'I Have To' vs 'I Get To'

It's easy to forget that we just aren't as rational as we think we are. That was, in many ways, the enormous contribution made by Daniel Kahnemann's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. In it, Kahnemann outlines how our decision making is flawed, often because while we think our rational, slow-thinking side (System 2) is in charge, in fact System 1, our fast-thinking instinctual side is running the show. 

Jonathan Haidt makes similar points - but focused on our morality and politics - in The Righteous Mind, his influential book about how our internal politics work. In his metaphor, our instincts are like an elephant and our rational mind like someone riding the elephant. Whilst the rider has some impact on the path ahead, if the elephant wants to go a certain way, it goes that way. And there's just not much the rational mind (rider) can do about it. One of my favourite examples of how this works from Haidt is that when confronted with a dessert menu, the rider can resist temptation. But once the elephant sees the cheesecake in front of it, resisting is a different matter altogether. 

And, let's pause to note, it's vital that System 1/The Elephant is in charge; it's vital that we mainly live in this instinctual way. We couldn't function if we had to think rationally about everything (imagine having to pause to think abiut every word you say or type, or form every sentence in your kind before speaking). Similarly, those people who lose function in the 'elephant' part of their brain simply can't live life: they find simple decisions like which coffee shop to go to impossible to make based on a purely rational approach. There just is often just no rational answer to that question in a city with tens or even hundreds of choices. No amount of pros and cons lists will help.

The reason this is in my mind today is that as we brought our work to a close, one of my clients recently referenced the power of a short video I shared with her, from the author Dan Pink. 

In it, Pink offers some simple advice to - in my mind - give you a little extra control over your elephant instincts. Pink talks abiut changing the language you use towards something that you are finding difficult to do: in his example, exercise. Most of us, upon waking up in the morning, find our thoughts saying something like 'I have to exercise this morning'. Try saying that out loud now, if you can. 

Then try Pink's alternative, 'I get to exercise this morning'. For many people, this instantly flips the energy around exercise.

It is a great way to encourage your elephant and stop it resisting so much, and it shifts you into a space of gratitude. A gratitude practice is - a client once told me - one of the proven ways to be happier. 'I get to' takes you (or at least it takes me) into a place something along the lines of: how lucky I am to get to run alongside this river and to be healthy enough to do that. I get to exercise. How lucky to have a gym here, close to my house, the ability to make time to get there and the money to afford a membership. I get to go to the gym.

These are small distinctions and they are big. Creating change in your life is only a tiny part about knowing what to do. Mostly it's about knowing how to make yourself - and in particular the elephant part of you - do it. Playing with the language of your thoughts is an important tool for any elephant rider who wants to create change for themselves. 

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PS I'm currently in the enrolment process for my group programme for coaches, The Coach's Journey. If you, or someone you know, is a coach who wants to take their business to a new level in 2020, then I'd love to hear from them. It all starts with a chance - free of charge, as a gift from me - to experience group coaching with me. The opportunities to do that are coming up at the end of the month. You can read all about it here.

This is part of a series of pieces, written in about twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then posted online. The first three years of those posts will be published (this year) as a book entitled: I Wrote This Book in 12 Minutes. Sign up to my mailing list here to hear from me about my writing, that book and other things, or read my other posts here.

You can read more about my work as a coach at www.robbieswalecoaching.com.