Speaker 1: I say that I want to be more diligent at
Speaker 1: work and achieve this particular goal. Yeah, I'm doing this
Speaker 1: other thing that's inconsistent with it. Drawing attention to those
Speaker 1: inconsistencies encourages us to do the work to change them.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 1: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Jonah Burger, a professor
Speaker 1: at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He's
Speaker 1: an international best selling author and a world renowned expert
Speaker 1: on word of mouth, social influence consumer behavior and how products, ideas,
Speaker 1: and behaviors catch on. Today, Jonah and Eric discussed his
Speaker 1: book The Catalyst, How to Change Anyone's Mind. Hi, Jonah,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: It is a pleasure to have you on. We are
Speaker 1: going to be discussing your book, The Catalyst, How to
Speaker 1: Change Anyone's Mind, and we might even get into a
Speaker 1: little of your previous book, Invisible Influence, because there's some
Speaker 1: great things in there also. But we'll start like we
Speaker 1: always do, with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking
Speaker 1: with his grandson. He said it, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second.
Speaker 1: He looks up at his grandfather says, well, grandfather, which
Speaker 1: one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. I like this parable a lot.
Speaker 1: I think we always have a choice about how to
Speaker 1: spend our time, what we spend it doing, who we
Speaker 1: spend it with, and how we use the limited amount
Speaker 1: of time we have every day and every week. And
Speaker 1: I think the more we spend time in good areas
Speaker 1: of our life, as I think, the parable sort of says,
Speaker 1: we feed that aspect, it becomes more focal to us,
Speaker 1: more essential to us, It becomes what we think about
Speaker 1: um and where we devote more attention. At the same time,
Speaker 1: the more we feed that other side of us, whether
Speaker 1: it's greed per se or other other aspects, the more
Speaker 1: it becomes is focal, the more it becomes what we
Speaker 1: think about, and the more it becomes the way we
Speaker 1: orient ourselves. And so it's a good reminder to make
Speaker 1: sure to feed the thing you want to orient yourself towards.
Speaker 1: I think yea makes sense. I want to start very
Speaker 1: broadly with you because you're talking about in your work
Speaker 1: how people change, and an underline element I think through
Speaker 1: all of it is the extent to which the people
Speaker 1: around us, in the environments around us are shaped by that.
Speaker 1: And you know which of the decisions that we make
Speaker 1: in life are shaped by other people I think an
Speaker 1: interesting question ask is which decisions we make are not
Speaker 1: shaped by by other people? You know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: think about it, and there are some, right, but but
Speaker 1: it's hard to think about something that isn't shaped in
Speaker 1: some way, shape or form by others. You know, our
Speaker 1: product choices, obviously, but even think about more consequential things
Speaker 1: like who we end up marrying, what jobs we end
Speaker 1: up taking. We're really not important things like what toilet
Speaker 1: paper we buy at the grocery store. In all these
Speaker 1: diverse aspects of our life, I think others often shine through.
Speaker 1: Does that mean that others shape our entire behavior? No,
Speaker 1: but they do have an impact. But most importantly, I
Speaker 1: think we're often unaware of that impact. Right. We're not
Speaker 1: aware of the fact that, you know, the person in
Speaker 1: front of us on the toilet paper or whatever they do,
Speaker 1: shapes kind of what we think about. We're not aware
Speaker 1: of the fact that that potential romantic partner, we're thinking about,
Speaker 1: our potential job, we're thinking about how good or bad
Speaker 1: it seems, is shaped by social influences. And so I
Speaker 1: think influence is often invisible, as we may talk about today,
Speaker 1: And that was sort of the focus of my second book,
Speaker 1: often Invisible, and so I think it's less about where
Speaker 1: influence happens and more about kind of you know where
Speaker 1: and if it ever doesn't. And it was a little
Speaker 1: bit of a leading question, because you know, the leading
Speaker 1: question I got was, you know, why is it so
Speaker 1: hard for us to see this? Because so much of
Speaker 1: it is we are in reaction to everything. I wanted
Speaker 1: to start broadly so that we could sort swing back
Speaker 1: up to your new book, which is called Catalysts, and
Speaker 1: it's about how we change other people's minds, but I
Speaker 1: think some of it also applies to how we work
Speaker 1: with ourselves. So I'd like to start with what's the
Speaker 1: major mistake that most of us make when it comes
Speaker 1: to trying to change behavior in ourselves or others? Yeah? So,
Speaker 1: so think about the last time we tried to change something.
Speaker 1: It might have been someone else, a boss, a colleague,
Speaker 1: it might have been ourselves. Maybe we want to get
Speaker 1: in better shape, or maybe we want to spend less
Speaker 1: time on social media or um, maybe we want to
Speaker 1: spend more time on the phone and connecting with loved ones.
Speaker 1: We have these goals, these things that we want to change,
Speaker 1: whether internal within ourselves or external with others. We often
Speaker 1: take a particular approach to those type of goals. And so,
Speaker 1: you know, I interviewed thousands of people, both executives in
Speaker 1: a business context but also individuals about personal change, and
Speaker 1: I asked them to write down, what's something you want
Speaker 1: to change and what's some thing you've done to try
Speaker 1: to change that thing. And over of the time people
Speaker 1: list some version of of what I'd call pushing. And
Speaker 1: what do I mean by pushing? Well, um, add more facts,
Speaker 1: more figures, more reasons, more information. Um. When we're trying
Speaker 1: to change other's minds, make one more phone call, one
Speaker 1: more power point presentation, send one more email. When we're
Speaker 1: trying to change our own behavior, you know, UM, think
Speaker 1: of reasons why we should do something, or kind of
Speaker 1: emotional appeals that move us in that direction. We focus
Speaker 1: a lot on forces that could compel us or someone
Speaker 1: else to do something. And it's clearly why we think that. Right,
Speaker 1: If if there's a chair in the middle of a room,
Speaker 1: a physical object, and you want to move that physical object,
Speaker 1: Pushing it is a great way to get it to go. Right,
Speaker 1: we push the chair in the direction we wanted to go,
Speaker 1: and it slides across the floor, And so we often
Speaker 1: apply that same intuition to people, whether those people are
Speaker 1: ourselves or others. We assume if if I just push
Speaker 1: that person myself or someone else in the right direction,
Speaker 1: they'll go. But the challenge, as I think we often
Speaker 1: think about, is well, what happens when others push us?
Speaker 1: Do we just slide across the floor? What happens when
Speaker 1: we push others there's just slot across of our No,
Speaker 1: they often resist, they often dig in their heels um
Speaker 1: And we do the same thing even when we're trying
Speaker 1: to change ourselves. And so it turns out we need
Speaker 1: a different approach to change. There's nice analogy to be
Speaker 1: made to chemistry. Actually, uh and if you look in chemistry,
Speaker 1: obviously chemical change is hard. Think about how long it takes,
Speaker 1: you know, carbon to be squeezed into a diamond eons
Speaker 1: and so chemists in the lab often add temperature and pressure.
Speaker 1: They heat things up, they squeeze them together, with the
Speaker 1: idea that that extra energy will create change. But there's
Speaker 1: a special set of substances that chemists often add that
Speaker 1: don't require more energy. They actually create change with less
Speaker 1: energy rather than more. These substances, claim the grime on
Speaker 1: our contact lenses or their car's engine, and very simply,
Speaker 1: they're called catalysts, right, And what's interesting about catalysts in
Speaker 1: the chemical world is they reduce the barrier to change.
Speaker 1: They lower the amount of energy required to create change.
Speaker 1: And it turns out we can learn a lot about
Speaker 1: that that analogy in the social world. When we're trying
Speaker 1: to create change, whether in our selves or others, we
Speaker 1: need to think less about well, what could I do
Speaker 1: to get that person to change, and more about why
Speaker 1: haven't they changed already? So if I'm thinking about myself,
Speaker 1: thinking about, oh, you know, I need to exercise more, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I should remind myself to exercise more, tell myself
Speaker 1: about all the reasons to exercise. Why don't I step
Speaker 1: back for a second and say, well, why aren't you
Speaker 1: exercising more? Ready? A Right, If I'm trying to spend
Speaker 1: less time on social media connect more with with friends,
Speaker 1: why hasn't that happened ready? What are the obstacles or
Speaker 1: barriers getting in the way? And same with others? Right,
Speaker 1: whoever's mind I'm trying to change, what are the obstacles
Speaker 1: or barriers that are preventing action? And how by identifying them,
Speaker 1: can I make change more likely? And so it's a
Speaker 1: subtle shift, but a really important one. Focus less on pushing,
Speaker 1: less on things we could do, and more about things
Speaker 1: that are already there that might be getting in the way.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great way for us to get
Speaker 1: started here and move into this. The first of those
Speaker 1: barriers to change is called the strategy is reduced. But
Speaker 1: you talk about reactants. This is what you talked to
Speaker 1: little bit about people push back. When we push on people,
Speaker 1: they push back. We all know this phenomenon in our
Speaker 1: own lives. I'm kind of curious, though, what causes push
Speaker 1: back some of the time versus others. The pandemic is
Speaker 1: a great example I think of where we can see
Speaker 1: reactants in effect because there's wear a mask and people
Speaker 1: start pushing back against it, and yet an awful lot
Speaker 1: of people just put on the mask. What is it
Speaker 1: that's causing you know, broadly, I'm not asking you. You You
Speaker 1: don't have to comment necessarily on this issue, although you're
Speaker 1: you're certainly welcome to, and I would value your opinion
Speaker 1: on it. But what is it that causes us in
Speaker 1: certain cases when there's a slight push in a direction
Speaker 1: to go Yeah, that's a good direction to go. I
Speaker 1: think I ought to go that way, and we go
Speaker 1: that direction versus other times we just as you say,
Speaker 1: dig in our heels. Yeah, I think there's a great
Speaker 1: discussion about the pandemic and more generally. You know, Um,
Speaker 1: the Catalyst actually came out the same week as the pandemic.
Speaker 1: So I've thought a lot about it and talking about
Speaker 1: the book, and I wrote a for hbrum at some
Speaker 1: point last year talking about sort of applying the ideas
Speaker 1: of reactants to things like mask wearing and vaccines and
Speaker 1: things along those lines. You know, I think there are
Speaker 1: a few answers to your question. Um. So, first, their
Speaker 1: individual differences, right, some people feel reactants more than others.
Speaker 1: But second, you know, when there's an action to be taken, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that there are ways and times to make
Speaker 1: it feel more like someone's own idea versus to make
Speaker 1: it feel like someone else is pushing you on on
Speaker 1: that idea. So let me give you a simple example. Right,
Speaker 1: Imagine you have kids and you want to get your
Speaker 1: kids to put their pajamas on. Right, let's pick something simple,
Speaker 1: really easy. It's bedtime. You gotta put your pajamas on.
Speaker 1: If you say, hey, put your pajamas on, the kids
Speaker 1: off and say no, I don't want to. You know,
Speaker 1: if you say hey, do this, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: You know, each eat your vegetables, I don't want to.
Speaker 1: You know, then even necessarily know why they're saying no. Um,
Speaker 1: but they really just want to assert their autonomy, right,
Speaker 1: I have my own identity. If instead you say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, which pajamas do you want to wear tonight?
Speaker 1: Or hey, what do you want to put on first
Speaker 1: your pajama top of your pajama bottom, They're going to
Speaker 1: be more like it upon their pajamas, not because you
Speaker 1: didn't encourage them too, but because you didn't tell them
Speaker 1: to write. You encourage them too, but you set it
Speaker 1: up more as a choice, more as a guided choice
Speaker 1: than a forced action. And so I think if you
Speaker 1: looked at mask wearing, if you look at vaccinations, if
Speaker 1: you look at personal change, if you look at social
Speaker 1: change more generally, it tends to work better when people
Speaker 1: feel like they came to it themselves. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean being completely hands off. Right, Um, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not sitting there hoping that my son magically decides to
Speaker 1: put on his pajamas. Sometimes he does on his own,
Speaker 1: on his own volition. Um, but I am smart enough
Speaker 1: to triz. Maybe I need to help him move in
Speaker 1: that direction, but not force him to go in that direction. Right,
Speaker 1: Set it up that that is the area he's focusing
Speaker 1: his attention on, without forcing him to take a particular
Speaker 1: action there, but by focusing his attention guiding that journey
Speaker 1: and moving it in the right direction. And I think
Speaker 1: the same thing is true whether you're trying to get
Speaker 1: your kids to put on your pajamas, change yourself, or
Speaker 1: you know, change others. Really reducing reactants and allowing for agency,
Speaker 1: making people feel like they're part of that process and
Speaker 1: it's not your idea, but they have a role in
Speaker 1: it as well. Yeah, I want to come back to
Speaker 1: mask wearing in the pandemic for a second, But I
Speaker 1: want to take reactance what you just said and sort
Speaker 1: of feeling like it's our own idea and apply it
Speaker 1: to personal change for a second. I do a lot
Speaker 1: of work with clients on changing behavior, and one of
Speaker 1: the things that I will often hear a client say
Speaker 1: something to the effect of, is I just was rebelling
Speaker 1: against myself my own rule. You know, I decided I
Speaker 1: wanted to do this thing, and yet that that natural.
Speaker 1: We all have it, like you can't tell me what
Speaker 1: to do seems to come up even when we're the
Speaker 1: one doing the telling. Do you have any thought or
Speaker 1: insight on that? I just I'm always kind of curious,
Speaker 1: Like what I do is remind people like, well, no
Speaker 1: one's telling you what to do. You are you. You
Speaker 1: always have the choice, and so to sort of to
Speaker 1: your point to try and ease react and is to say, like,
Speaker 1: this is not being imposed by someone else. This is
Speaker 1: what you decided, and to remember that. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you've got any thoughts on that. I like the
Speaker 1: way you framed it a lot. And we can think
Speaker 1: about motivation, the motivation to take an action to do
Speaker 1: something as being internal or external, being more kind of
Speaker 1: intrinsic within the self, or being more extrinsic outside of
Speaker 1: the self. And even take something like exercise, right, I
Speaker 1: may be exercising because I want to exercise. I love exercising.
Speaker 1: So I'll talk about me personally. I love playing basketball,
Speaker 1: like it's a lot of fun for me. I enjoy
Speaker 1: playing it. I'm terrible at it, but I just enjoy
Speaker 1: doing it. It's fun. Um, you know, I love it.
Speaker 1: I like it a lot of run around outside. Don't
Speaker 1: care whether I win or lose. I just care whether
Speaker 1: I get a chance to play. And so that's intrinsically motivated.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing it as a means to any end.
Speaker 1: I'm just doing it as as an end itself. I
Speaker 1: enjoy the process of doing it. Contrast that with how
Speaker 1: I feel sometimes about running, or how some other people
Speaker 1: may feel about exercise in general, where I feel like, man,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not doing this maybe because it's the
Speaker 1: most fun, but I'm doing this because I feel like
Speaker 1: I should do it because it's a good way to
Speaker 1: get exercise, because it would be smart to get out
Speaker 1: there and do something. Um. And so it's still coming
Speaker 1: from me in some sense. But it's also not right.
Speaker 1: There's a should rather than than a want. And so
Speaker 1: I think I really like the way you framed it.
Speaker 1: You know. I don't think we need a lot of
Speaker 1: encouragement if we want to do something, but I think
Speaker 1: we feel like if we should do something, then there's
Speaker 1: that external thing where it's not an end in itself,
Speaker 1: it's a means to something else. I should exercise because
Speaker 1: that will help me do something else. I should do
Speaker 1: this thing because that will help me achieve something else.
Speaker 1: And the more it's a should rather than a want,
Speaker 1: the more we may not feel like it's coming from
Speaker 1: from within. Um. And so I think just as you
Speaker 1: nicely said, you know, encouraging us to realize, well, hey,
Speaker 1: this is coming from within, or finding an intrinsic reason
Speaker 1: to do it. Right. Maybe you don't love running, but
Speaker 1: you love being outside. Well, great, that's an opportunity to
Speaker 1: do something you want and allow you to do that
Speaker 1: thing you want and mix it with something else. You know,
Speaker 1: people talk about temptation bundling sometime if you want to
Speaker 1: do something but you don't want to do something else,
Speaker 1: you link the two together. So you know, this is
Speaker 1: an opportunity to do the thing that you want while
Speaker 1: also doing something else. And so I think that can
Speaker 1: be a great way to motivate ourselves, to help us
Speaker 1: realize that, yes, we are in control. And even something
Speaker 1: that seems like I should, if we can make it
Speaker 1: more of a want, will will be more effective. Excellent. So,
Speaker 1: going back to the pandemic and mask wearing and vaccine,
Speaker 1: I think, as you were saying, you know, reactance is
Speaker 1: one of it. But if I jumped down to another
Speaker 1: of your catalysts, one of them is distance, right, And
Speaker 1: this seems to really for me be framing up what
Speaker 1: a lot of the pandemic is. You know, you talk
Speaker 1: about the zone of acceptance or rejection. Can you share
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, and do you think that's
Speaker 1: what's playing in here? Is where vaccine and mask wearing
Speaker 1: is falling into people's zone of acceptance or rejection. So
Speaker 1: let's start with a simple example, and then then we
Speaker 1: can make it more complicated. So so basically, anything we do,
Speaker 1: any attitude, any behavior, any domain of our life, we
Speaker 1: can array our beliefs, our opinions are thoughts towards it
Speaker 1: on a football field. So let's take politics for a second,
Speaker 1: because it's really easy to see, right. We know some
Speaker 1: people are staunch conservatives, others are strongly liberal. We can
Speaker 1: imagine putting those in two ends of a football field.
Speaker 1: Let's make the conservatives the far right, and let's make
Speaker 1: the liberals, you know, on the left, and then you
Speaker 1: can put yourself anywhere on that field. So you might
Speaker 1: be the five yard line of the conservatives, you might
Speaker 1: be the fifteen yard line of the liberals, or you
Speaker 1: might be midfield fifty yard line, you're exactly moderate in
Speaker 1: between the two. And so it turns out that while
Speaker 1: we have a position on the field where we put ourselves,
Speaker 1: there's also what's called the zone of acceptance, which is
Speaker 1: around where we are that we're willing to consider. So
Speaker 1: let's say I'm on the fifty yard line, for example,
Speaker 1: I am willing to listen to things that are fifty
Speaker 1: yard line exactly moderate. But I'm also want to listen
Speaker 1: to things that are five or ten yards in each direction,
Speaker 1: but thirty yards in each direction probably not. And that's
Speaker 1: called the region of rejection. When we get too far
Speaker 1: from where someone is currently, it's so far from where
Speaker 1: they are that they're unwilling to even listen to the
Speaker 1: possibility of being changed because that information is so different
Speaker 1: from how they see themselves at the moment. You know,
Speaker 1: your listeners may be familiar with the idea of the
Speaker 1: confirmation bias, but you know, not only do we look
Speaker 1: for information that confirms our existing belief but we filter
Speaker 1: new information based on those existing beliefs. And so if
Speaker 1: I'm on the fifth yard line of the field versus
Speaker 1: let's say the five yard line of the field. Information
Speaker 1: that's on the twenty five yard line looks very very different, right,
Speaker 1: How I see that same information. While it's objectively the
Speaker 1: same information, how I see it maybe quite different. And
Speaker 1: so let's take that to the vaccine and personal change
Speaker 1: as well. You know, I think part of the challenges
Speaker 1: if you come up and ask someone to do something
Speaker 1: that's so far from where they are currently, they're unwilling
Speaker 1: to even listen to the possibility of being changed. You know,
Speaker 1: if I'm vaccine worried, but I'm close, then I'm willing
Speaker 1: to move because it's in the zone of acceptance. But
Speaker 1: if if you're asking me, if I'm a you know, staunch,
Speaker 1: staunch conservative, and you're asking me to get vaccinated, which
Speaker 1: maybe seems like somehow more on the liberal side for
Speaker 1: some reason, Um, if that falls in the region rejection,
Speaker 1: I'm unwilling to listen and it may even push me
Speaker 1: back in the opposite direction. And so often what we
Speaker 1: need to do is we need to kind of ask
Speaker 1: for less and then ask for more. We need to
Speaker 1: start closer to where people are ready, Start with an
Speaker 1: assets within that region of acceptance, move them a couple
Speaker 1: of yards down the field and then ask for more.
Speaker 1: There was a doctor I was talking about that was
Speaker 1: dealing with an obese patient. Was a trucker who was
Speaker 1: drinking three leaders of Mountain Do a day morbidly obese, right,
Speaker 1: And the tendency there is to say, stop drinking Mountain
Speaker 1: Do right. Quick cold turkey makes a lot of sense, right,
Speaker 1: you know, quick cold turkey be better for you. But
Speaker 1: the problem is that ask is so far from where
Speaker 1: that person is currently. It's so far it's in the
Speaker 1: region of rejection. They're gonna be unwilling to listen to
Speaker 1: even the possibility of changing. And so what does she do? What?
Speaker 1: Rather than telling him to quit cold turkey? She says, hey, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I know you love Mountain Do. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to ask you to quit, but would you mind
Speaker 1: going from three leaders to two leaders a day? And
Speaker 1: he grumbles. He doesn't want to do it, of course,
Speaker 1: but he goes, Okay, you know, I'll give it a shot,
Speaker 1: and comes back a few weeks later and is able
Speaker 1: to do it. Then's just great, good job, Now go
Speaker 1: to one right, and he grumbles again, doesn't want to
Speaker 1: do it, but he ends up doing it, and months
Speaker 1: later he comes back and ses now go from one
Speaker 1: to zero and the guy loses over thirty pounds. Right,
Speaker 1: not because she went right away for what we wanted
Speaker 1: what she wanted, but because she asked for less and
Speaker 1: asked then asked for more. She kind of took that
Speaker 1: big change, broke it down into more manageable chunks um
Speaker 1: and helped him move down the field and in the
Speaker 1: right direction. And so I think the same thing is
Speaker 1: true for personal change. Right. So you know, if I'm
Speaker 1: a writer and I want to write something that's really big,
Speaker 1: and I'd go, okay, well, i gotta start by writing,
Speaker 1: you know, five thousand words a day. Not only is
Speaker 1: that a lot period, but particularly I'm starting from zero,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be really hard to achieve. Same with exercise.
Speaker 1: I want to exercise more, okay, but you know, if
Speaker 1: I try to go from zero to seven days a week,
Speaker 1: it's probably gonna get overwhelming and I'm gonna give up.
Speaker 1: We sort of shoot for intensity. Some research shows we
Speaker 1: kind of go quickly to intense ways to achieve our goals.
Speaker 1: But because we go for intense ways, we often fail.
Speaker 1: They're so intense that we give up because we can't
Speaker 1: hit them. And so it's often better to start with
Speaker 1: something all all right, say, look, I'm going to exercise
Speaker 1: two days a week, right, and then I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: from two to three. I'm gonn exercise ten minutes a day.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go from ten to fifteen and fifteen to twenty.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna move myself there and kind of in some sense, um,
Speaker 1: it's stepping stones, breaking big change down into small stepping stones,
Speaker 1: moving in the right direction, step by step. Eventually getting
Speaker 1: there may take more time, but it's going to be
Speaker 1: more effective. We end up talking on this show in
Speaker 1: so many different ways about that idea of small steps.
Speaker 1: If we circle back to reactants for a minute, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about one strategy for reducing reactants, which
Speaker 1: is highlighting a gap. So I was wondering if you
Speaker 1: could share a little bit about what highlighting the gap means.
Speaker 1: And there's a great story about smokers and Thailand that
Speaker 1: I think just sums this up so so well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so maybe I'll tell the story and then I'll explain
Speaker 1: that the broader principle. So this goes back to the
Speaker 1: idea of you know, the best way to change someone
Speaker 1: is not by telling them to change, but is encouraging
Speaker 1: them to want to change themselves. And so this is
Speaker 1: what a group called the Thaie Health Promotion Foundation was
Speaker 1: dealing with a few years ago. So they were trying
Speaker 1: to get people to quit smoking. They're kind of a
Speaker 1: pro social group to encourage people to quit smoking, and
Speaker 1: they're having trouble. People aren't calling the quit line, and
Speaker 1: so they think, okay, well, let's give people information. Let's
Speaker 1: you know, tell them all the reasons why they should quit.
Speaker 1: But what they realize is if they push smoker, smokers
Speaker 1: is going to push back. Right, stop telling me what
Speaker 1: to do um. And this is often true more generally,
Speaker 1: not just about smokers. Right. We tend to think that
Speaker 1: problems are information problems. We tend to think that if
Speaker 1: we just give people more information, they'll come around. Rarely
Speaker 1: are problems information problems. Often there's something else going on
Speaker 1: that we don't realize. We're so egocentric. We just think, oh,
Speaker 1: if people had access to the information we had, they
Speaker 1: would change. But often people have a different perspective on
Speaker 1: that same information. And so the Health Promotion Foundation ended
Speaker 1: up doing something really really clever. Rather than telling smokers
Speaker 1: to quip or giving smokers information, they had little kids
Speaker 1: walk around the city and ask smokers for a light. Okay,
Speaker 1: So imagine you're smoking on the street. You're watching a
Speaker 1: smoker smoking on the street, and an eight year old
Speaker 1: kid comes up to that smoker and says, can I
Speaker 1: get a light? The smoker looks at the kid and goes,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? No, no, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to give you a light, right, of course not. And
Speaker 1: not only do they say no, but they say why. Look,
Speaker 1: don't you know the smoking causes lung cancer and emphysema
Speaker 1: and strokes. Don't you want to run and play right?
Speaker 1: You're so young? Why would you want to do this
Speaker 1: to your body? All these different things? And so as
Speaker 1: the smokers are talking, the kids are sitting there going, okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good point. That's a good point. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the interaction and say okay, thanks, thanks
Speaker 1: a lot. And by the way, here's a sheet of paper.
Speaker 1: And on that sheet of paper it says you worry
Speaker 1: about me, why not yourself? If you're interested in learning
Speaker 1: more about quitting smoking, call this quit line. Doesn't tell
Speaker 1: people to quit, It just highlights a gap between attitudes
Speaker 1: and actions. And this is true more broadly, right. We
Speaker 1: want our attitudes and actions to line up. If I
Speaker 1: say I care about the environment, I better recycle. If
Speaker 1: I say I'm a big fan of a certain sports team,
Speaker 1: I better watch their games. Whatever I say, I should
Speaker 1: do the same thing. And if my attitudes and actions
Speaker 1: don't line up, a negative emotional reaction caused cognitive dissonance occurs. Right,
Speaker 1: and I do work to reduce that dissonance. I either
Speaker 1: have to say I don't care as much about the environment.
Speaker 1: I've got to do more work recycling. And that's exactly
Speaker 1: what the Health Promotion Foundation did to smokers, right. They've
Speaker 1: encouraged smokers as Wait, I just told this kid not
Speaker 1: to smoke, but I'm smoking myself. Maybe I should think
Speaker 1: about doing something about that, which is exactly what people did, right.
Speaker 1: They are you're going to tell the kid to smoke? No,
Speaker 1: you're not. Are you going to quit smoking? Of the
Speaker 1: people who got this piece of information did of them
Speaker 1: ended up calling the quit line, big increase in calls
Speaker 1: to the quit line video the campaign go viral. But
Speaker 1: I think the insight is is a powerful one. Right.
Speaker 1: We don't often realize that we're being inconsistent. We are
Speaker 1: inconsistent all the time. Right, things we say and things
Speaker 1: we do often don't match up, but we don't see
Speaker 1: that they don't match up. Right, But if someone highlights
Speaker 1: that gap, or we encourage ourselves to highlight that gap. Well,
Speaker 1: I say I care about getting in better shape, yet
Speaker 1: every time I go to the grocery store, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm buying a bunch of unhealthy food. Like, what do
Speaker 1: I think I'm not going to eat the unhealthy food? Well,
Speaker 1: why why am I buying it? Then? Right? Or you know,
Speaker 1: I say that i want to spend less time on
Speaker 1: social media, yet I'm still doing this thing. Or I
Speaker 1: say that I want to be more diligent at work
Speaker 1: and achieve this particular goal, yet I'm doing this other
Speaker 1: thing that's inconsistent with it. Drawing attention to those inconsistencies
Speaker 1: encourages us to do the work to change them, right,
Speaker 1: because it puts sort of attitudes and actions next to
Speaker 1: one another and highlighting that gap and encourages folks to change.
Speaker 1: And so just since we talked about the pandemic, you
Speaker 1: can apply that same idea that the pandemic. Right, I mean,
Speaker 1: imagine you're trying to talk to a vaccine skeptic someone
Speaker 1: who's not wearing a mask. We often come across in
Speaker 1: some you know, public place, there's someone who should be
Speaker 1: wearing a mask but isn't, and I think a tendency
Speaker 1: to tell them wear a mask, why aren't you wearing
Speaker 1: a mask? Wear a mask? Or a person who's not vaccinated,
Speaker 1: you should get vaccinated. But if we do that, they're
Speaker 1: going to push back. Right, there's obviously reasons they feel
Speaker 1: like that's not for them. But what if instead we
Speaker 1: imagine saying, Okay, hey, you know, I noticed you're not
Speaker 1: wearing a mask, right, I heard you don't want to
Speaker 1: get vaccinated. You know, let's say your elderly grandparents was around,
Speaker 1: or your young kids were around, would you want people
Speaker 1: around them not to be vaccinated? Would you want people
Speaker 1: around them not to wear masks? Or if you'd say, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like people around my young unvaccinated
Speaker 1: kids to be wearing masks or vaccinated. Okay, interesting, do
Speaker 1: you think you might want to get vaccinated? Then? Right,
Speaker 1: encouraging them to go Await, I'm saying that I want
Speaker 1: people around my kids to be careful, Yet I'm not
Speaker 1: being careful. Maybe I should think twice about being careful.
Speaker 1: And so you can bring a horse to water, but
Speaker 1: you can't force them to drink. But if you show
Speaker 1: them some really nice water, you encourage them to think
Speaker 1: about making the decision that they should have made all
Speaker 1: all along. Yeah, I think there's so much subtlety and
Speaker 1: how we do that because highlighting the gap is great,
Speaker 1: except we all know situations where someone highlights the gap
Speaker 1: for us and we move into reacting. So that's why
Speaker 1: I love that tie story. I also would love to
Speaker 1: know somewhere sooner or later, somebody had to be like, yeah, kid,
Speaker 1: here's here's a light, here's a cigarette. Like you're gonna
Speaker 1: run into somebody who's a character out there. But it's
Speaker 1: such a beautiful idea. Yeah, and so I didn't run
Speaker 1: this campaign, but I've heard that nobody, nobody gave the
Speaker 1: kids cigarettes and and also everyone threw away their cigarette,
Speaker 1: but they kept the piece of paper. I think it
Speaker 1: was what you highlight though, which is important is it
Speaker 1: has to be done the right way, right. So I
Speaker 1: talk a lot about asking questions, I talk a lot
Speaker 1: about highlighting a gap. I talk a lot about giving
Speaker 1: people choices, but like, let's go back to the you know,
Speaker 1: giving your kid choices, right. It's not about just giving
Speaker 1: them choices. Right. If you say, hey, do you want
Speaker 1: to you know, eat ice cream for dessert or eat
Speaker 1: your broccoli, They're gonna go, oh, it's a no brainer.
Speaker 1: I wanted ice cream, right. And so it's not just
Speaker 1: about choice. It's about the right choices. It's not just
Speaker 1: about questions. It's about the right questions. And so, as
Speaker 1: with any strategy, we have to think about the right
Speaker 1: way of doing it. But the goal is key. Right.
Speaker 1: What am I trying to encourage someone to do? How
Speaker 1: can I lead them there or guide them there, but
Speaker 1: help them feel like they got there on their own,
Speaker 1: directing their attention but not forcing them down a particular path. YEA.
Speaker 1: Doing coaching work, you just realize how powerful questions are,
Speaker 1: Like you have to really work on questions. Yes, a
Speaker 1: big part of the art. I think. The other thing
Speaker 1: that gets in the way of change, another barrier to
Speaker 1: change that you point out is something known as endowment.
Speaker 1: Share a little bit about what that is. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think a good way to talk about endowment is actually
Speaker 1: to to talk about a study that was done a
Speaker 1: number of years ago. They ask people, they say, Hey,
Speaker 1: which do you think hurts more a minor injury or
Speaker 1: a major one. A minor injury being like you sprain
Speaker 1: a finger, you have a lower back injury, you have
Speaker 1: sort of a little bit of a problem with your
Speaker 1: knee that flares up once in a while, And a
Speaker 1: major injury would be like, you know, you shatter your kneecap,
Speaker 1: you have a heart attack, you break your arms, something
Speaker 1: like that, And people think about it and they go, oh, man,
Speaker 1: that that's obvious. I mean, a major injury hurts a lot.
Speaker 1: Minor injuries don't hurt very much at all, So major
Speaker 1: injury must be a lot more painful. And it's clear
Speaker 1: why we think that, right, Major injuries do hurt a lot,
Speaker 1: But it actually ends up that our intuition is is wrong.
Speaker 1: Minor injuries end up causing us more pain than than
Speaker 1: major ones. And the reason is because we never get
Speaker 1: minor injuries fixed. Right, So so major injuries you get,
Speaker 1: you shadow your kneecap, you're gonna go and and get
Speaker 1: a cast on it in physical therapy and all the things.
Speaker 1: You get a heart attack, you see a specialist, you
Speaker 1: would stent put in whatever it might be. You do
Speaker 1: the work to fix it. But if there's a minor injury.
Speaker 1: If it's just a little bit below the threshold for action,
Speaker 1: we never make the change. Right. We end up sticking
Speaker 1: with something that's not great, but then it caused us
Speaker 1: a lot of pain over time. It's only a small
Speaker 1: amount of each period, but add up those periods over
Speaker 1: a lot of time, and it causes us more pain
Speaker 1: than the major pain over just one period or two.
Speaker 1: And so that same intuition taps into what I would
Speaker 1: call endowment. Right. We are attached to old things in
Speaker 1: part because old things aren't terrible. Because if old things
Speaker 1: were terrible, we would get rid of them. Right. If
Speaker 1: your job was terrible, you get rid of it. If
Speaker 1: you're dating someone and they're terrible, you would stop dating them. Right.
Speaker 1: If you're married to them and it's terrible, you get divorced. Right.
Speaker 1: If something is terrible, we fix it. But if something
Speaker 1: is just not great, we never end up getting it fixed. Right.
Speaker 1: You can almost think about this is like you know,
Speaker 1: if your house is infested with cockroaches, you call an exterminator,
Speaker 1: but if like every week, you get a couple of ants,
Speaker 1: or once a month you get a cock roach, you
Speaker 1: never end up calling because it's not above the threshold
Speaker 1: for change, but you end up stuck with that problem
Speaker 1: for a long time. And so this is kind of
Speaker 1: the challenge of change. If something was terrible, it would
Speaker 1: have been changed ready. But if something's just okay, it's
Speaker 1: never never changed. And so um Jim Collins talks about
Speaker 1: this a lot and good degrade. He talks about, you know,
Speaker 1: why do we have good schools? Why don't we have
Speaker 1: great schools because we have good schools? Why don't we
Speaker 1: have great this because we have good this and in
Speaker 1: some sense they're good is the enemy of a great um.
Speaker 1: And so I don't want to say that, you know,
Speaker 1: the person someone is dating is good and that's not
Speaker 1: good enough. For a job is good, and that's not
Speaker 1: good enough. But I think the key insight is things
Speaker 1: that are okay can get in the way of better things.
Speaker 1: And so one thing we need to encourage people to
Speaker 1: do is to highlight the cost of an action. Write
Speaker 1: them to make them realize that, yes, over one period
Speaker 1: that bad, that minor injury doesn't hurt, but over a
Speaker 1: long time it would probably be worth getting it fixed.
Speaker 1: And so I'll give you just an example of this.
Speaker 1: I had a cousin every time he would send an email,
Speaker 1: would basically type out his email signature, so he would say,
Speaker 1: you know, best Charles or whatever it is in his
Speaker 1: email signature, and and this frustrated me forever. Right, I
Speaker 1: was like, God, you know everyone has an automated email signature, now,
Speaker 1: why don't you just automate your email signature? Is like,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I don't know how to
Speaker 1: do that, And it doesn't take that long to write
Speaker 1: best Charles. I just throw it at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the email, right, It's it's no work at all. And
Speaker 1: so to him, right, think about it, it's good, not great.
Speaker 1: It's the couple bugs once in a while, it's not
Speaker 1: a house infested with the cockroaches. And the work to
Speaker 1: do the new thing is hard, right, The work to
Speaker 1: figure out how to install that email signure is gonna
Speaker 1: take ten or fifteen minutes. And so the cost today
Speaker 1: is bigger than the benefit today, so we don't take action.
Speaker 1: So what did I do? So? I said, Okay, interesting,
Speaker 1: I got it. It It takes a long time. How many
Speaker 1: emails do you write a week? He said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: a few hundred emails. How many seconds does it take
Speaker 1: you each time that you write your email signature goes
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, a few seconds. Okay, So
Speaker 1: how many minutes a week do you spend writing your
Speaker 1: email signature? And he thinks about it, and then he
Speaker 1: types in right, how to automate an email signature because
Speaker 1: he's just realized, Right, what I've done is I've highlighted
Speaker 1: the cost of it. Actually, I've made him realize. Yes,
Speaker 1: in the moment, today's moment, the cost of change is
Speaker 1: bigger than the benefit of change. You're right, But even
Speaker 1: if we go a week, the cost of change becomes
Speaker 1: less than the benefit of change. And so it's about
Speaker 1: encouraging people to realize that doing nothing that good? Is
Speaker 1: it maybe the enemy of the great That doing nothing
Speaker 1: may not be as cost as it seems. Encouraging to
Speaker 1: realize that. Yes, and a given moment, it may be
Speaker 1: hard to change, but in the long run they are
Speaker 1: better off in making that change, as humans were so
Speaker 1: bad at present cost versus future cost, or present benefit
Speaker 1: versus future benefit. It's why it makes so many of
Speaker 1: these changes so hard, because we are wired to do
Speaker 1: what is easier, feels better now, even though we know
Speaker 1: the long term and so I love that idea of
Speaker 1: highlighting the costs over the long term, thinking about like,
Speaker 1: what does this really mean over a period of time.
Speaker 1: Often what happens is those costs are adding up and
Speaker 1: we get the bill at the end, and then we go, oh, shoot,
Speaker 1: I should have changed, right. So but if we got
Speaker 1: an invoice each week that showed the cost still on it, right, like,
Speaker 1: we'd be like, oh boy, this is really adding up.
Speaker 1: I might want to do something. I like the way
Speaker 1: you said that instead of just like getting a total
Speaker 1: bill at the end and you're like, oh, I can't
Speaker 1: pay this. Yes, we are focused on the invoice at
Speaker 1: the moment of change. And by the way I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book the cost benefit timing gap, what
Speaker 1: do I mean by that? The cost of change almost
Speaker 1: always come due before the benefits of change? Right. I
Speaker 1: love I love the way you phrase it is an
Speaker 1: an invoice, right. So you know, let's take a simple example.
Speaker 1: I want to buy something. I want to buy a
Speaker 1: new lawnmower or I don't know, you know, a new computer.
Speaker 1: I got to pay that money upfront. I want to
Speaker 1: learn a new skill. I want to take one do
Speaker 1: class or learn to cook, or learn a language or
Speaker 1: install a new software package. Is going to take a
Speaker 1: lot of time and effort to do those things. There's
Speaker 1: a benefit to those things, right, I have a better
Speaker 1: lawnmower or a better computer. I've learned a language, I
Speaker 1: get in shape, I do all these things. But those
Speaker 1: benefits are often in the future and they're uncertain, and
Speaker 1: the costs are often now and they're they're certain, And
Speaker 1: so we just end up saying, well, look, I'll just
Speaker 1: stick with what I'm doing because it's easier. Right, there
Speaker 1: was moment to moment costs and benefits are misaligned. And so,
Speaker 1: as you nicely said, by encouraging us to take a
Speaker 1: longer viewpoint, making those invoices at the weekly level rather
Speaker 1: than at the daily level, but also not at the
Speaker 1: six month level, it encourages us to rise maybe actually
Speaker 1: should change. The benefits are going to be bigger than
Speaker 1: the costs over that period. Yep. And as I was
Speaker 1: reading that section in your book, I could not help
Speaker 1: but think about, like the injuries in my life, and
Speaker 1: which of them actually prompt me to go get help,
Speaker 1: you know, And it's it's usually after I have ignored
Speaker 1: it just as long as I can. And then I'm
Speaker 1: finally like, all right, this just isn't working. You know,
Speaker 1: I've had I've got a shoulder thing, and I know
Speaker 1: how to fix the shoulder, and I will stop doing
Speaker 1: the exercises until I feel the shoulder to inge again. Now, luckily,
Speaker 1: I've gotten a little bit wiser that when I feel it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, Okay, I know what to do, and I
Speaker 1: start doing them and it never gets really bad again.
Speaker 1: But that is such a true statement. You know, when
Speaker 1: is it bad enough to do something about it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's almost like, you know, we should do preventative maintenance,
Speaker 1: but we never do right because oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't need to do it, and then well, it ends
Speaker 1: up you'd be better off if you've done it. Ye.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about something now. I'm sort of
Speaker 1: shifting into invisible influence for a second, but I want
Speaker 1: to talk about this idea of identification and differentiation. How
Speaker 1: as people, sometimes we really want to identify with a
Speaker 1: certain group, or sometimes we want to differentiate ourselves from
Speaker 1: a certain group. And I've always found this fascinating to
Speaker 1: be like, what is it that causes people in some
Speaker 1: cases to identify or differentiate? And then often right, I'm
Speaker 1: identifying with one group while I'm differentiating from another group,
Speaker 1: and you talk eloquently about some of the factors that
Speaker 1: go into that, and I just thought that was really fascinating. Yeah. Sure, so.
Speaker 1: So I think, as you very nicely pointed out, it's
Speaker 1: not that we do one or the other. We're constantly
Speaker 1: doing both, right, We are constantly looking to identities that
Speaker 1: we want to hold. People would often call these aspiration
Speaker 1: groups or aspirational identities. It maybe a person, it may
Speaker 1: be a group of people. You know, we look to
Speaker 1: them and go, God, I would love to be like them, um,
Speaker 1: and so I'm going to engage in things that will
Speaker 1: make me more like that and like them. Maybe I
Speaker 1: see an ad and you know, the product that people
Speaker 1: using it just looks so cool and fun, and so
Speaker 1: I maybe buy that product so I can be more
Speaker 1: like them. Or you know, I see an action that
Speaker 1: someone's taking and so I want to do something like
Speaker 1: them to you know, be part of that group. At
Speaker 1: the same time, they're also called sort of disassociative groups
Speaker 1: or avoidance groups, UM, identities that we want to avoid. Right.
Speaker 1: We look at them and go, God, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't I don't want to be like that, and so well,
Speaker 1: maybe I should avoid doing things that those type of
Speaker 1: people are doing, And so we constantly have sort of
Speaker 1: these polls were oscillating between between how does what I'm
Speaker 1: doing make me look? And really, who does it make
Speaker 1: me look like? If it makes me look like the
Speaker 1: type of person I want to look like, I'm more
Speaker 1: likely to do it. And if it makes me look
Speaker 1: like the type of person I don't want to look like,
Speaker 1: I'm less likely to do it. So we ran a study,
Speaker 1: for example, many years ago, your listeners maybe remember these
Speaker 1: famous bands, Live Strong bands. These yellow wrist bands were popular,
Speaker 1: and so right at the moment they became popular, we
Speaker 1: sold them on I was a PhD student at Stanford.
Speaker 1: We sold them to a group of student at Stanford
Speaker 1: a dorm of Stanford students, and looked at whether they
Speaker 1: wore them or not, and they did, and then we
Speaker 1: sold them to another group of people. And if the
Speaker 1: ideas look more is better. You know, people just want
Speaker 1: other people to be doing something. They should be happy
Speaker 1: to continue wearing them, and they like the wristband, so
Speaker 1: the fact that other people wearing it doesn't give them
Speaker 1: more information about the bands. But we picked the group
Speaker 1: we told to second on purpose, we picked sort of
Speaker 1: the geeks on campus, so imagine sort of an academic
Speaker 1: focus dorm. They take extra classes, they do extra work.
Speaker 1: And we wondered what would happen to the initial group
Speaker 1: of wristband wears when the geeks started wearing it, and
Speaker 1: we found sure enough is when the geeks started wearing it,
Speaker 1: those initial people stopped doing it. Right. It's not that
Speaker 1: the band is actually any better or worse. Functionally, it's
Speaker 1: still the same, but because it's associated with a group,
Speaker 1: they don't want to look like they stopped doing it.
Speaker 1: And so you see these motivations working together all the time. Right,
Speaker 1: I want to be like these people and not like
Speaker 1: the others. And even if I want to be like
Speaker 1: a certain group, I don't want to be identical to them. Right.
Speaker 1: So you know, look at a group of I don't
Speaker 1: know i'm gonna I'm gonna stereotype here, but fourteen to
Speaker 1: eighteen year old girls are ways right. You often see
Speaker 1: groups of friends that are dressed very similarly. Now they're
Speaker 1: not just identically, right, um, but they're wearing the same brands,
Speaker 1: are the same styles of clothes. They're not learning literally
Speaker 1: the same shirt and literally the same pants. But you
Speaker 1: can figure out what group someone belongs to based on
Speaker 1: their choices, but you can also get a sense of
Speaker 1: how much they care about standing out of that group.
Speaker 1: And so we simultaneously have these motives to fit in
Speaker 1: and stand out, um to signal desired identities and avoid
Speaker 1: signaling undesired ones, And the choices we make are based
Speaker 1: on those motivations, allowing us to communicate desired identities to
Speaker 1: ourselves and and to others. I think this is such
Speaker 1: an interesting point. We had an author on Luke Burgess
Speaker 1: who wrote a book about a concept of memetic desire.
Speaker 1: You know, the desire is imitative, which is I think
Speaker 1: obvious that it is. But the question of what causes
Speaker 1: us to imitate certain ones versus others I find really fascinated.
Speaker 1: And when you start unwinding this back to kind of
Speaker 1: where we started, which is that so much of what
Speaker 1: we do is influenced by others. How do we know
Speaker 1: what we really want? You know, what does that even mean?
Speaker 1: If I've been being influenced since the moment I was
Speaker 1: born by what's around me, whether it's identifying or differentiating
Speaker 1: from everything. You know, how do we get to what
Speaker 1: is for us, and I'm just kind of curious. How
Speaker 1: do you think about trying to unravel that enough? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think you can completely unravel it to my point,
Speaker 1: but how do you unravel it enough to start to
Speaker 1: go okay? I think I'm making decisions based on what
Speaker 1: I want, not without so much influence. So imagine you
Speaker 1: took a business trip to a city you've never been
Speaker 1: to before, and your plane touches down and it's you
Speaker 1: go to the hotel and it's dinner time. You don't
Speaker 1: know anybody there, but you want to figure out where
Speaker 1: to go out for dinner. Imagine you couldn't use something
Speaker 1: like yelp. Imagine you couldn't ask the concierge for advice.
Speaker 1: Imagine you just had to walk around and find a
Speaker 1: place on your own. And you couldn't even use, by
Speaker 1: the way, the time tested trick we often use, just
Speaker 1: how many people are in the restaurant. You couldn't even
Speaker 1: be that as information, right. Think about how difficult it
Speaker 1: would be to pick a good place to go for dinner.
Speaker 1: It'd be super difficult, right, You have no idea if
Speaker 1: the place is good or not. It would be bad
Speaker 1: and so you you talk about, well, you know, we
Speaker 1: want to make our own choices, but we don't always
Speaker 1: want to make our own choices, right, A lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, our own choices. I want to end up
Speaker 1: at a good Thie restaurant, and I want to use
Speaker 1: other people as a way to help me figure out
Speaker 1: which is the good Thai restaurant to to go to,
Speaker 1: And so influence by itself isn't bad, you know. I
Speaker 1: think influence is often a four letter word in some
Speaker 1: people's mind. They say, I don't want to be influenced,
Speaker 1: particularly in our American culture. You know, we see ourselves
Speaker 1: as individuals, special people. You know. We go to Burger King,
Speaker 1: we have it our way. We go to Starbucks, they
Speaker 1: make our latte exactly how we want. You know, we
Speaker 1: are completely different from everyone else. It's okay to be
Speaker 1: like other people, right, It's okay to be part of
Speaker 1: a group. It's okay to rely on others for information.
Speaker 1: I think what I do agree with very much with
Speaker 1: what you said is is we want to be more
Speaker 1: aware of influences so we can choose our influence. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to be influenced, it's another thing to be
Speaker 1: influenced negatively, and so I think we need to be
Speaker 1: more aware of how influence works so we can pick
Speaker 1: our head up and go wow. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that the fact that I often compare myself. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm often on social media and I'm looking at my friends,
Speaker 1: and by looking at my friends, you know, I'm making
Speaker 1: myself unhappy because I'm looking at, you know, a varnished
Speaker 1: perspective in their lives, which is not what happens in
Speaker 1: every day but the best moments, I'm looking at their
Speaker 1: greatest hits, and I'm comparing my average life to their
Speaker 1: greatest hits. And no one's average life compares to someone
Speaker 1: else great as greatest hits. Right, That's why the greatest hits.
Speaker 1: But if I don't realize that, I'm sitting there going, man,
Speaker 1: you know, my life just isn't as exciting when when
Speaker 1: in reality, all our lives are filled with both exciting
Speaker 1: moments and less exciting moments. And so I think that's
Speaker 1: really what the goal of invisible influence is all about,
Speaker 1: is to help us be more aware of what those
Speaker 1: influences are so we can choose our influence, so we
Speaker 1: can decide, look, you know I'm gonna do this because
Speaker 1: I am choosing to be influenced by others, or you know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to shut off these channels because I want
Speaker 1: to make a completely independent decision, but recognizing that that
Speaker 1: requires more work. Yeah, yeah, I think that's so true
Speaker 1: that it's inescapable. So to your point, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's about not being influenced in ways we don't want
Speaker 1: to be. Or I think the other is just not
Speaker 1: to have it happening so sort of subconsciously, you know,
Speaker 1: it's to have the awareness of, like, Okay, as a
Speaker 1: human being, I'm going to react, whether identify, or differentiate
Speaker 1: to everything that's around me all the time. It just happens.
Speaker 1: And you know, all that makes me think about sort
Speaker 1: of all the way back to where we started, kind
Speaker 1: of about the wolf parable right, that feeding the good
Speaker 1: Wolf is often about. Are we surrounding ourselves and being
Speaker 1: influenced by people who are doing something similar? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know, someone said it very nicely. They said, you know,
Speaker 1: you are the sum of your five closest others, whether
Speaker 1: that's a spouse, whether that's your kids, whether that's you know,
Speaker 1: your best friends, and so pick your influence carefully, right,
Speaker 1: think about who you are surrounding yourself with. If those
Speaker 1: are the types of people that you want to be
Speaker 1: surrounded with, great, but recognize that those folks are going
Speaker 1: to influence you and make sure you're choosing them carefully. Yeah. Well, Jonah,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for taking the time to come on.
Speaker 1: It has been a real pleasure talking with you, and
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed both the books and I find your
Speaker 1: work just fascinating. Well, thanks so much. If what you
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