Category: Josh Feingold Blog

I have talked about how often times, the most limiting factor to our own success is ourselves, either due to fear of trying or lack of imagination of what we can accomplish.

What is important to note, is that this extends beyond the individual to society as well, since society is nothing other than a group of individual people.

What this means from a practical perspective is that there are societal beliefs that are promulgates within each society, that are taken for granted, and assumed to be true by the society, even if as we have seen at an individual level, these beliefs are baseless.

One key problem with baseless beliefs is that they create internal angst due to the fact that there is a divergence between what we know to be true (that the belief is baseless) and what we tell our self is true (that the belief is fact). This dissonance, makes members of that group doubt themselves and their judgement, leading to a downward spiral.

I think that if we look at the current state of Woman’s Liberation or Affirmative Action programs, we can well see where groups of people have ended up promulgating their own false beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong, when these groups started, they added tremendous value breaking barriers and stereotypes.  However, over time, the groups began defining themselves by the self-talk of the group, resulting in a self-oppression.

It is the wise TV Writer who knows when to end their show before ratings start going down.  However, this talent is seldom seen with societal groups.  No one ever stands up and says, “Look we did it.  We accomplished equality. We have succeeded.”

That is sad.

 

When I was in college someone* I looked up to asked me what do people want more than anything else?  Of course, I am sure I answered some trite thing, to which he replied, “Options.”

This lesson has probably been one of the truer things that I found in life, both as a father, a salesman, and for my own self.

As a father, I see how much better my young children reply to the question of “Would you like to go to camp in your pajamas or would you like to get dressed first”, when telling them to get dressed would only result in stone walling.

As a salesman, I have seen how by giving someone two applicants for a position makes them EXCITED about the candidate they select instead of just giving them the one candidate that I really liked in the first place.

For myself, I see it when, they offer me which Vodka I prefer in my cocktail, which means I was involved in prepping my overpriced drink – and enjoy it more than I might otherwise have.

I noticed this can serve as a great therapeutic option as well, that was used by Milton Erickson:

I usually say, “There are a number of things that you don’t want me to know about, that you don’t want to tell me. There are a lot of things about yourself that you don’t want to discuss, therefore let’s discuss those that you are willing to discuss.” She has blanket permission to withhold anything and everything. But she did come to discuss things. And therefore she starts discussing this, discussing that. And it’s always “Well, this is all right to talk about.” And before she’s finished, she has mentioned everything.

Since this seems to be true, let’s look at a few reason why 1) choice is so important and 2) why we end up with a better outcome when we give options.

Here is what I came up with.

Choice is important because it gets into the issue of control and free will.  We like to be in control of our own lives.  It gives us a false sense of security, and we love being secure.  So by having a choice, we don’t think about other options that we might have thought of on our own due to lazy thinking, and simply choose.

Further, by being involved in the process we are much more likely to be happy with the outcome.  This is because we can only blame ourselves if the outcome is bad, since we were involved, and since we don’t like to blame ourselves, we are much more likely to justify our own actions – and create a positive spin on things.

So by learning to always give options you can help make people more happy with their choices.

* This lesson was taught to me by Dovid Friedman when I was in school in Maryland.

One of the most interesting things that I have ever learned about lies is that for them to work, they must include truths.

The original context that I heard it in was actually, an old Jewish adage, however, since learning it I have found it to be true time and time again.

You see, any one can lie.  However, to really pull the wool over someones eyes, they have to convince themselves that the liar is telling the truth.  It is something that only they can do, the liar can’t do it for them.

So how best to do that?  Include easily verifiable truths in your story.

The reason that this works so well is based on the lazy principle of people, which states that we don’t do any more work than we think we need to in life.

So when we verify parts of a liars story, we then assume the rest of the story is correct, thus believing the false story in its entirety.

I’m not sure there is a way around this, but perhaps remembering that this is true will allow us to no be fooled by others who are looking to take advantage of our good nature.

In general people are lazy.  Effort takes work, and people don’t like to work, so typically, people only take effort when they have no other option. Interestingly, this is not just with regards to physical labor, but extends to mental gymnastics as well.  Meaning that people won’t typically think about more than they need to.  This impacts us in numerous ways:

This is why sales people ask “When is a good time to meet?” instead of “Would you like to meet?”  People respond positively to the former, but upon reflection might reject you in the latter.

Similarly, if we want something, it is better to state something as a confirmation of a request, rather than ask a question.  Such as, “I assume you are going to clean the carpet for free, since you stepped on it with your muddy boots when you came to fix my AC, correct?”

However, one of the most important ways that this impacts us on a daily basis, is that people only answer the question posed.

Since I am in sales, it is always amazing to me how much more impactful asking the person on the other end of the line a specific question like “Who have you talked to recently that told you they had staffing needs?” is than the question of “What needs do you currently have?”  For some reason, the more specific and probing that my question is, the more the individual works to recall and answer and give me what I am looking for.  An opportunity.

The upshot of this, is that if we ask the wrong question, we get the wrong answer, even though the person we are talking to might have the information that we need.  We just didn’t know how to access the information effectively.

By remembering that people only answer what they hear you ask, you can better shape your question to include a more broad scope, or remember to develop follow-on questions when their answer is not effective, and not just take their first answer as gospel.

 

One of the many ironies of life is that we are sometimes scared to try new things, thus preventing us from trying, but in those cases when we try new things that we aren’t scared to try, they often backfire.   Of course, this leads to the circle of being scared to try new things.

Let’s clarify a little.

Yesterday, I sprayed myself with pepper spray.  Yeah.

Long story short, I have been doing some camping in north Georgia with my kids and thought it prudent to buy some bear spray, which is just a 12 ounce can of pepper spray.  Wondering exactly how far the canister could spray, in case of emergency, I decided to find out for myself.  I carefully took off the safety, then pfssst, did a quick spray, and many tiny particles flew into the air away from me.

Well, they taught me in boy scouts, to never pee in the wind, but failed to mention that the same thing could be said about aerosol sprays containing pepper, so a few particles drifted back towards me.  Next thing I know, I am gagging, and itching, hating life in general, and laughing at myself.

So besides the obvious fact, that pepper spray is not something to try out in my carport, I think this experience brings out an even more important point.  That is, as humans we are not that good at identifying new experiences.

You see, in my brain, I figured, aerosol canister, I know how those work, I use them in the bathroom and with bug spray all the time.  Not only that, they target certain areas, so nothing to fear here.  What I wasn’t thinking about was the makeup of the internal contents of the can!  And that made all the difference, in my case.

Had I been smart, I would have said, pepper spray.  Never seen it in action, let’s learn about how it work, before I try it.  but I went with what I could see – the can – and it brought back feelings of familiarity and safety.  So I gave it a shot.  Literally.

So what are some takeaways?

One, when you enter into a new work environment, even though the new environment seems similar, there are things that you don’t know about, so sit back and observe to try to figure out what they are before you take action.  This is a well known idea, but less often followed.

Further, there are times when we are scared to try new things, since we can’t think of similar experiences that we have had that makes it safe, or because we view the new thing as similar to negative past experiences. However, this may or may not be the case.  We might be missing similar safe activities that we should be comparing to, and would make the activity less scary, and us willing to try it.   The reason that we can’t is simply that we haven’t experienced the activity yet due to fear that is holding us back.  So try to push beyond the fear, and see for yourself, instead of letting your brain make connections that may or may not actually be there.