Something You Should Know - Why Perfectionists Aren’t So Perfect & How Advertisers Target You

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

As the weather gets warmer, people wear flip flops. While they may be easy and convenient, there are some problems with flip flops. This episode begins with some advice if flip flops are part of your warm weather wardrobe. https://abc7.com/archive/6266861/ Being a perfectionist may seem like a good thing. After all, if you are going to do something, why not do it right? Still, striving for perfection may not be wise in a world where “good enough” is just fine in many cases. Joining me to discuss why perfectionists are the way they are is clinical psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo author of the book, Better Than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love (https://amzn.to/32tNfDb). Hearing what she has to say could take a lot of pressure off of you.  Every day, there is a lot of advertising coming at you. That’s not necessarily bad, but a lot of that advertising doesn’t register with you at all. Joining me to discuss how advertising works is marketing expert Neale Martin author of the book Habit: The 95% of Behavior Marketers Ignore (https://amzn.to/2LGFc02). You’ll be surprised to discover how many ads you are exposed to every day and why some work - but most don’t. Many people mistake a food allergy for a food intolerance. There is a difference. Listen as I explain what the difference is and why it is important to know. http://allergicgirl.blogspot.com/2010/12/food-allergy-guidelines-dr-clifford.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Go to https://Therabody.com/Something to get your Therabody RecoveryAir today with 60-day money back guarantee and free shipping, there’s no risk! With Avast One, https://avast.com you can confidently take control of your online world without worrying about viruses, phishing attacks, ransomware, hacking attempts, & other cybercrimes! Sign up for your FREE Novo business checking account RIGHT NOW at https://Novo.co/Something and you'll get access to over $5,000 in perks and discounts! Discover matches all the cash back you’ve earned at the end of your first year! Learn more at https://discover.com/match Use SheetzGo on the Sheetz app! Just open the app, scan your snacks, tap your payment method and go!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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A lot of us are. Perfectionism is actually perpetuated by a fear of failure. People often say, I'm not a perfectionist, I don't think I'm perfect. No perfectionist thinks they're perfect. A perfectionist is so fearful of failure that they are going to do whatever they can to prevent it from happening. Also, if you or your kids wear flip-flops a lot, you need to hear something. And does advertising really work? It must, because there's so much of it. Well, a terrifying statistic is that advertisers pay for 4,500 messages per person per day

in this country. That's an advertisement every 14 seconds for every man, woman, and child, you know, breathing in the U.S. All this today on Something You Should Know. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats.

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gotten some very nice reviews about something you should know on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere. So thank you if you're one of the people who wrote one of those reviews. And if you haven't written us a review, one would be greatly appreciated. We start today with flip-flops. In warmer weather, a lot of people prefer to wear flip-flops instead of shoes. And while they're easy, and in some cases, wearing them is better than going barefoot, flip-flops instead of shoes. And while they're easy, and in some cases wearing them is better than going barefoot, flip-flops come with their own set of problems, particularly if you wear them a lot. In fact, today, a lot of kids and teens complain about aching feet, the kind of pain you would normally associate with older or overweight people.

And you can often trace that pain back to wearing flip-flops. According to podiatrist Mary Beth Crane, flip-flops force you to grip with your toes and walk with an unnatural gait, and they generally don't supply much in the way of arch support. The results of all of that can be sore arches and heels, inflamed Achilles tendons, heel calluses from the slapping, hammer toes from the gripping, and fungal infections between the toes. For those people who simply cannot go without wearing flip-flops,

the kind that do have arch support and contoured soles are the best choice. It is best to try to avoid wearing the same pair of flip-flops every day, and it's not a good idea for flip-flops to be your primary shoe. Real shoes are better for your feet, and that is something you should know. Perfectionist. It's one of those words that seems to have some good qualities and some bad qualities. I mean, if you're going to do something, why not do it right? Why not do it perfectly?

On the other hand, the world isn't perfect. We aren't perfect. And having that standard that everything must be perfect can be a heavy burden to bear. Whether you are or are not a perfectionist, or maybe you even know a perfectionist, I think you're going to enjoy hearing clinical psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo and what she has to say on the topic of perfectionism. She is author of the book, Better Than Perfect, Seven Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a life you love. Hi, Elizabeth.

Welcome. Thanks so much. It's great to be here. So what is perfectionism? How do you define it? What's your definition? So a lot of people think of perfectionism or those people who have a really neat junk drawer where everything is categorized.

But the way that I view perfectionism is much broader. It's an all or nothing mentality. Something's perfect or it's a failure. It's right or it's wrong. It's the way that I think things should be or wrong. And that all or nothing mentality can really get in the way of our relationships, of our health, and of our functioning in the world. Because we expect so much. Because we expect so much of others and ourselves. So, you know, a lot of people say to me, well, I'm not really a perfectionist.

I know someone who is, but it's not me. And then I ask them to take the Better Than Perfect quiz. And when they do that, they are often amazed at how much perfectionism does play a role in their lives. As a matter of fact, when Better Than Perfect first came out, I did a media tour in one of the interviews on the Today Show. And I had about five producers who were working on the segment. And the head producer pulled me aside and said, just so you know, we all, except for one person, denied being perfectionists until we took your quiz. And all of us scored really high. So a lot of times it's not even something that we are aware of because our society is very all or nothing. We are very, you made one mistake, so you're a failure kind of mentality. And so a lot

of us have internalized that. So help me figure out if I'm a perfectionist or not. What's in that quiz? Help me know. Well, I mean, everything from, you think in terms of all or nothing. I had one cookie and messed up my diet. I might as well have the whole plate. You know, that kind of all or nothing. Are you a procrastinator? So people who put things off

tend to be perfectionistic. Oh, it's going to be boring. It's going to be hard. I don't know how to do it, so I'm not even going to start. Maybe the perfectionism comes in your work. You made a presentation, you had a conversation with someone, and all you can focus on is that one little mistake that you made.

You replay it over and over and over, what you should have said, what you shouldn't have said. I call that pressing on a bruise. It doesn't feel good. But a lot of times we do that to replay it. That's perfectionistic thinking. So what's the difference, though, between being a perfectionist and just wanting to do well and wanting to learn from your mistakes and wanting to get it right the next time? And where's the line? So that second thing that you just described is what I call being better than perfect. A perfectionist thinks in all or nothing terms.

Again, something's perfect or it's a failure, but then they take it one step further. If it's a failure, then I'm a failure. They personalize their failures. They personalize their mistakes. And perfectionism is actually perpetuated, a lot of alliteration there, is actually perpetuated by a fear of failure. People often say, oh, I'm not a perfectionist. I don't think I'm perfect. No perfectionist thinks they're perfect. A perfectionist is so fearful of failure that they are going to do whatever

they can to prevent it from happening. A lot of this, I would imagine, has to do with that little voice inside your head that is constantly telling you, not only do you need to be perfect, but in fact, you suck at everything. Yes. It's that inner critic. And here's the thing. I don't think everyone realizes that every single person has an inner critic. Sometimes it may be silent. Sometimes it may be screaming in your ear, but we all have an inner critic. And the thing about perfectionism or inner critic is when we are at a low level of stress, when things are going pretty well, that inner critic isn't so loud. Or even if they're speaking to us, we can rationalize it. Oh, come on. I don't suck. I just made a mistake. We can keep that open mentality.

But as stress levels start to increase, that's when we go from seeing everything, putting everything in perspective, to focusing on the negative. In psychology, we call it negative filtering. So focusing almost exclusively on the negatives. And this is why someone, a very rational individual, can say, no, no, I know it doesn't have to be perfect. It's okay if I made a mistake. But when stress levels are high, we personalize it. It becomes more overbearing for us. Do you find that people are perfectionist in one or a few areas of their life

and maybe not so much in others? Yes, definitely. There are definitely areas. For some people, it's their health. So maybe they're very regimented with their eating or their workouts. For some people, it's their work. So they're very meticulous. They're the micromanagers. So even if they have delegated a responsibility off to someone else, they are going to double check and triple check and quadruple check to make sure that those people are doing it. But they may not

have that mentality in other areas of their life. And it really goes into our self-worth. How we view ourselves, our worthiness, plays an impact on every single interaction and every single interpretation that we have. And I like to differentiate between conditional self-worth based on conditions and unconditional self-worth. So conditional self-worth means I believe in myself if. I believe in myself if people agree with me. I believe in myself if I look a certain way, if I have a certain amount of money. I believe in myself if I do things correctly. And that conditional self-worth is very taxing because you're constantly scanning the environment

to determine how you're going to view yourself. And when stress levels get higher, we tend to pull into that more, be more conditional in terms of our self-worth. The goal is unconditional self-worth. And unconditional self-worth means you believe in yourself regardless. Not in a narcissistic, I'm better than everyone else sort of way. That's actually very conditional self-worth. But unconditional self-worth is really based on your values

and your core and who you are so that you feel good about yourself and you know you can keep getting better. And that way, mistakes aren't viewed as personal problems with who you are, but just, okay, that was an error. I really messed up there. How can I move on from this? We're talking about perfectionism, and my guest

is Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo. She is author of the book Better Than Perfect, Seven Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. 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. 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. And he spoke 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. So Elizabeth, it would seem to me that people, it's human nature for people to make comparisons. And people need evidence that, you know, if you and your brother start out the same and he's doing really great and everything you try sucks, it's hard to get up and go, I can unconditionally love myself because you now have evidence that you're not doing as well as maybe you should be or maybe you thought you'd be, that the evidence is flying right in your face that you've failed. Again, it's the difference between failed and failure. Did I not be as successful as I wanted to be?

Yeah, but that doesn't mean that I suck as a human being. And you're right. As a society, we base our worth on conditions. I mean, look at social media. I feel good about myself if I get at least 100 likes or comparing ourselves to other people, but all of that is very conditional. And just because it is common in our society doesn't mean it's very helpful. The goal is to have unconditional self-worth.

You'd be like, I'm good regardless. And goal is to have unconditional self-worth. You'd be like, I'm good regardless. And when you have that unconditional self-worth, it actually doesn't make you lazy and sitting around eating bonbons. I'm okay, so I don't have to do anything. It allows us to be our true selves. It allows us to really pursue our passions and our purpose in a more meaningful way. Yeah, but it's one thing that I understand, you know, getting likes or not getting likes on Facebook.

But if you've lost your job, you can't find another one, you can't pay the mortgage, you can't buy your kids stuff. This isn't likes on Facebook. This is real life stuff that hurts and is hard to pop through and say, but I love myself. I'm still doing great. Because you're not doing great. Well, that's two different things. Love myself internally, doing great externally. I work a lot with people who are, who've lost their job.

And that is an unbelievable blow to a lot of people. I mean, a lot of people define themselves. Who am I? I am my job. And so when you lose that, there's a whole sense of loss of identity. I am nothing. But when you can really look and cultivate who you are on something much deeper, it's not that those external events don't hurt.

It's not that they aren't difficult. But it's not an attack. It's not an attack on who you are as an individual. And if you can have unconditional self-worth when going through something like that, then what happens is you're not saying, it's not being delusional. My life's great even though I can't pay the mortgage and my kids are mad at me because I can't buy them presents. It's really, okay, I believe in myself. I'm going through a tough time right now.

I know I can get through this even though it sucks right now. Yeah. I mean, because part of life, you know, we know this, life is up and down. And so I always tell my clients, if you're feeling, and if you're really, really down spot, if you wait long enough, things will get better. Unfortunately, the same can be said when we're kind of on cloud nine, that, you know, inevitably something is going to happen. When we look at the characteristics of true success, things like resiliency, perseverance,

grit are really important. And those really require a belief in yourself. Again, not in a delusional way, everything's perfect, but in the sense of, okay, it sucks now and I can get through this. I can handle this. Maybe not by myself. Maybe I need to get some help in terms of coaching or help in terms of social support or whatever it is, that I can do this. So, Elizabeth, what do you think the difference is between those people who look at adversity and see the silver lining and know things will get better, and those people who say, I suck, my life sucks, I can't deal with this, and really have a problem? Well, yeah, I want to take a step back, because I will tell you, usually people, even those people in that first group who are the

resilient ones, fall back into, I suck, I can never do this. So it's not in all or nothing things. A lot of times we're dancing between those two. But one of the key characteristics and the differentiators is that sense of self-worth. Am I worth it? Because if we base our worth on conditions, I'm only good if I have a job, I'm only good and believe in myself if my kids, you know, I can pay for their presents or I can pay for the mortgage, then when you don't have that, it can really spiral into, you know,

anything from, you know, just feeling down to clinical depression where you truly can't. You can't get out of bed, you can't put in your job application. And, you know, a lot of times that is, that's what happens. So the goal then is to say, how can I feel good about myself? How can I take a step and one step in the right direction to get me back on this road? And what is that? What is that one step do you think that that's easy for people to do that might start to give them that sense of control and sense that they're doing better? Well, it's a different step for everyone.

I will say one of the things to remember when you're in a really tough place and it feels like you have no control is to look at, I talk about there are two different strategies to dealing with a problem. There's problem focused, changing the problem itself. So if you're unemployed, it's getting a job. But then there's emotion focused, which is changing your emotional reaction to it. And so, and some of that is that what we call cognitive restriction, changing what you're saying to yourself. But another part of that is what we call cognitive restriction, changing what you're saying to yourself. But another part of that is stress management. So we talked before about how when our stress level is high, we tend to think in more negative ways. So if you think of your stress level as going from zero to 10, zero is no stress at all.

You just got off the massage table. Life is great. 10 is the most stressed you've ever been. If you're feeling angry, you're screaming. If you're feeling anxious, you're screaming. If you're feeling anxious, you're having a panic attack. Usually, luckily, we're not at 10 a whole lot of time and we're not at zero a whole lot of time. We're somewhere in between. When we're at a seven or higher, I call it the red zone. We aren't thinking rationally. It seems like we are, but we're not. We go from using our frontal lobe in lower levels of stress,

which is this beautiful structure in the front part of our brain that differentiates us from other animals. It allows us to engage in problem solving and executive functioning and perspective taking and seeing all different perspectives. When our stress level goes up into that red zone, seven and higher, we move from using that frontal lobe to using our limbic system. Limbic system is a part of your brain that is emotionally based. So I feel lousy, so my life sucks. And then you can only focus on that. So one of the things to do, which sounds ridiculous maybe to some, is to take steps to reduce that stress to get you out of the red zone.

I always tell my coaching clients, if your stress level is higher than a 7, 7 or higher, don't let anything out of your mouth because that's when you say something that you're going to later regret. And don't put anything in your mouth because that's when Ben and Jerry's therapy tends to happen. But if you are at a 7 or higher, what we have to realize is you are not thinking straight. So even if you're dealing with the death of a loved one, even if you're dealing with a horrible diagnosis, you want to say, what is my stress level and what can I do to get it out of the red zone? Because that is when your brain will start to function in a way where you could start to make positive changes. So what does that mean? Well, I mean, you can do deep breathing. You can do relaxation. Usually when you're that elevated at stress, it's hard to do. The best thing to do is to change your state,

to move your body, jumping on a bed, going for a walk, dancing to a song that you like, anything that you can do to move your body, jumping jacks, doing two minutes of pushups, whatever it is. While it may seem like, how is this going to help me get a job? What it does is it gets your brain functioning in a way that you can start to problem solve and to take those problem-focused approaches to change the situation. Lastly, when it comes to perfectionism, where does it typically come from? Do you find that perfectionists are the children of perfectionists? Or where does that behavior begin, typically?

It typically begins in our childhood, and it could be, you know, when you look at perfectionists, sometimes it's the parents who are the perfectionists without realizing they were the perfectionists. So, ugh, you got a 97, what happened to the other three points? Or it could be, oh, you got an A, I'm so proud of you. And then the child starts to associate, you know, getting the 100% or doing really well with their self-worth. And so they strive to keep going for that. I have to be perfect in order for people to love me. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, and parents do that with the best of intentions, and yet it can backfire. And that's what's so important to remember.

They do it with the best intentions. I can't tell you how many clients I've had who talk about parents, especially dads. I'm just thinking of a couple male clients with whom I've worked, and their fathers are really hard on them. And we know they were jerks, but they were usually using harsher words than that about their father. But when you take a step back and look at why was your parent acting like that, usually your parent just wanted what was best for you. They wanted you to be successful.

They wanted you to be maybe more successful than they were. Their approach may not have been the best in terms of motivating you to do that, but if you can take a step back and really reinterpret what they wanted from you, it can help change your mindset. So, you know, we talked about better than perfect, and I have a book called Better Than Perfect, and there's seven strategies in there. The first one is called Postmortem Your Past, which means look at your past. When did this perfectionism develop? What rules did you come up with for you? I have to be perfect in order for people to like me. I can't make a mistake. You know, I had to be the number one on the sports team in order

to be successful, in order for my parents to give me a thumbs up or even give me any attention at all. Look at those events and see how you can reinterpret them to be more helpful to you. Good advice. Almost perfect. Beyond perfect. Clinical psychologist Dr. Elizabeth Lombardo has been my guest. She's author of the book, Better Than Perfect, Seven Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love. And there is a direct link to her book on Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Elizabeth. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate being here. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

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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. As you have no doubt noticed, some advertising seems to work. Some seems to work really well, but a lot of advertising fails. So with all the thousands of advertising and marketing messages you're exposed to, why is it you respond to some of that advertising, but not to other advertising? Well, it may have a lot to do with human behavior, behavior that a lot of advertising people don't understand. That's according to Neil Martin, who has been examining this for a long time.

He is a consultant and author of the book, Habit, the 95% of behavior marketers ignore. Hey Neil, welcome. So start with the premise here of why so much advertising and marketing doesn't work. As a PhD in marketing I was very frustrated with how much of marketing theory wasn't working in the real world. And when I uncovered this line of research from neuroscience that most of our behavior is unconscious, it explained a lot

of what I had discovered in terms of why satisfied customers leave, why most new products fail, and why it's very hard to translate advertising into revenues. Which so often happens, and that's one of the criticisms of so much advertising is that it costs more to create and buy the advertising than the company ever makes back in dollars because it's so ineffective. Well, a terrifying statistic is that advertisers pay for 4,500 messages per person per day in this country. That's an advertisement every 14 seconds, every 14 seconds for every man, woman, and child, you know, breathing in the U.S. And what we do as a survival mechanism is we learn to ignore it. And in large part,

that is an adaptive mechanism that the brain does to filter out irrelevant information. And so advertisers are kind of in that nightmare scenario where they have to yell louder and louder to get noticed. And as soon as they yell louder, we just ratchet up what our filters screen out. And that becomes this really wasted amount of revenue. And I think advertisers in the U.S. spend about $150 billion a year on advertising, and they know a large percentage of that is wasted. And it's not that it's totally ineffective. It's that they don't know what part's working and what part isn't.

And so how do you figure that out? How do you know what parts are working and what parts aren't? Well, I think that the big thing to do is to realize that you have to connect with people emotionally. And that means you have to tell a really well-integrated story about yourself. And you have to make that message consistent so that you create a brand position inside of customers' minds. Because what the customer wants to do is to simplify his life or to simplify her life. And so if she's shopping, then she wants to make her decisions as quickly as possible. She doesn't want to go through a massive evaluation process. If you're going online to buy headphones or speakers or whatever.

You don't want to spend 10, 15 hours in research. What you want to do is make a good decision as quickly as possible. When advertising facilitates us making good decisions quickly, then it's helping us. But what happened is because so much of advertising is self-serving that we have a tendency to discount it, to disbelieve it, and therefore it's not helping us make decisions. What is it that advertisers are doing that, as you describe it, is self-serving, and what would be a better way to do it? Well, the big thing is to recognize that word of mouth is much more powerful than advertising,

because if I tell somebody this is a good movie, I don't get anything if they go to it. So obviously, if you're trying to sell me something, you're going to derive revenue. So that's what's in it for you, but what's in it for me? When an advertisement actually helps me by educating me to make a better decision. So the way an advertiser can do this is to say, I'm not the best insurance company for everybody, but if you are a young couple just starting out, we're the perfect company for you. Because what you've just done is you've just told lots of people, don't waste your time coming to me. So you're helping me.

You're saying, don't waste your time on me. I'm not for you. But then you're also creating credibility with that young couple because you're saying, I have designed a package just for where you are in life. And that's where I think that a lot of companies don't ever want to say no to customers because they don't want to lose potential sales. But those companies that recognize and develop the discipline to say, you know, these are the customers we serve well, these are going to be our customers, and to focus on serving those well as opposed to trying to serve a lot of people not so well.

Well, if what you say is true, why do you suppose there is so much misinformation then within the advertising and marketing community about what works and what doesn't work? The problem is that a lot of marketing theory, which came out of the 1960s, was based on a misunderstanding of how people really make decisions. And I had the privilege of working with some of these pioneers, and they were doing the best they could at that time with kind of the very beginnings of cognitive science. But what we've learned in the last 15 years about the way the brain works

is really revolutionary and eclipses everything we knew before. With the whole idea of understanding that what you're trying to do is to work with the unconscious mind of the customer because that's the part of the mind that's making most of the decisions. But what does all this have to do with habit? I mean, that's the name of your book, Habit, but I'm not seeing the connection yet. Well, that's the thing about it is that when you look at this idea of habits, what you discover out of pioneering work from MIT and people at UCLA and Duke who spent some time with me,

is that there's a part of your brain that develops habits. And you can think about it like getting in your car, fastening your seatbelt, backing down the driveway, making coffee, all of the daily routine things that you do that are so automatic that don't require conscious intervention. And you've driven down the road at some point and not been able to remember the last five miles you drove, right? And you kind of go, how did I do that?

How did I navigate this car five miles with no conscious intervention? But that's the norm. That's the way you shop. That's the way you do most things. And that we are not aware of it because, you know, our conscious brain can't access those processes. And there's a part of your brain in the limbic region that develops these habits. And once a habit is encoded, it's much more powerful than your intentions.

That's why most of us are overweight. I think 60% of Americans are overweight. And if you go up to ask them, they tell you, I want to lose weight, but they don't. And some people think they're weak and they're bad and all these other kind of things. But the reality is they are, you know, really under the sway of these very powerful, unconscious habits that, you know, is operating faster and quicker than their conscious brain is even aware. But some people do break out of those habits and they do lose weight. Well, and that do lose weight. Well, and that's the key. I mean, that when you look at how do you do that, and a large part of this

is to understand that when you create a habit, you're strengthening these neural connections and these very powerful places in your brain. And once those connections are set, they don't go away. So if you don't reinforce it, it can become dormant. It's like somebody who's quit smoking and then maybe two or three years, there's just something happens, and they just reach for a cigarette. And if they start that smoking again, they are right back in the throes of that addiction. So the way to realize, you know, how do I change a habit is to recognize that you have to overlay another habit on top of the old one, and that has to become stronger.

And so if you're trying to lose weight, or if you're trying to, you know, if you're trying to break through a competitor's hold on a market, what you have to do is to really start working first with the conscious mind to say, this is what I'm trying to do. And then you have to proactively start developing the same kinds of habits, which are formed through repetition over time. And, you know, so one example for the losing weight thing as a metaphor for the business side of this. But, you know, you can, you know, wait until you're hungry, you know, when you're hungry to make sure that you have,

that the good food is just as easy to get to as the bad food. I mean, a candy bar is so easy to eat. You know, make sure that you have cut up some turkey the day before that you can have and take with you, or that you have some carrots or something that are in a bag with you. And that when you have that cue that would normally get you to look for, go to the vending machine, that you have something there and then consciously you start off eating that thing and it's not going to fulfill you the way a candy bar would or potato chips. But over time, that's going to become, that's going to taste good to you.

And over time, that's going to be as natural to you as potato chips. And then when you go to try to eat a potato chip, it's too salty. Or if you try to eat a candy bar, it's too sweet because over time, your taste buds have gone through that kind of change. And it's the same thing if you're trying to take a customer away from a competitor, to realize that's a very hard thing to do because they have these entrenched habits. And you have to kind of dislodge that habit, elevate it to conscious awareness, and then sort of make an appeal to the conscious mind when you've broken the habit for that time period.

And that's that short window of opportunity you have to win them over. Well, one great example I know you talk about, and it's appropriate because this is a podcast, is the original iPod when Apple came out with it. You know, when they started with the iPod, that section of the music industry was very small, maybe $100 million total. And they developed a player that was so intuitive, that worked so well with the way your unconscious brain works, so that you could give an iPod to somebody, not tell them how to use it, and within five or ten minutes they'd figured it out. But the big thing was iTunes. As soon as you plug a CD into your

computer, iTunes launches, takes all your music in, and then syncs it to that device. So you developed an incredibly powerful habit around listening to music this way. And to the point now where most kids, the idea of buying a CD is just bizarre. I mean, why would you buy a CD? And why would you have a CD player? Why would you want to be limited to, you know, 10 or 12 songs? And to the point where they own that category, and I think they've become the number one music retailer in the United States now, because they've captured our habits. But don't you think that people form habits around different kinds of things? I mean, in the case of the iPod, it was so intuitive that people quickly formed a habit around that that became their way of consuming music. But if you're an airline, it's going to be hard to get people to develop a habit of buying tickets on your airline

when so many people have already developed the habit and continue to have the habit of buying the cheapest ticket regardless of what airline? Well, you've asked two or three really good questions there. And, you know, it's not like your conscious brain is on vacation and can't be brought into play. A lot of decisions that we've made over and over were originally made consciously and then became unconscious. You chose your dry cleaner for a reason. You chose your grocery store for a reason. But most of those reasons are normally about convenience. Even something that's a very highly involved purchase, like an automobile or a house, you're still basically, most people are trying to simplify that decision

because we get overwhelmed with the amount of details, with the amount of information. And so we're always trying to simplify that decision. So the house may come down to, boy, I love the master. The master bedroom is just great. Reality is, of course, it had to be in the right school district. It had to be in the right price range. So there was a lot of these kind of course, it had to be in the right school district. It had to be in the right price range. It had to have, you know, so there was a lot of these kind of, you know, screens, but then there's

this emotional reaction to that one thing that makes that house stand out over all the others. Now, you talk about, like, the airlines thing. It's the same kind of thing. If I'm an infrequent flyer, but how do I get that ticket? Do I go to Orbitz? Do I go to United? And if I

go to United, then United owns me. I mean, they have a really good chance of selling me that ticket, but if I go to Orbitz? Do I go to United? And if I go to United, then United owns me. I mean, they have a really good chance of selling me that ticket. But if I go to Orbitz, then it might be Delta. It might be American. Is my priority around what time I fly? Or is it around price? Or is it around frequent flyer programs? And so it immediately gets complicated again. And so what we're trying to do, if we fly a lot, then we're going to try to really simplify that. And we're going to say, I'm going to use this website each time because I know how this website behaves. I don't have to relearn it. Does that make sense?

Yeah, sure. And it seems, from what you're saying, is that the more we have to do something, the more flights we have to book, the more trips to the grocery store we have to take, the simpler we want it. And it's all about this idea of being, you know, cognitively efficient, and that we don't have, and we are inundated with information. We have so much information that we are completely overwhelmed. And the problem a lot of companies have is that they have, like, really smart engineers who work with a product or an idea for a long time, and it becomes very, very natural to them.

But it's very unnatural to the user. And this is in business-to-business sales. And what you consistently see is the companies that make it easy and make it convenient are the ones that win and not necessarily ones with the best product. Aren't there products, though, where it just doesn't really matter? You know, it's a commodity. A pencil is a pencil. You need to buy pencils, you buy a pencil. Yeah, and when you talk about commodities,

but it comes back to the same thing, that if you make it, why do you buy the pencil you buy? Well, and let me be real clear about this. I mean, the whole point of this is to really try to help companies rethink how they approach their customers. What I'm trying to get companies to do is to think more about behavior than attitude. When I was interviewing some folks up at Duke who had been studying this, and they were really startled to discover that, you know, habits went out over intentions. If you have a strong habit and you have an intention,

most of your habits are going to be in line with your intentions. That's why they formed. But let's say that you have a very strong habit, you know, to eating chocolate or whatever, and then you have this intention of wanting to get in shape, that you can bring your mental energy to bear and you can be good for a couple of days, but then most people lapse back. And that's that power of the habit. And so if you're talking about is there a specific product that is immune to this? I think anything that you buy repeatedly, your brain is going to try to make that an automatic process. When something's novel, then the conscious brain gets involved to solve the problem.

What about products or services or things that are not habitual? I mean, say you're going to take a cruise. You probably don't do that very often. It's a very intentional thing to sit down and read the brochures and go online and check out the websites. I mean, there's nothing habitual about it. Absolutely. And what we get into, though, is, and that's a beautiful example. It's a beautiful example. So something I haven't done before, it's a cruise. So I get a brochure. Now, do I start looking online? How do you pick which cruise line to go with? Are you going to

shop based on price? Are you going to shop based on convenience? Are you going to shop based on... And it's a very cognitive decision, but there's another aspect of habits, which we call heuristics. And heuristics are like little rules that we develop over time, and most of them are sort of unconscious. So you go in and your favorite cereal's on sale, so you stock up. You know, you go in, I shop at a grocery store that has these little, you know, sale stickers under things. And I sort of, you know, shop the store based on those yellow stickers because it could be a huge, you know, price difference. Now, it's not like, can I not afford a $5 box of cereal? But the cereal manufacturer has trained me that I should only buy their cereal when it's on sale because it's on sale for like $3. So it's a huge savings.

And so that's the whole idea of developing this rule in your brain. So when you come to something that's novel, like a cruise, it doesn't mean that you're not using some of your heur brain. So when you come to something that's novel, like a cruise, it doesn't mean that you're not using some of your heuristics. So you may look at the different prices for the size of rooms. So you have a cabin, then you have a cabin that has a window, then you have a cabin that has a porch, and then you have a cabin that's got a suite all the way up. And so most of us kind of have, if we look at like five choices, some of us are going to say, I'm going to pick the third most expensive one because that's the one where I'm probably going to get most of what I really want

without the stuff that just makes it too expensive. While other people would go, you know what, I'm not going to spend that much time in my stateroom doing whatever, so I'm going to get the cheapest one. And they'll just think about a price rule. And so it's not that your conscious brain's not involved, but that your conscious brain is still leaning on a lot of these unconscious rules that you've developed over the years to help you kind of deal with complexity. And since everybody has different rules and different criteria, if you were someone who makes a product and you just say, we're the best for everybody, you're missing the

point. Absolutely. I mean, I think if you create a position in somebody's mind that you're the best at what you do, I think that's fine as long as it's fairly narrowly focused, but to say like, you know, we're the best, you know, you can think through like business hotels. You know, why would you stay at Marriott versus Sheraton? Is it because the beds are more comfortable? You know, is it because, you know, over time, it's basically, you know, if they've got hotels in my cities and I can kind of really simplify my booking process, I know that website, then, you know, I get on their frequent point system and, you know, and I just get locked in because I don't want to have to think about it every time I do it.

Aren't there a lot of people, though, who really like variety? And so maybe you don't want to stay in the same hotel every time you go on business, even though you could. Maybe you want to go on a different cruise line just to see what they have to offer. And so trying to sell that person, it would seem, to come back to your cruise ship or come back to your hotel, that's a tough sell. And it does seem like an awful lot of people like that variety. When we look at variety, most of us are variety-seeking about some things, but we're not all the time variety-seeking. So in other words, I may be out there, I really like dark chocolate. So I might be really interested in trying out different things with dark chocolate.

But I have no interest in trying new coffee. I've got my coffee. I'm fine. There's no novelty-seeking in my coffee pursuit. The big thing to recognize is that when people do something which is a variety-seeking thing, they very rarely make the thing that they're going after for variety into a habit. And so I may get a lot of people who will try something, but that doesn't mean I've been successful. I think the best example of this is Zima.

Zima had an unbelievably successful advertising campaign that got more than 50% of people who drank alcohol in the U.S. tried Zima once. Very few people tried it the second time. And so they were incredibly successful at getting us to try it, but horrible about making that into a routine purchase. Well, it's interesting how people think and how they make choices and compare that to how marketers and advertisers think people think and make choices and how sometimes that all comes together and sometimes it doesn't. Neil Martin has been my guest. He is a marketer, a consultant, and author of the book Habit, the 95% of behavior marketers ignore. And you will find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Neil. If you suddenly develop a reaction to a certain food or

beverage, you're probably intolerant, not allergic. Allergies generally start in childhood and might even disappear over time. They involve the immune system and are generally more serious. Food intolerances tend to increase with age and are more of a digestive matter, and they're usually just a nuisance. The most common food intolerances are lactose, gluten, and MSG. A lot of people develop intolerance for sulfites, too. That's a compound found in beer, wine, and champagne, and is sometimes added to dried fruit or canned foods as a preservative. If any of those things make you itchy,

congested, or swollen, you're probably intolerant. And that is something you should know. Please help us keep the momentum going as we continue to grow our audience and help us out by telling someone you know about this podcast. I'm Mike Kerr Brothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hey, hey, are you ready for some real talk and some fantastic laughs? Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up

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