Speaker 1: Hey everybody, it's Eric from the one you feed back
Speaker 1: with another mini episode. Before we get started, I want
Speaker 1: to say that our sponsor this week is Aloha. They
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Speaker 1: to support the show. And now into the mini episode,
Speaker 1: what I want to talk about this week is a
Speaker 1: concept called the rider and the elephant, and the basic
Speaker 1: idea is that each of us have two sides. We
Speaker 1: have an emotional, automatic, sort of irrational side, which is
Speaker 1: the elephant. Then we have an analytical, controlled and rational side,
Speaker 1: the writer. So the challenge you can imagine is that
Speaker 1: as writers, we come up with these ideas of what
Speaker 1: we think we should be doing, the behaviors we want
Speaker 1: to change, the things we want to accomplish in our life. However,
Speaker 1: if the elephant is in an alignment with that, then
Speaker 1: we're going to make small change temporarily at best. The
Speaker 1: key is to get the two of these entities working together.
Speaker 1: So there's a few different things, a few different ways
Speaker 1: you can do this. One of them that I like
Speaker 1: is the difference between feeling and wanting, and so what
Speaker 1: this is is we have a tendency to tell ourselves
Speaker 1: we don't want to do something. For example, if I
Speaker 1: say I'm going to start a workout routine, and the
Speaker 1: second day, I'm sitting there in the morning and telling myself,
Speaker 1: I don't want to go. I don't want to go.
Speaker 1: I don't want to go. That's not really true because
Speaker 1: I have decided that I want to work out. I've
Speaker 1: thought about it, that more rational part of me wants
Speaker 1: to work out. However, I just don't feel like it
Speaker 1: in that moment. And that can help me often to
Speaker 1: get over that block because I'm minding myself of what
Speaker 1: I want, and I'm appealing a little bit more to
Speaker 1: the elephant at that point. I'm trying to put some
Speaker 1: positive emotion into it at that point. The other thing
Speaker 1: is this is why we talk a lot about small successes.
Speaker 1: I think that one of the reasons that small successes,
Speaker 1: so if you're gonna start working out, do it five
Speaker 1: minutes a day, and do it every day, is that
Speaker 1: I think those small successes give us an emotional good feeling.
Speaker 1: We've done what we said we were going to do.
Speaker 1: Our writer and our elephant are in alignment, and I
Speaker 1: think that gives us a boost of well being, and
Speaker 1: that boost of well being will appeal to the elephant.
Speaker 1: It's more emotional and helps to turn the elephant in
Speaker 1: the direction that we want him to go. There's been
Speaker 1: a third enhancement to this analogy, um where the instructions
Speaker 1: are kind of direct the rider motivate the elephant. And
Speaker 1: then there's been a third enhancement, which is called shape
Speaker 1: the path. And this is really about what's in our environment.
Speaker 1: Like we've all heard the example of well, if you
Speaker 1: want to work out, set your gym clothes out in
Speaker 1: the owning, which sounds silly, but it works for a
Speaker 1: lot of people. The idea is that back to the analogy,
Speaker 1: if we groom a clear path in front of the elephant,
Speaker 1: he's going to go down the path it's easiest to
Speaker 1: go down. So as we're trying to make change in
Speaker 1: our life, we need to make the path we want
Speaker 1: to go down as easy as possible and make the
Speaker 1: past we don't want to go down harder. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you are trying to eat better. Don't have four
Speaker 1: boxes oreos in the house right now. If you want
Speaker 1: to go eat an oreo, you have made that the
Speaker 1: harder path to walk. So you can really work with
Speaker 1: your environment. We've had a couple shows where people talk
Speaker 1: about that environmental aspect, but really think about what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do and how you can make it easier
Speaker 1: for yourself. Another challenge that I find is that what
Speaker 1: looks like resistance is often just a lack of clarity.
Speaker 1: So if I say I'm just gonna eat better, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna eat healthier, that does not work for me. There's
Speaker 1: a bunch of reasons it doesn't work, but one of
Speaker 1: them is it's just very unclear, and so the elephant
Speaker 1: is not going to get behind that, and the writer
Speaker 1: can't really direct because he doesn't know what he's directing
Speaker 1: at that point. So the more specific that I can
Speaker 1: get on what it is that I am doing or
Speaker 1: not doing, the better off I'm going to be. So
Speaker 1: always strive for clarity when it comes to figuring out
Speaker 1: the next steps or behavior change. Lack of clarity is
Speaker 1: always the enemy, and I find this again and again
Speaker 1: with the people that I'm working with in the coaching.
Speaker 1: And then the other one is we have a tendency
Speaker 1: for a lot of a sense. We have started and
Speaker 1: stopped change programs so many times in our lives that
Speaker 1: we don't really believe it's possible, and we say things like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person who or I never finish
Speaker 1: anything I start, and that is um. We think it's
Speaker 1: a people problem. We think it's our problem, and it's
Speaker 1: very demotivating to the elephant. Usually what appears to be
Speaker 1: a people problem is a situational issue. It's that we
Speaker 1: don't have the right strategies, we don't know how, we
Speaker 1: don't have the appropriate triggers in place. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of different things, is there. But I find this
Speaker 1: metaphor to be helpful for me in thinking about if
Speaker 1: I want to make a change, I have to sort
Speaker 1: of get both my mental faculties engaged and my emotional
Speaker 1: faculties engaged. If I get both of those bought in,
Speaker 1: change becomes easier. So that's what I've got for today.
Speaker 1: If you're interested in learning more about the coaching programs
Speaker 1: we have where we really spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: on this type of thing, and and other things send
Speaker 1: an email to me Eric at one you feed dot
Speaker 1: net and we can talk a little bit more about it. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: another episode is out Tuesday. Thanks for listening everybody, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk soon. Bye.