certain social gatherings that he would miss,
miss on some of the things,
but the list of pros was fundamental.
And the biggest pro
was that he would no longer have to think about it again.
Psychologists have found that, on average, people have about 50,000 thoughts a day.
And Nate said that about 40,000 of those thoughts were about food.
He couldn't stop thinking about it.
And that's, essentially, the nature of addiction.
You can't stop thinking about it.
And he was very addicted to food.
And that's why the Michael Jordan quote is so important:
"Once you make a decision,
you no longer have to think about it again."
That was the biggest benefit of Nate just making this shift, saying,
"I'm no longer going to do it;
I don't want to think about this ever again."
And once he let that go, and once Elko and Tom Hartman let that go,
all of a sudden, they were able to be exactly who they wanted to be.
The problem with them trying to control their behavior,
willpowering their way to change,
maybe setting short goals,
is that they never actually were able to let go
of that thing they wanted to get rid of that whole time.
Once they can just make the shift in who they where,
in how they saw themselves the rest of their lives -
once you make a decision and cut off the alternative option
by committing 100%,
all of a sudden, their mind was completely free
and they felt so aligned with who they were,
they started doing what they'd procrastinated for years.
Elko started a business that he had wanted to do for three years.
Within a week of having that vision of seeing himself,
he had already started.
Since then, he's done all sorts of things that he's always wanted to do.
Nate's the same way.
Ever since he's been able to let this thing go,
and he's stopping, no longer avoiding, the behavior that he hates,
and he's now pursuing the life he loves
because he's so aligned with who he is and where he's going
and the story he's telling himself is based on that future,
not based on "Well, this is why I am the way I am."
Then all of a sudden,
he could be more courageous; he could be more confident.
The scientific definition of confidence
is actually that confidence is the byproduct of prior performance.
Once you start acting confidently or once you start acting powerfully,
then you develop confidence.
And confidence then allows you to have imagination,
allows you to see a bigger future, allows you to believe in yourself,
and confidence allows you to be courageous.
So now,
I'm kind of pushing this question on you.
What are some things that you've potentially been resisting?
What have you been thinking about doing?
And maybe they've been on your mind for a long time.
It could be an addiction that you've been thinking about,
weighing in your mind for years.
Maybe you've tried it for 30 days at a time,
maybe you're going off of it for a year, but you haven't had that shift.
On the flip side,
what things have you wanted to do for years
that you've been thinking about?
What are those things - going back to my want-to-be entrepreneurs -
a lot of want-to-be entrepreneurs whom I interviewed
had been thinking about this for years.
It actually took me years to get to the point where I jumped off the cliff.
And it all starts with a financial investment.
It all starts with shifting your story and shifting your identity.
You can't do it through willpower;
you have to do it through who you're going to be.
Thank you.
(Applause)