Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Probability REALLY Works & Proven Ways to Master Motivation

Starting point is 00:00:00 As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future.

Starting point is 00:00:42 Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, you probably hate asking for help, but you really should,

Starting point is 00:01:10 and I'll tell you why. Then, the laws of probability affect all aspects of your life, and it's critical to understand how they work. For example… There is absolutely nothing in probability theory that says you can't sit down and toss a coin, could be heads, could be tails, and just get heads, heads, heads every time. It could happen, but the probability of it happening is vanishingly small. Plus, where women should really put their purse when they go to a restaurant, although they almost never do.

Starting point is 00:01:40 And if you want to accomplish anything, you must understand how motivation really works. First of all, motivation is a skill. And there's three psychological needs. And if these three psychological needs are not involved in your approach to your task, you won't succeed. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most.

Starting point is 00:02:26 Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:03:15 Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. I want to dive right in because this subject interests me a lot. Have you ever been reluctant to ask for help? I know I have, and I'm not sure why. For fear of looking weak or stupid or incompetent, people are often afraid to ask for help or advice for fear of appearing that way.

Starting point is 00:03:54 But it turns out, and this is so interesting, it turns out that it's just the opposite. A study in the journal Management Science found that participants rated others as more competent when they asked for help. This was especially true when the task was difficult. In general, people who seek advice from others are perceived to be more competent than those who don't. And interestingly, admitting that something was your fault is an effective way to build trust, even though people think it does just the opposite. People are more attracted to people who appear human and less than perfect. And that is something you should know.

Starting point is 00:04:42 So much of our lives are governed by probability. Will the weather be good? Will the traffic be bad? Will you win or lose at a game? Will you get the job you applied for? Probability and to some degree chance play a role in so many aspects of our lives. We want to know the future. We can't know the future, but we can try to figure out the chances of something happening, the probability. And yet a lot about how probability works is misunderstood.

Starting point is 00:05:15 When you understand it better, you can then predict the future better. Not for certain, but better. Here to discuss this is Ian Stewart. Ian is Professor Emeritus of Math at the University of Warwick in England, and he is author of the book, Do Dice Play God? The Mathematics of Uncertainty. Hi, Professor. Hi there, Mike. You know, what's interesting to me is how people are so obsessed with, and I suspect from the beginning of time, trying to obsess about how to predict the future, and yet we're so bad at it. We haven't gotten very good at it. But is that kind of just human nature, do you think, we want to know what's next, which is basically, certainly until fairly recently, your survival rather depended upon it. There were so many things in the world you lived in, predatory animals hiding behind the nearest bush or rock, that you were quite likely to be set upon and attacked by somebody, or an invading army would come through, or a natural disaster would suddenly happen. And so, on the other hand, if you could get some kind of handle on what was going to happen in the future, even if it was imperfect, then that gave you some sort

Starting point is 00:06:40 of advantage. And in fact, even claiming to be able to do it would give some people an advantage. Well, but your field of study, mathematics, has put a bit of a harness on uncertainty to some extent and in some cases. I think that's a very good way of putting it, to some extent and in some cases. But people were gambling with dice back in Roman times, but they didn't entirely have today's understanding of what's involved. For example, in ancient Rome, if you look at the dice that archaeologists have dug up, they're often not very good cubes. They may be a bit longer in some directions than others, and that means that some numbers on those dice would come up actually more often than others. They weren't completely fair. But the gamblers

Starting point is 00:07:30 didn't seem to be too bothered by that. And one of the theories is essentially they believe that if the gods were on their side, they'd be lucky and they'd win. And if the gods weren't on their side, well, tough luck, you know, you're in trouble anyway. But after a while, the gamblers themselves started to think, you know, this is not, we need to be a bit more systematic about this. And the big breakthrough comes in the 1400s in Renaissance Italy with a wonderful man called Girolamo Cardano, who was a brilliant mathematician, a pretty good doctor, and an absolute rogue. He lied, he cheated, he at one point was making a living by gambling, either at cards or dice or chess. And Cardano basically worked out some of the basic rules of probability. And perhaps the most important one is one of the

Starting point is 00:08:28 ways we interpret probability. The probability of some event happening is the proportion of times it occurs if you keep trying. So if I've got a dice and I roll it and I'm interested in throwing a six well if it's a fair dice then in the long run one time in six that number comes up one time in six five comes up one time in six four comes up on average in the long run each number will come up one sixth of time. And Cardona realized that you could start to do interesting calculations and understand games of chance better and work out better strategies using that kind of mathematics. And it's that concept, that idea of the long run that trips people up, I think. Because, and tell me if I'm wrong, but you know, I think there's a tendency to think that if you flip a coin 10 times, you'll get five heads and five tails. You might, but you probably

Starting point is 00:09:32 won't because that's not enough flips. That's not enough of a long run for that 50-50 effect to take place. And the idea that if you flip a coin and its heads once, that the next time it's more likely to be tails is also false because the coin doesn't know it just flipped a head. The next time it's still a 50-50 chance that it'll be heads or tails. It's the long run where the 50-50 works, and I think, and hopefully you'll agree, that the long run is longer than most people realize. The long run can be very, very long indeed, yes.

Starting point is 00:10:10 It's quite subtle, and there is a sense in which if you wait long enough, if I'm just tossing a coin, I mean, I did this once. I sat there tossing a coin for the fun of it, and on one occasion, I tossed 10 heads in a row. That doesn't make tails more likely to come up next time. The coin doesn't think, oh, I've tossed heads too often. I must do something about this. The coin is just an inert object. But what happens is, suppose I've tossed 10 heads.

Starting point is 00:10:42 Okay, from that point on, heads and tails usually, with high probability, will occur roughly equal amounts. So what happens is, in the next, say, 100 tosses, I might get, if it's exactly the case, I'll get 50 heads and 50 tails. So when you add in the initial 10, I've now got 60 heads and 50 tails. Well, that's a lot closer to 50-50 than 10-0. If I tossed a million times and got half a million of each, then you've got a half a million and 10 heads and half a million tails. So it's not the difference between the numbers, it's the ratio of the two numbers that

Starting point is 00:11:25 evens out in the long run. Usually, there is absolutely nothing in probability theory that says you can't sit down and toss a coin, fair coin, could be heads, could be tails, and just get heads, heads, heads, heads, heads, heads every time. It could happen. But the probability of it happening is vanishingly small. So talk about chaos theory and what that is and why it's important. Okay, chaos theory is a different kind of randomness. And we were talking about rules and laws and approximate rules. People used to think essentially that you've got random events which just happened, the past makes no difference, whatever the coin has tossed in the past, it's still either heads or tails and you don't know which one it's going to be. Or you've got laws, you've got things like Newton's laws of motion, Newton's law of gravity, you've got mathematical equations for how the future is going to pan out, given what we know about the present. Chaos sits in the middle. It says it's possible to take a deterministic

Starting point is 00:12:32 system governed entirely by rules, and there's no random elements in the rules whatsoever. And yet, when you look at its behavior at first sight, it appears to be random. You can't just look at the numbers and say, ah, I can tell you what it's going to do in the future. And more importantly still, in practical terms, if we have a real physical system which obeys chaotic rules, the rules themselves say any tiny error in measuring the state of the system now, what it's doing now, will very rapidly blow up. And the slight differences in the possibilities that fit the current measurements lead to futures which are completely different from each other in a rather random sort of way. And the example everybody knows about this is the weather.

Starting point is 00:13:26 Meteorologists have known for 100 years the mathematical rules that govern how the weather works. It's to do with the flow of air, it's to do with the humidity, the water, the vapour that's in the air. But it's inherent in the nature of those equations that if you plug in very slightly different numbers describing what you think the weather is right now, the future that these rules predict can be very, very different depending on these tiny differences. This is a thing called the butterfly effect. A butterfly flaps its wing and a month later you get a tornado somewhere.

Starting point is 00:14:01 It would seem, though, that the more history we have, the better we would be at predicting what's going to happen. The more we know what has happened, past performance is no guarantee of future results, but that we would have a better idea of what's going to happen. And also, I guess it has to do with the number of variables, the things that can't change. It really depends a lot on the actual system we're interested in. So for example, with tides, you can predict them years ahead with considerable accuracy. It's not straightforward. It's not just everything happens every 24 hours and so forth. The shape of the coastline, the depth of the water, all of this matters. But we understand that and it doesn't seem to be subject to the butterfly effect.

Starting point is 00:14:48 Small errors in measuring things now just disappear. They die out. The future, there's a single future that is predicted. The motion of the planets in the solar system we can predict with considerable accuracy for several million years. However, on a very, very long time scale of, say, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of years, we can't actually predict the future of the solar system because that has a little bit of chaos in it. It takes an enormously long time to grow, but eventually we can't do the experiment. We can only observe the solar system we've got, but we can do the simulations on computers, and you can see these effects happening.

Starting point is 00:15:28 And in fact, understanding why they happen explains quite a lot about the past history of the solar system and its likely future. We're talking about probability and chance, and my guest is Ian Stewart. He is author of the book, Do Dice Play God? The Mathematics of Uncertainty. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons

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Starting point is 00:16:36 on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more.

Starting point is 00:17:06 A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson, discussing the rise of conspiracies

Starting point is 00:17:21 and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So Ian, can you talk about some of the fallacies, some of the things people get wrong when they're trying to predict what's going to happen? And for example, you talk about, you know, when people have two choices, they think, you know, it's a 50-50 chance. Well,

Starting point is 00:17:57 no, it's not. And those kind of things that people could, a little more practical knowledge here of what might help. Yeah, that's a very good example. I was watching television some years ago, and there was a program about weather prediction. And they had somebody, he wasn't a meteorologist, but he was heavily involved in the practical side of making weather measurements and things like that. And at some point in the program, he said, well, whether it rains or not it's basically 50 50 isn't it and nobody picked up on this and he knew he must have known it is not 50 50 i mean in the summer it's much more likely to be dry than rain in some areas rain is much more common than others um it's not 50 50 just because there's two choices. And I think most choices are like that. Yeah, if I'm tossing a coin, yeah, if it's a pair coin, it's 50-50 or close to 50-50.

Starting point is 00:18:56 But there is a definite logical mistake people tend to make here, which is when faced with two choices and not really knowing much about them, our natural default assumption is they're equally likely. It does seem it's human nature to want things or to expect things to even out. That, you know, if things are going bad for you for a while, you think now you're due for something good to happen. Or if things have been going pretty well, you imagine, well, something bad's got to or if things have been going pretty well, you imagine, well, something bad's got to happen because things have been going too well. There's this sense that things even out.

Starting point is 00:19:31 For example, with coin tossing, it will even out. The problem is it may take an enormously long time to do so. So if you've tossed a coin and your heads are 100 ahead of tails, the mathematics says it is absolutely certain that if you keep tossing long enough, eventually you'll get back to heads and tails being exactly equal. The problem is the average time for that to happen is infinitely long. In light of the evidence, in light of what people know on a very realistic, practical way that odds are what

Starting point is 00:20:06 they are, probability is what it is, people still talk about, for example, when they go to Las Vegas and they'll say, you know, this slot machine is really hot or that blackjack table is really hot right now. What do you think is going on there? Yeah, this is selective use of the evidence. I mean, what you get with any series of trials of any kind, and this is actually important in things like medical trials as well, by pure chance, every so often, you will get a run of good luck. For example, if I'm tossing a coin and heads wins, and I toss 10 times and we keep playing that game, one time in a thousand or so, I will toss 10 consecutive heads. And the rules of probability, the patterns of probability,

Starting point is 00:20:53 actually predict that. So now if lots of people do this, one of them has got a really hot coin. It's just tossed 10 heads in a row. Keep coin that's really good now the test is okay having done that now take that coin and start tossing again and in all likelihood it will just be from if you ignore the first 10 from that point on it will be roughly equal numbers of heads and tails if you build in the first 10 as part of your numbers, then it slowly seems to lose its potency. It's not quite, you know, it used to be much better than this. No, actually what's happened is immediately you got to the end of the first 10, you were just seeing that it never had this hot property in the first place. Do the laws of probability, whether it's blackjack or poker or

Starting point is 00:21:46 flipping a coin or whatever, does it change when you change the circumstance of real world to virtual world? If you create a program that's supposedly random coin flip, will the results be different because a computer is doing it versus a human is doing it, and there's wind speed and gravity and air pressure and all that? These subtle influences can change the proportion of heads and tails. In fact, some mathematicians built a coin tossing machine, and they built a coin tossing machine that was so precise that it would toss heads every time. It flips the coin several feet in the air.

Starting point is 00:22:29 It spins over half a dozen times or more. Lands heads. Do it again. Lands heads. Do it again. Lands heads. And that's because the mechanics is very precise. And the machine is much better at tossing than a human being.

Starting point is 00:22:46 If I toss a coin twice, it doesn't spin at the same rate, it doesn't get quite the same force acting on it, you get different results. But even so, all of that depends on the air currents not being too high, temperature maybe not being different, the humidity in the air not being different. If you use that machine millions of times under slightly different circumstances, you would probably get slightly different results because all of these factors do influence what's going on.

Starting point is 00:23:14 It's more obvious with dice. When you roll dice across a table, every time it bounces, the butterfly effect comes into play. And so very tiny differences can completely change the final number that the dice rolls. So it seems at the end of the day here that the lesson is that despite all of the efforts to make probabilities better and to predict the future better, you just never really know. And actually with coin tossing, the thing that really randomizes the toss

Starting point is 00:23:51 is which side up you put the coin on your thumb. And this is why there are ways to toss coins which make it look like they're flipping over, and actually they're spinning around and around with the same face on top all the time, just wobbling a bit. This is why in most of these games where you start with the coin toss the other player does not call until the coin's in the air so you can't rig which side is face up based on what he called because you don't know but it's actually the randomness of the human being putting the coin on their thumb

Starting point is 00:24:25 one way up or the other. The most likely prediction when you toss a coin is it will land the same way up that it started. Wait, wait, say that again, because I think people think that a coin toss is used so often to decide things because it is so random, it isn't so predictable. So say what you just said. The most likely prediction when you toss a coin is it will land the same way up that it started. Is there anything you do differently now that you know the laws of probability as well as you do that I don't know, that I don't do? I don't. We have a national lottery here. I never bet on it.

Starting point is 00:25:07 I know what the odds are I know that my chance of winning is so tiny that I'm wasting my money and on the other hand one of our secretaries some years ago won half a million pounds on the lottery so if I had told her you're wasting your time and she'd believe me I would have actually deprived her of half a million pounds. So I don't gamble, but if people enjoy it and they can afford the money they're spending and they get fun out of it, then it's hard. You know, I certainly wouldn't say the opposite. But the knowledge of what the odds actually are and what that means puts me off a lot of gambling games. Because I just don't believe that the universe is going to let me win. To which some people will say, yeah, but somebody has to win, and you'll never win if you don't play. And like you say, if it's fun, why not?

Starting point is 00:26:01 Ian Stewart has been my guest. He is a professor emeritus of math at the University of Warwick in England. And the book is called Do Dice Play God? The Mathematics of Uncertainty. There's a link to that book in Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Ian. Thanks, Mike. It's been a pleasure.

Starting point is 00:26:19 Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:26:49 Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:27:26 New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. You have probably heard at least one motivational speaker. Often they are the people who have overcome some adversity and, despite the odds, did something amazing. And while that's great, and those stories are often inspiring to hear, it is just one person's motivational story. But what about your motivational story? What motivates you? What is motivation?

Starting point is 00:28:06 Is it simply finding the courage to overcome obstacles, or is there more to it than that? Here with a deeper look at motivation that may just help you find your motivation to achieve a goal is Susan Fowler. Susan has been working in the area of motivation for some time and has authored a couple of books on the subject, including Master Your Motivation, Three Scientific Truths for Achieving Your Goals. Hi, Susan. Thank you, Mike. I'm thrilled to be here. So I think everybody has heard motivational speakers tell their story, and it's all very motivating because that's motivating to them, and that's what motivated them, but that doesn't necessarily motivate me. And sometimes that all falls a little flat. So what is new and different and exciting about what you have to say about motivation? Well, I hope it's exciting because it's science-based. It's not my opinion or just, you know, I had a good life experience and let me tell you how I did it, and the fluff.

Starting point is 00:29:05 It's really solidly empirically proven ideas that I know work not only in my own life and the lives of the people that I work with, but there's just good science, compelling science behind it. And I don't want to sound too braggadocious, but there's this wonderful academic research community behind it. And I'm one of the few people who is actually taking the science and applying it. And the science is saying what in general? What beyond personal motivation stories, what does the science say about it? That, first of all, motivation is a skill. So it's not something you have or don't have.

Starting point is 00:29:48 It's a quality of energy. And you can, at any time, any place, on any goal, you can shift your motivation. We tend to think of motivation as a quantity of something you have. And so if you don't have it, then you look for ways to get it. So that's where we get caught up in the carrots and the sticks and all of the tricks that we do in the organizations around trying to reward people for behavior or reward ourselves for our behavior or applying pressure and tension or fear. And so what I want people to know is that there's a lot of different ways of being motivated, and some of those ways are optimal and have real-world implications, and some of those ways of being motivated are suboptimal

Starting point is 00:30:36 with equally profound implications for your energy, your well-being, and your ability to achieve your goals. And so let's talk about goals, because I have my theory about goals. I think people tend to achieve their goals, and if they say they have a goal that they never seem to get around to, perhaps it's not really a goal, it's just a wish that they never get around to. But what are goals as you talk about them, and how do you know what your goals are if it's a little bit fuzzy? Well, what I really want people to know is that if you haven't achieved your goals,

Starting point is 00:31:15 it's probably because you don't love them enough. It's because you don't have the core of what you need, what's at the heart of motivation. I mean, motivation is at the heart of everything you do, what's at the heart of motivation. I mean, motivation is at the heart of everything you do and that you don't do. And so I don't care what your goal is or what you say your tasks are. I mean, it could be from, you know, I need to complete my expense reports on time or I want to lose weight or I want to stop smoking or I have a dream that I listened to one of your podcasts about, you know, the side business, you know, that you want to start.

Starting point is 00:31:48 What people need to know is that there's three psychological needs, and if these three psychological needs are not involved in your approach to your goal or your task, whatever it is you're trying to do, you won't succeed. Well, I want to hear those three things. But before you get into those, I get the sense when you talk about motivation, it's this thing that you have or you don't have. And, you know, I'm motivated sometimes. I'm motivated more in the morning to do things than I am in the afternoon. Motivation is fleeting, it seems. It comes and it goes, depends on my mood, the time of day, a lot of things. It's not a constant. Well, here's what we need to understand. You're always motivated. The question is why? The question is what type of motivation do you have? So you might

Starting point is 00:32:38 have certain types of physical energy during certain times of the day. But like I just got back from a seven country, 25 day speaking tour. And yeah, I am not a morning person. I am an evening person, but I had optimal energy throughout this entire trip because I was managing my motivation. I know how to master my motivation. So there's a difference between the motivation that you have, like when you eat a candy bar versus the motivation that you have when you eat a handful of almonds or, you know, physical energy and motivation is the same way. So if you are motivated because you feel like you have to do something, that's a different type of motivation than the motivation that you're doing something because it's aligned with a value that you have or that you have a deep sense of purpose behind it. So what we can teach people is how to identify the type of motivation they have

Starting point is 00:33:36 and then help them shift their motivation from suboptimal to optimal through a series of questions that you can ask yourself that helps you to create the psychological needs necessary. And what are those questions? Can I just use diets as an example? Sure. Because that's kind of a goal that a lot of people have. That what happens, the reason diets don't work is because you're missing the three

Starting point is 00:34:02 psychological needs necessary for dieting. So, for example, the first psychological need is for choice. And as soon as you say, oh, I'm on a diet, I have to lose weight, I can't eat a muffin, you have just eroded your psychological need for choice. And so what you need to do is to create that choice so that you can sustain your diet. But if you think, oh, I can't have that muffin, you've eroded your sense of choice. Now it becomes about the muffin. Oh, I really want that muffin. What we need to understand is it's not about the muffin. It's about choice. So the second

Starting point is 00:34:39 psychological need or scientific truth for achieving your goal is that in addition to a sense of choice, you need to have a sense of connection. And so connection means that you need to feel a sense of belonging with the people who are involved with whatever you're being involved with and that there's not a sense of being used or manipulated, that there's not ulterior motives. So let's say that you're in sales and your manager is like pushing you to make sales. And what you feel is like the only reason your manager is really pushing you is because he wants, you know, to succeed as a manager, that he's got ulterior motives. There was a fascinating study done at the University of Kansas, Dr. Brandon Irwin,

Starting point is 00:35:22 and what he found was that coaches who are really vocal, like, come on, you can do it, one more, you know, like training coaches, they were the least successful coaches. And the reason was because people felt like the coach was just doing what they were doing for their own sake, not for your sake. And so we need to feel the sense of connection that's interpersonal. But we also need to have a connection to meaningful values or to a sense of purpose. And we also need to feel like we're contributing to a greater good. So what happens, let's say, on the diet is that we don't really think about the deeper reasons. What are the

Starting point is 00:36:05 values I have around this diet? Or is it superficial? It's like, oh, I've got my high school reunion and I want to look good. Or I'm doing this out of fear because my doctor told me I was at risk and so I better lose weight. So when I ask my husband, you know, why are you doing this? What values do you have around this? Or how does it give you a sense of purpose? It was really interesting. He said, you know, I've always been an athlete. And I see myself as an athlete even though I'm older now and I'm not playing sports.

Starting point is 00:36:37 I feel like losing weight would help me be more of the person I see myself as. So he self-identified with a person who was not as heavy as he was. After a few weeks, and I kept asking these questions, you know, what choices have you made? And, you know, do you still have a sense of connection? How so? And what he said was, you know, I just got in touch with one of the reasons I want to lose weight is I want energy for our girls. You know, we have grandchildren and I want to be here for them. And I want to be agile. And I want energy for our girls. You know, we have grandchildren, and I want to be here for them, and I want to be agile, and I want to be that fun grandpa. And so all of a sudden he found a whole deeper meaning, reason,

Starting point is 00:37:12 for losing the weight that he hadn't even thought about when he actually declared that he was going to go on a diet. So in addition to having choice, we also need to have a sense of connection. And we get that by asking ourselves, why am I doing this? What is the meaningful reason or value or purpose behind it? And how might I contribute to a greater good beyond myself by doing whatever I'm doing? If you have a doctor tells you that you're at risk of dying if you don't go on a diet and get better. I can't think of a better motivation than that.

Starting point is 00:37:48 Death is... It's horrible. Yeah. So... No, no, no. I mean, it's a horrible reason. Why? Because it's fear.

Starting point is 00:37:55 It's fear-based. And whenever we're fear-based, it's like the junk food of motivation. It's like eating the candy bar. It's going to give you a burst of energy in the beginning, but it doesn't sustain you. Fear, threats, rewards, power, status, all of those external motivators that come from outside don't work, or they work in the short run. But even in the short run, they tend to limit your sense of well-being, your creativity, your innovation. They paralyze you. They paralyze some part of you.

Starting point is 00:38:30 So the skill of motivation is saying, okay, I know I need to lose the weight. I need to find my own reasons for losing the weight. Or I need to find my own reasons for doing this. Now, if you get in touch with, you love life, and it's a positive, and you're not doing it out of fear of, oh, I'm going to die, or, oh, my doctor told me I have to do this. That's called imposed motivation. And so whenever other people try to impose their values on us, that's how we tend to rebel.

Starting point is 00:39:02 We need to find our own values. We need to get in touch with our own reasons. So anytime you're doing it because someone has told you you have to, that tends to limit our success. But it would seem to me, I can think of people I know who have had a serious health event or a diagnosis, and it allowed them, it gave them whatever motivation they never had before to quit smoking, to lose weight, it works like crazy. If they, it depends on how you internalize it. So it's just like if we have a salesperson, for example, and we say, if you really sell

Starting point is 00:39:44 the most, you're going to go on this sales trip. And some salespeople internalize that as, oh, I can hardly wait to win that sales trip. I want to be the top. I want to be the highest ranking. And some other salesperson internalizes it as, that's interesting information. The sales trip would be nice. And the way I'm going to get to the sales trip is I'm going to focus on what's good for my clients. I'm going to focus on being a problem solver. I'm going to focus on being of service. The way you internalize that sales trip is going to determine how successful you are,

Starting point is 00:40:17 not only in the short run but in the long run. What we find when we look, for example, at really successful salespeople over time is that they don't do it for the prize or for the trip or for the ranking. They're doing it for deeper, more meaningful reasons. And guess what? The byproduct is they win. So the same thing is true when people are confronted with a fear-based reason for doing something. If you internalize it as fear, you will not succeed. If you internalize it as this is my chance to live life

Starting point is 00:40:51 or whatever your reason is, this is my chance to be here for my children, as long as you don't feel guilty about it. Because guilt can stimulate a shift in your motivation, but you can't stay guilty. You can't be optimally motivated with shame. It erodes your, like I said, your creativity, your innovation, your sense of well-being, your positive energy, your sustainable energy.

Starting point is 00:41:17 So we've, you know, we've been, gosh, I guess we've just been indoctrinated that we think we have to have discipline and willpower and fear and pressure. But what we now know is that those are suboptimal ways of being motivated that aren't nearly as powerful or will be as enduring as optimal reasons for being motivated. Okay, and what's the third thing? The third thing is competence. We need to see that we're learning and growing every day. So if we feel like we're making progress on something. So if I ask, you know, my husband who's on the diet, what did you learn? What did you learn this week?

Starting point is 00:41:58 What did you learn that's going to make you better at this? And he says, you know what I learned? This is really silly, but it's interesting is that red onions have less calories than white onions. So I'm going to just keep eating red onions. And it was really funny because he was just, you know, ordering a sandwich, do you have red onions? You know, omelet, do you have red onions? And so one day I asked him, I said, so did you ever learn why red onions have less calories than white onions? And he said, yeah, they've got less sugar. It's weird. This is, you know, now many, many months later, he still orders red onions because it's something he learned and that was intriguing.

Starting point is 00:42:36 You know, you think about a child learning to walk. The child keeps falling. We don't question why he falls. What we need to ask ourselves is, why does he keep getting up? And when he keeps getting up, he's not crying, he's not sad, he's not mad, he's joyful, he's laughing, and then he starts running before he can even walk. That's our nature. Our nature, and that's what these three psychological needs are, they're fundamental needs that are fundamental to our human nature. And so our nature is we love to learn.

Starting point is 00:43:11 We want to grow. We want to be more effective at everyday activities. We want to demonstrate skill over time. We want to grow and learn. It makes us happy. And so if we are not growing or learning or seeing progress, We want to grow and learn. It makes us happy. And so if we are not growing or learning or seeing progress, then that's when our motivation flags.

Starting point is 00:43:36 So we don't have to master something, but over time we need to see progress. So when these three psychological needs are operational, when we create these proactively in our life, we can do practically anything. It's amazing what you can overcome. You can stop bad habits. You can start good habits. You can sustain the positive energy necessary to accomplish whatever your goals are. So take a goal, let's take it out of diet, take it somewhere else, and apply those three things and show me how that would work. Okay.

Starting point is 00:44:12 Well, I hope you don't think this is a silly thing, but this is something that was really important to me because I travel so much for my work. I hate going through security at the airport, and it just caused me angst. It's like one day I'm standing at the airport and I'm just, my fists are clenched and I'm just, I'm just really tense. And I'm looking at all the lines thinking which one's moving fastest. I'm trying to get in the fastest line. And then I have one of those just moments where I go, what am I doing? You know, I teach this stuff and here I am so stressed out. And this is something I have to do multiple times, you know, in a week. And so I said to myself, okay, how do I shift my motivation for this? Because I don't have any choice.

Starting point is 00:44:49 I have to go through freaking security. You know, I don't have any choice. And then I thought, well, yeah, I do. I didn't have to go on this trip. I could have chosen to not travel. I could have chosen to stay home. I could choose to burst through security and get arrested. You know, I could choose to go through it and be miserable. I have choices. And I said, okay, I get it. I could choose to burst through security and get arrested. You know, I could choose to

Starting point is 00:45:05 go through it and be miserable. I have choices. And I said, okay, I get it. I have choices. So if I choose to go through security, can I go through it and find some connection? I already had competence. I'm pretty good. You know, I kind of have that down pat. So I had competence. And I said, how do I gain connection? And so I said, okay, first of all, I don't find a lot of meaning going through security. I was just in Amsterdam, and I started to throw my bottle of water away. And they go, oh, no, no, no, don't worry about that. You can go through with your bottle of water. I go, really? And they go, yeah, we found that doesn't really make a difference. And I go, everywhere else in the world, they make you throw your

Starting point is 00:45:41 bottle of water away. So I just think some of the rules are arbitrary, and I don't see a lot of meaning to it. So I thought, how do I find meaning going to security? And I thought, okay, if I can link, if I can align going through security with my values, okay, what are my values? And I just started going through my values, and I thought, learning. Learning is a huge value for me. I thought, what could I learn going to security? And I realized I could learn patience because I'm not a very patient person.

Starting point is 00:46:08 And I thought, okay, how do I learn patience? I get in a really bad line. So I got in a line that had a family in it. And this is a family, a young couple with a toddler and a newborn. I did not know you could go through security with that much stuff. And so I get behind them and they go, do you want to go ahead of us? And I go, no, no, I'm practicing patience. No, I didn't say that out loud, but you know, to myself, I go, no, thank you. And I'm watching them and it's literally painful. And so finally I said to them,

Starting point is 00:46:38 excuse me, would it help if I held your baby? And they said, oh, would you? And I said, yeah. So I'm holding this baby mic and I'm realizing I love holding babies. It's just, you know, it's just a joyful thing for me. And then we go to our gates and I'm going, wow, that was really fun. I got to hold a baby. And now I realize every time I go through security, I have an opportunity to live my values, to live my life purpose, and to maybe even enjoy it. And it's changed totally the energy that I have going through security. When you have choice, connection, and competence, it has the ability to literally change the energy that you use to act on whatever it is you're doing. Well, it really is interesting to hear more of the science of motivation.

Starting point is 00:47:28 We've all heard the stories, the motivational and inspirational stories of people. But how motivation works, I think, is what can really help people. Susan Fowler has been my guest. Her book is Master Your Motivation, Three Scientific Truths for Achieving Your Goals. And you'll find a link to her book in the show notes. Thank you for being here, Susan. Appreciate it. All right. Thank you, Mike. You know, the most commonplace women put their purse in a restaurant is to sling it over the back of the chair.

Starting point is 00:48:03 But keeping it behind you leaves it vulnerable to being taken by anybody who walks by, according to Kevin Coffey, who is a retired LAPD detective and founder of Corporate Travel Safety. Now, sometimes women will rest their bag on the floor next to their chair, but a thief can casually pick it up or kick it away while your eyes are turned. The safest spot for your handbag is on your lap, but that's not very practical. So instead, try this. You lift up one leg of the chair and loop the purse strap around it. So when you sit down, your purse is secure. You would have to get out of the chair for someone to get it. It's very easy, but few people do it.

Starting point is 00:48:46 And that is something you should know. You know, many of the people who listen to this podcast are followers or subscribers, meaning that whatever platform you listen to this on, there is a button somewhere that you can click on and then you follow this podcast. And what that means is the episodes are sent right to your device. So you don't have to come find new episodes when they're published. They find you. It's totally free, doesn't cost a dime, and that way you never miss an episode.

Starting point is 00:49:17 So follow Something You Should Know and tell your friends to do the same. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

Starting point is 00:49:48 She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions,

Starting point is 00:50:02 and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network.

Starting point is 00:50:24 At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Probability REALLY Works & Proven Ways to Master Motivation

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