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Beyond ancient philosophy and its modern interpretations, we have the scientific insights of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. Known as the Father of Behavioral Economics (which we learn more about in coming chapters), Kahneman, an emeritus professor of psychology at Princeton University, is the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. The “fast” way of thinking is the elephant. It happens when an unconscious idea pops into consciousness. It can also be that emotional driver one needs to effortlessly change. Kahneman refers to this as “System 1,” writing that it “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” Conversely, “System 2” is the rider. It “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.”
Kahneman explains that System 2 is where we make our rational choices, our conscious decisions. His description is telling: “Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book.”
You’re damn right it is. System 2 is the supporting character, and an inherently lazy one at that. Kahneman writes that System 2 engages in the “law of least effort.” But that doesn’t mean it’s useless in this regard. Far from it. As the Heath brothers explain in Switch, you have to appeal to both elephant and rider. Kahneman says System 1 constructs 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 Smash!” them into insignificance. The ratio revealed in Di Noia and Prochaska’s research of pros to cons is enlightening. They discovered the pros must outweigh the cons by almost a 2 to 1 ratio to be truly effective!
It stresses the importance of the great leap forward achieved via some form of epiphany; it’s not a simple tipping of the balance sheet to 51–49 in favor of the pros. Again, it’s not a small step forward toward successful and sustainable change; it works better if you take a giant leap.
“Pros and cons of decision making is not a conscious, rational, empirical process,” Professor Prochaska said. “It is very emotionally based.”
What can make someone passionate about a new direction? What gives them the drive to charge ahead with an unstoppable “no-prisoners” attitude? Prochaska explained that a dramatic event could cause someone to reevaluate pros and cons.
Such a dramatic event found its initial spark for Chuck Gross in January 2008. He sat in an Irish pub in New Orleans, called Boondock Saint, having a quiet beer or five. The bar was named to pay homage to a cult-action film of a similar name.
“My brothers-in-law are twins. My wife and I took them barhopping on Bourbon Street for their twenty-first birthdays,” Chuck, a computer programmer in Pittsburgh, told me. The Irish-style pub was dark and somewhat gloomy. A mirror advertising Guinness hung on an aging brick wall. Being it was a twenty-first birthday event in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Chuck was in no shape to walk a straight line.
That night, Chuck had a chance meeting that would be the first step on a journey that would change his life.
“Back then I was not a social person, being as fat as I was,” Chuck said. He described two seats at the far end of the bar, and how he ended up sitting next to an average-looking man who practically forced Chuck to speak with him.
The man was in his fifties, clean-shaven, plain-faced, and wearing glasses, Chuck recalled. His hair was gray-white, he had an outgoing personality, and it seemed like he couldn’t help but engage in conversation. Because Chuck had consumed a few drinks, he began to loosen up.
The two men talked for a time of things inconsequential, and then the man informed Chuck of his profession as a photographer, which he proclaimed gave him the ability to read people. “I see the fear in your eyes,” the man told him.
Chuck admits that his memory was hazy due to alcohol consumption, but insists the stranger never brought up Chuck’s weight. Rather, the man told him he could see there was something Chuck wanted to do, and that the fear he felt soon wouldn’t be a problem in this quest.
Chuck Gross was taken aback that a random stranger would speak to him in such a way. I advocate against poking one’s nose into the body weight of others; people should mind their own business. Even though Chuck’s obesity was not mentioned, it was obvious what the man was talking about. The conversation ended abruptly but still had a profound effect.
Two months later, Chuck Gross was dead.
Lightning Strikes
The life-changing epiphany seems rare because people aren’t forthcoming about it.
William Miller and his coauthor write in Quantum Change: “people who experience such events are often reluctant to discuss them openly.” In their research, they uncovered that many had told only one or two people, and some never told anyone. I’m kind of a big deal on Facebook, so when I asked, people came forward.
Bragging over one’s social-media following is the epitome of pathetic, but if you want to “Like” my page, it’s facebook.com/bodyforwife.
During the interviews, Miller and C’de Baca write, “the words came tumbling out like a great unburdening.” Yep. That’s what happened with my interviews, too. It’s because such an event changes how people feel, what they think, how they experience the world. It is a Big Deal. Life will never be the same.
Freaked out a little right now? I mean, Chuck Gross died, right?
It’s a good kind of lightning strike, however, like when Luke learned he was to become a Jedi, except without having your aunt and uncle burned to a crisp by Imperial Stormtroopers.
Of the fifty-five people interviewed for Quantum Change, the authors explained that for 80 percent of them, it “took them completely by surprise.” And for half, nothing special was happening leading up to it. This reinforces Beeman and Kounios, who say lightning strikes during diversion after getting stuck.
To repeat: keep working at it, follow the steps in this book, then take a break and let the unconscious do its thing.
Let’s get back to Chuck.
As forward as the stranger’s words were, it nudged him from the precontemplation stage to the edges of contemplation. Cons of change became slightly minimized, and pros garnered more investigation and emphasis.
“During those two months, the conversation was eating away at me both subconsciously and consciously,” Chuck said, explaining that many of the things one experiences when they are that heavy are buried because they’re constant: back pain, aching feet, always being out of breath. Before, they were facts of life, but after the meeting, he became more aware of them. Chuck’s brain was becoming primed for lightning to strike.
It was March 11, and the Pittsburgh winter edged toward spring, a time of rebirth. Rather than forget his chance meeting at Boondock Saint the previous January, Chuck dwelled on it.
Then it happened.
“My wife Denise came out of the bathroom with a positive pregnancy test,” Chuck said. He explained this was not something planned for. They’d talked about having children, but it was always for the future, when he was healthier and had lost weight.
“The lightning bolt was instantaneous,” he said. It first hit him with overwhelming joy that he was going to be a father, but he also knew with absolute clarity he had to do something about his condition. He described it as though someone hit him in the back of the head with a baseball bat, full swing.
The bat to Chuck’s skull was what ended his life, metaphorically speaking. “I tell people I died that day. The old Chuck is dead. I killed him.”
Chuck’s realization that he had to change happened in an instant, when he knew he had to become not just the father his child needed, but the husband his wife deserved. Yet Chuck didn’t stop thinking there. The powerful “Aha!” moment brought additional clarity to who he was and how he needed to change.
“I realized that a big part of my identity was wrapped up in me being fat,” he said. The emotion of the moment was clear; years later he struggled to tell the tale. Voice thick, Chuck explained he was always the fat kid growing up; people made fun of him for it. His identity was as the funny fat guy; the guy girls wanted as a friend, but never to date. People knew him for being able to eat and drink a lot, and that was all. With the pregnancy announcement, Chuck had a new identity thrust upon him, that of a father, making his values pivot hard in a new direction.
In 2016, researchers from the University of Oregon published a study in Psychological Inquiry about the “identity-value model” of self-regulation. The authors theorize that “behaviors that are connected to identity are more likely to be enacted because they hold greater subjective value.” They examined the dieter’s dilemma, investigating how people struggle with eating healthfully, and how self-control is about two opposing processes: impulsively eat the doughnut, for example, because it’s yummy, or strive to regulate that behavior and resist the treat in favor of vegetables?
When someone’s identity is one that places high value on healthy eating, there isn’t much struggle. It’s not a matter of exerting willpower; it’s acting in a way that is in direct relevance to who they are. At the beginning of this book, I mentioned awakening the grizzly, but it’s more about becoming the grizzly.
The final part of Chuck’s process to destroy that old identity and create a new one involved stepping on the scale. Technology lent him a hand.
“The scale was only rated up to 400 pounds and always gave me an error message, but this time it worked and read 410.” That’s what made it real; it reinforced for Chuck what he had to do. He needed to embrace the identity shift.
Chuck described hating exercise; he hated watching what he ate, hated trying to lose weight only to fail again and again. “Before, I never felt like I’d be able to change.” But this time was different. This time, it was not the rational thought prompting him forward, but a new sense of being filling him with emotion. That lightning strike / baseball bat to the head doesn’t come from a considered weighing of the pros and cons; it’s an overwhelming sensation in which an internal spirit awakens and proclaims: This will happen!
Chuck’s transformation was so total that I had no idea of his amazing story when I first met him in 2015. It was at a fitness conference in Kansas City, in a hotel room after-party. I assumed he was another fitness aficionado and was surprised when he replied to my call for stories. We met again in 2017 and 2018 and shared a big hug each time.
I told Chuck’s story to Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and a longtime critic of the idea that willpower is some depleting resource we need to ration in order to change behavior.
“Chuck sounds like he had this experience that didn’t change his self-control,” Inzlicht said. “He changed his identity.” Being a good dad was something Chuck would hold in high value, and this was the identity push he needed because of his concerns about his ability to be active with his children and even live long enough to see them grow. As a result, “The value of losing weight dramatically increased.”
Chuck described his old identity as an anchor that needed to die for him to move forward. This was the defining moment that divided his life into before and after. “The person I am now was born that day,” he said.
From ashes gray, a phoenix arose.
But what does this all mean? How did this one moment help Chuck lose over two hundred pounds and keep them off? The first part to understand is that insight, driven by emotion, unlike rational analysis, is something possessing the power to crush doubt.
“There was an overwhelming sense of joy and relief,” he said. “I didn’t need to struggle with my motivation; it came built in.” Chuck described a sense of inner peace; there was no question he would do it. There were still struggles to overcome, but he had momentum that began that day; it pushed him forward.
I want to repeat something Chuck said, because it’s damn important. Let’s bold, italicize, and center it to draw attention:
“I didn’t need to struggle with my motivation; it came built in.”
This is what we’re going for, dear reader. Right there is the reason I’m writing this book. Dropping over two hundred pounds and keeping them off takes tremendous effort, but having it feel like destiny, that you have an endless fountain of desire to achieve, after years of trying and failing, can only be attained by a sudden, transformative experience. I’m not saying amazing accomplishment can’t be attained by way of baby steps, but that way sucks, and the failure rate is high.
Rapid transformation of desire to succeed is so much cooler! Wouldn’t you rather do it that way?
Maybe not. Maybe that identity-shift stuff freaked you out.
But I want to alleviate that fear, because you’re going to change anyway. We are, all of us, changing all the time. I’m quite a bit different from the man I was ten years ago, and way different than the one from twenty-five years ago. While a life-changing epiphany is something that feels like it is something that happens to you, the preparatory work, along with your life experiences and deepest desires and understanding of your true self, help ensure it was something coming from you. This isn’t an outside agency acting upon your brain; this is your brain.
Yes, if this happens, you’re going to change. A lot. Quickly. Sounds scary, but it comes with an overwhelming feeling of rightness. And that’s why it drives you. We’ll examine the neuroscience behind this shift in coming chapters, but for now I ask you to trust in the power of your unconscious and conscious processing systems to find the correct path.
Time for another mental activity.
Think of what happened to Chuck, and why it happened. The overwhelming epiphany seemingly came out of the blue—but did it? The seed was sown back in that New Orleans bar. He became more aware of the negative consequences of his current path. He also talked with his wife about how children were for “later,” when he got healthy.
And then it all came crashing down in an instant with a pregnancy announcement. Chuck received an overwhelming vision of the man he must become, for his wife, and for his unborn child.
Chuck was suddenly “pro” focused.
The cons of changing didn’t matter; all that mattered was becoming.
Your next task is to maximize the pros. Imagine one or three of the things you’d like to do. Create a basic vision of the You, Part 2, that I spoke of earlier.
Now imagine what it’s like to be that person.
Focus on just a few of the major benefits you will receive from this change. As I showed earlier, don’t overanalyze, but ponder some of what will be awesome about that new career, new body, new location, or new life. What are the big things that make it so desirable?
Are these good things not just good, but amazing? Are they inspiring? Do they make you desire this change so much that you must achieve them? If not, perhaps the problem is you’re not being ambitious enough in your vision. But don’t be so ambitious that you choose an objective which is unachievable.
This is called the “expectancy-value approach,” a behavior-change theory dating back to 1967. It dictates that we engage in those behaviors we both expect to be successful at and have high value to us.
Think on this: What kind of benefits would it take to inspire you to action? Merge this with consideration of the feasibility of the goal. You can still dream big, because implausible does not mean impossible.
Create another vision. Think of a new you so incredible it becomes irresistible. Push the boundaries of realism. No one gets to be Batman except Batman, but you can still achieve awesome. There’s only one Wonder Woman, yet you can become a wondrous woman.
What does the limit of your potential look like? More important, how does it feel to imagine the benefits of standing in those shoes?
Don’t expect this will cause lightning to strike now. It’s information for percolation. But it might happen soon, so be ready, just in case. A transformative moment might happen in chapter 1 (#ulink_432c42ac-62e6-5b08-b240-728394934c71), or it might happen in chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo). It might happen three months after you finish this book. Work the problem until you’re stuck, engage in diversion, and you could have a transformation like Chuck did.
Chuck went from despair to joyous determination in an instant. Joyous determination. This sense of elation Chuck described is a parameter of the transtheoretical model called “dramatic relief.” It can take place when one moves from the contemplation stage and into the preparation stage, from thinking to doing. It is because the anticipation of resolving one’s weighty problems generates a sense of euphoria. You’re like, Hell, yes! I see light at the end of the tunnel now, and I will run toward it. Nothing will stop me.
How does the feeling last? What keeps you on the new course, besides the shift in values and identity? The secret is in the synapses.
James Prochaska explained that such dramatic relief could involve either negative or positive arousal. Positive arousal involves being inspired to chase something good. But negative arousal, unlike the name might imply, is not a bad thing: it’s about removing a negative feeling, such as conquering an addiction.
