The One You Feed - Mini Episode: The Elephant and The Rider

Episode Date: June 13, 2015

Mini Episode: The Elephant and The RiderOne of my favorite books is The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt.In it, Haidt poses several "Great Ideas" on happiness espoused by thinkers of the past - Plato, Buddha, Jesus and others - and examines them in the light of contemporary psychological research, extracting from them any lessons that still apply to our modern lives. Central to the book are the concepts of virtue, happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.He uses a metaphor of a rider on the back of an elephant in which the conscious mind is the rider and the unconscious mind is the elephant. The rider is unable to control the elephant by force: this explains many puzzles about our mental life, particularly why we have such trouble with weakness of will. Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement. Visit our website Some of our most popular interviews that you might also enjoy:Kino MacGregorStrand of OaksMike Scott of the WaterboysTodd Henry- author of Die EmptyRandy Scott HydeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallyknowreally.com

and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts hey everybody it's Eric from the one you Feed, back with another mini-episode. Before we get started, I want to say that our sponsor this week is Aloha. They make wonderful plant-based protein, daily greens mix, vitamins, a lot of different things. We're big fans.

You can visit aloha.com and get 20% off your first order by using the code GETFIT20. This will give you 20% off, some great products, and give you a chance to support the show. And now, into the mini-episode. What I want to talk about this week is a concept called the rider and the elephant. And the basic idea is that each of us have two sides. We have an emotional, automatic, sort of irrational side, which is the elephant. Then we have an analytical, controlled, and rational side, the rider. So the challenge you can imagine is that as riders, we come up with these ideas of what we think we should be doing,

the behaviors we want to change, the things we want to accomplish in our life. However, if the elephant isn't in alignment with that, then we're going to make small change temporarily at best. The key is to get the two of these entities working together. So there's a few different things, a few different ways you can do this. One of them that I like is the difference between feeling and wanting. And so what this is, is we have a tendency to tell ourselves we don't want to do something. For example, if I say I'm going to start a workout routine and the second day I'm sitting there in the morning telling myself, I don't want to go.

I don't want to go. I don't want to go. That's not really true because I have decided that I want to work out. I've thought about it. That more rational part of me wants to work out. However, I just don't feel like it in that moment. And that can help me often to get over that block because I'm reminding myself of what I want. And I'm appealing a little bit more to the elephant at that point. I'm trying to put some positive emotion into it at that point. The other thing is, this is why we

talk a lot about small successes. I think that one of the reasons that small successes, so if you're going to start working out, do it five minutes a day and do it every day, is that I think those small successes give us an emotional good feeling. We've done what we said we were going to do. Our rider and our elephant are in alignment. And I think that gives us a boost of well-being. And that boost of well-being will appeal to the elephant. It's more emotional and helps to turn the elephant in the direction that we want him to go. There's been a third enhancement to this analogy where the instructions are kind of direct the rider,

motivate the elephant. And then there's been a third enhancement which is called shape the path. And this is really about what's our environment like. We've all heard the example of, well, if you want to work out, set your gym clothes out in the morning, which sounds silly, but it works for a lot of people. The idea is that, back to the analogy, if we groom a clear path in front of the elephant, he's going to go down the path that's easiest to go down. So as

we're trying to make change in our life, we need to make the path we want to go down as easy as possible and make the paths we don't want to go down harder. So for example, if you are trying to eat better, don't have four boxes of Oreos in the house, right? Now, if you want to go eat an Oreo, you have made that the harder path to walk. So you can really work with your environment. We've had a couple shows where people talk about that environmental aspect, but really think about what you're trying to do and how you can make it easier for yourself. Another challenge that I find is that what looks like resistance is often just a lack of clarity. So if I say, I'm just going to eat better, I'm going to eat healthier, that does not work for me. There's

a bunch of reasons it doesn't work. But one of them is it's just very unclear. And so the elephant is not going to get behind that. And the rider can't really direct because he doesn't know what he's directing at that point. So the more specific that I can get on what it is that I am doing, or not doing, the better off I'm going to be. So always strive for clarity when it comes to figuring out the next steps or behavior change. Lack of clarity is always the enemy. And I find this again and again with the people that I'm working with in the coaching. And then the other one is we have a tendency for a lot of us, since we have started and stopped change programs so many times in our lives, that we don't really believe it's

possible. And we say things like, well, I'm the kind of person who, or I never finish anything I start. And that is, we think it's a people problem. We think it's our problem. And it's very demotivating to the elephant. Usually what appears to be a people problem is a situational issue. It's that we don't have the right strategies, we don't know how, we don't have the appropriate triggers in place. So there's a lot of different things there. But I find this metaphor to be helpful for me in thinking about if I want to make a change, I have to sort of get both my mental faculties engaged and my emotional faculties engaged. If I get both of those bought in, change becomes 100% easier. So that's what I've got for today. If you're interested in learning

more about the coaching programs we have, where we really spend a lot of time on this type of thing and other things, send an email to me, eric at oneufeed.net, and we can talk a little bit more about it. Otherwise, another episode is out Tuesday. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we can talk a little bit more about it. Otherwise, another episode is out Tuesday. Thanks for listening, everybody, and we'll talk soon. Bye. you