the story, and System 2 believes it. System 1 “is the source of your rapid and often precise intuitive judgments.” It is a “mental shotgun” allowing us to answer, in an instant, those tough questions about our lives.
Time for a wee task.
I thought about calling these tasks “Action Items,” but I didn’t want you to have a full MBA Bingo card by the end of the book (being that I have an MBA, the risk is real). Implement these Action Items to proactively synergize an optimized epiphanic paradigm! Just, no.
Give us a kiss. Except all caps: KISS. I’ve interviewed both Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. Paul is nice….
Man, my System 2 is all over the place right now. KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid. A 2011 study published in Personality and Social Psychology Review looked at “feelings as information.” The study asserts feelings are a “sensible judgment strategy,” but don’t overthink it, especially in terms of the advantages of change. That’s because when you create a comprehensive list of all the benefits of something, the study showed, it becomes less appealing. This is System 2 overanalyzing what System 1 came up with. Your task is to not let that happen.
When System 1, the fast-acting hero of your life, says, “This is it!” the supporting character of System 2 will come up with a couple of confirming rationalizations as to why, yes, we can agree that this is likely the thing. Then STOP! Once you have that confirmation, just go with it. You don’t need to keep drilling down into the benefits, or it actually becomes less compelling. This doesn’t apply to using System 2 for enacting the vision. Being detail oriented in that regard is important.
The Gap between Thinking and Doing
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
William Shakespeare wrote of the stage and players and how life is one big performance in a monologue from As You Like It. But the speech also refers to seven stages of a person’s life.
I only know of this play because it was quoted in the 1981 hit song “Limelight” by my favorite band. Beyond that, I possess mere high school knowledge of Montagues, Capulets, Macbeths, and whatever the last name of that Danish lad was, the one who pondered if he should be or not.
Speaking of Hamlet’s act 3, scene 1, soliloquy, crossing the gap between thinking and doing is making the decision to “take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them.”
You may be facing a sea of troubles, but what could your life look like if you took up arms and charged fearlessly ahead, fierce and furious in your determination to take not a single prisoner but emerge victorious?
Hamlet’s oft-quoted scene begins with, “To be, or not to be?” At the darkest period of his life—dad dead due to the dastardly deeds of his dick uncle—the young Danish prince ponders his future actions, struggling with the decision that lay before him. Should he accept his outrageous fortune, or get in its face?
Oh, wait. It’s Shakespeare. Everyone dies. Bad example. Let us move back a space to the moment before the decision to take arms was made. Some centuries after Shakespeare laid down his mighty pen, James Prochaska, a psychology professor and director of the Cancer Prevention Research Center at the University of Rhode Island, developed a different model for the stages a person goes through when experiencing life change.
Along with his colleagues, Professor Prochaska developed the transtheoretical model (TTM) of behavior change, which is one of the most studied lifestyle transformation models ever created. Since its initial development in the 1970s, more than $80 million and 150,000 study participants have contributed to its peer review. It’s no longer used much for designing psychological interventions, but it’s still useful as an examination tool.
There are five stages to TTM:
1 Precontemplation—People in this stage are not even thinking about altering their behaviors, as they do not see their current lifestyles as problematic. This couch is ever so comfy. Never shall I remove my bottom from its padded glory and proximity to the rectangle of glowing time waste.
2 Contemplation—This is when a person is thinking about changing their behavior, but not quite ready to act. Hmmm. Is there such a thing as a “couch sore”? Perhaps if I repositioned a little. Dammit, I emptied the DVR of all the good stuff. Is there anything new on Netflix? I suppose I could go outside….
3 Preparation—In which the person is focused around planning for acting toward behavior change, which is intended to be imminent. Outside it is! I just need to wiggle myself out of this massive ass groove I’ve created in the couch first….
4 Action—When a person is engaged in behavior change. It is a challenging time, when fragile habits are formed. Later, couch! Fresh air, bitches!
5 Maintenance—In which habits from undergoing the action stage are more ingrained and the new behavior becomes sticky as the person gains self-confidence in their abilities. What’s a couch?
Under the TTM model, where is the lightning strike? Where does the critical moment that divides a person’s life into before and after take place? We can see it in the gap between thinking and doing, between stage 2 and stage 3. It happens after contemplation and before preparation. Although the stage that follows is called “Action,” preparation is still a form of doing, a form of action. It is a giant leap forward toward a new life, which happens in an instant. It requires bravery and force to leap this chasm; hence the need to ensure that the emotional grizzly-elephant-horses are shocked into wakefulness and pointed in the right direction. They have taken up arms, roared defiantly, and the sea of troubles trembled at the might of such a battle cry.
Sometimes the movement from contemplation is a mere step, but that’s not what you’re after. What you seek is a giant leap. Because if this moment that prompts the advancement to stage 3 is a powerful one, if it is a true epiphany that enlightens and inspires, you’ll have little fear of relapse.
The new behaviors stick.
The Decisional Balance Sheet
“Reaching a tipping point to move toward action involves a change of focus,” James Prochaska told me. “One goes from the balance favoring the ‘cons’ of adopting a new behavior to giving more weight to the ‘pros.’”
Unfortunately, people tend to slide back into old habits, which is why it is important to ensure the decisional balance sheet is well stacked in favor of acting.
“A person is going to be a lot better prepared to stick with the new behavior if the pros significantly outweigh the cons,” Prochaska said. If the pros only slightly tip the balance when you start down the path to changing your life, you will still be experiencing those cons. If you just barely decide to change—if, exasperated, you throw your hands in the air and say, “Fine! I guess I’ll do it”—you’re going to feel the suck of that change; it can overpower any benefits. The balance teeters around ambivalence; you are more inclined to give up and slide back into old behavior.
In 2010, Jennifer Di Noia, a professor of sociology at William Patterson University in New Jersey, worked with Prochaska on a meta-analysis of twenty-seven different studies of how TTM was used to evaluate decisional balance; they were specifically looking at dietary changes to affect weight loss. Published in the American Journal of Health Behavior, they came to some fascinating conclusions.
During the precontemplation stage, cons rule the synapses, but something interesting happens during contemplation: The balance begins to shift. And it shifts in a way that explains why so many fail in their efforts to change their lives.
In the contemplation stage, the reduction in thinking about cons is small; the balance shifts because the value of the pros increases by a significant margin. The cons are still there, still powerful. The fear of pain or boredom from exercise, the financial worries over pursuing a different career, or “You can peel my wine glass from my cold, dead hand!” remain palpable. And to overshadow such fear, the pros need to “Hulk