Transcription
Identity is the way that that you can hack your own behavior so fast. The way we define ourselves, what we are and what we're not, controls every thought, feeling, emotion, and behavior of our life. You can be hurt. You can be damaged. You can become intolerably anxious, and you can die.
One day you woke up for some reason and you're 295 lb. It got so bad you finally said, "Not another day, not another moment. I'm changing this now." You may set world records for weight loss. When you really expand your identity, your life changes completely. What used to be hard to do is easy.
Let's talk about how to manipulate your next podcast guest into being more open-minded. This technique is something we teach called negative dissociation. And the way that it works is it should sound like an observation about the world. Let's say we just sat down and I'd say, "You know what? I'm glad I'm interviewing you. There's a lot of people out there that are just so closed off and locked in these little rigid beliefs. And I'm not sure whether it is they're just terrified of what people are going to think about them if they step outside the lines or if they're scared of being open-minded for these other beliefs. I'm not sure which one it is. I mean, you meet these people so often." And you're going to nod. You nodded your head. What we're saying, what I'm saying sounds true. And it probably is.
Throughout the conversation, what you're really doing is you're not getting them to make an agreement about how they're going to act. You're getting them to make an agreement about who they are as a human being. So, the moment you can get them to covertly make an "I am" statement in their head, you're hacking your way into that person's identity. So, let's say you said that, they nodded, and then maybe a few minutes later you're like, "I got a confession to make. You know, I had social anxiety growing up. How did you get this open about everything? Have you always been this way? Or was this through some kind of like leadership training or something like that that you went to?" And the moment you answer that question, I've got you to commit. Now you're fully committed to being wide open for the rest of the conversation.
Bob Cialdini's got a great example of this. They got these people to stick signs in their yard. These giant ugly signs that say "drive safe" on them. And the way that they got this like 85% of this neighborhood to stab them into their yard was a week prior. They knocked on their door and they said, "Hey, I have a one question survey. It'll take 15 seconds. Do you support safe driving? Yes or no?" Everyone's going to say yes. So, now they've made a commitment about who they are. "Do you support?" So, it's who are you as a person? And they said, "All right, thank you so much for that." And just to show your support, could you put this tiny small sticker in the window of your house facing the street?" And they're like, "Yeah, yeah." And they go stick it on the window. Anyone who said yes, "I support safe driving," a week later would stick that giant stupid-looking sign in their front yard. And they double-blinded this. They did it in another neighborhood where they didn't go door-to-door first. They just went door-to-door and said, "Hey, can we stab this giant ugly sign in your yard?" And like 1% of people said yes, as opposed to like 85% in the other neighborhood. It's a tiny agreement about who you are as a person.
If somebody wants to master that, you make it about your social commitment to yourself, to other people, but publicly say like "I am this kind of person" to yourself. So, it's not like "I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow." It's "I am the kind of person that goes to the gym." It's a much more powerful identity-based action. And identity is the number one thing in the world when it comes to persuasion and influence.
The way that I teach this to intelligence people is when you're good at influence, you're building two walls. One wall is anxiety, and the other one is cognitive dissonance. And the hallway that you're creating is the relief from those things. The anxiety is like if I don't do what I say, I'm going to face social rejection. The cognitive dissonance is "I am the kind of person that does this," and if I don't do this, I'm not keeping with who I said I am and who I agreed to be. And I'm facing cognitive dissonance. So, cognitive dissonance means that it's bouncing them back into the hallway every time they bump up against something that they've previously agreed to.
Identity is the way that that you can hack your own behavior so fast. And the way that I explain this to people, it takes 30 seconds to understand it. If you were an Olympic athlete and you had a badass body, like you had a healthy diet, everything was in perfect shape, you woke up every morning, you had great energy and all that stuff, and one day you woke up for some reason and you're 295 lb. How fast would you get back to that body? You may set world records for weight loss because your identity is with that body. It's not that "I want to lose this weight so I can be healthy." It's "This is not me." And anytime you're feeling "This is not me," "This is against who I am as a person," it's the most powerful motivator when it comes to influencing other people and influencing ourselves.
I believe the strongest force in anybody's personality, in the human personality, is the need to stay consistent with how you've defined yourself. We all have an identity for ourselves. So, you'll hear people say something like, "Is there a difference between somebody who feels depressed and somebody who is clinically depressed?" Well, yes, once you have the title "clinically depressed," you can go to one of those people, and do you think clinically depressed people have happy moments? I'm going to guess not really. They can't have happy moments, but if you catch them when they're going, "I'm not really happy. It just looks like I'm happy." Yeah. Cuz our need to meet that definition. If you don't know who you are, you can't make a decision. It's like when people talk about somebody turning in their 40s and you know, having this, you know, midlife crisis. What it really is, it's an identity crisis. "Is this really who I want to be? Is this really who I am?"
So, I'll talk to some people that smoke cigarettes and they'll say, "No, I smoked for 10 years and I stopped and I'll never smoke again." If I come to them and say, "Would you like a cigarette?" They don't go, "What brand is it?" They go, "I'm not a smoker. I'm not one of those."
The way we define ourselves, what we are and what we're not, controls every thought, feeling, emotion, and behavior of our life. It works at all levels. If I set a thermostat in this room at 68°, and that represents your comfort zone, your identity. So, it could be 68° is what you're used to in terms of intimacy, or 68° is how much financial well-being or freedom you're used to, or security you're used to. Might not be a lot, might be a little. It's not your goal, it's what you're used to. If the temperature in this room drops from 68 to 65 to 62 to 60, at some point the heaters kick on cuz the computer says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're a 68°er. You're not a 60°er. This is no good." And you feel pressure. The heaters kick on and drive you back up to where you're supposed to be.
And most people listening probably have times where it got so bad you finally said, "Not another day, not another moment. I'm changing this now. This relationship, this thing on my body, whatever." But what most people don't realize, it happens on the other side as well. If you're a 68°er and you start doing better than you expect, you get momentum, you start to crush it, you start to go 80°, 90, 98°. Suddenly the computer inside goes, "What the hell are you doing? You're not a 98°er. You're a 68°er." And then the first thing happens, the heaters stop, you lose your drive, and then if that's not enough, the air conditioners kick on to help you sabotage, get right back down to where you think you deserve to be.
I always tell people the biggest problem people have is that they think they're not supposed to have any. But problems call forth in us if we don't give up. They cause us to grow. In the end, what you get will never make you happy. Who you become will make you very happy or very sad, and that's an identity. That's what everybody sells in a product. Nike sells, you know, you're an action person, "Just do it." Those shoes have nothing to do with it. They're just selling you on a feeling and linking it to their product.
But when you really do that to yourself, when you really expand your identity, your life changes completely. What used to be hard to do is easy. If you act out your identity, if you act out your beliefs in the world, and what you want doesn't happen, what happens is that your body defaults into emergency preparation for action. And the reason for that is you've wandered too far away from the campfire, and now you're in the forest. And so, what do you do then? And the answer is well, you don't know what to do. So, what do you do when you don't know what to do? And the answer is you prepare to do everything. And the problem with that is that it's unbelievably draining psychophysiologically. Like it hurts you. People stay where what they do has the results they want. That's partly why you want to be around people who share your cultural presuppositions.
Let's say you're a country music aficionado, and you're hanging around with your cowboy-hatted buddies, and you throw on a tape, and everyone says, "Great tunes, man." You know, you're happy about that. You throw on a piece by Tchaikovsky, and you're in a different subculture, and who the hell are you? The people in your group will say, "Man, who listens to music like that?" And like that's a trivial example in some sense, but I believe it's one that everyone can resonate to. It's very hard on us not to be where we know that what we want is going to happen. We hate that. By and large, we are conservative creatures, even if we're liberal in temperament. We can't tolerate that much uncertainty.
You might ask, "Well, why?" And the answer is well, because you can be hurt. You can be damaged. You can become intolerably anxious, and you can die. So, it's no wonder you're sensitive. We're very sensitive to negative emotion. And so, functional identity regulates your emotion. The problem with an identity that isn't rooted into the archetypes is it leaves you incomplete because the archetypal rooting of the identity is what helps you grapple with the fundamental existential problems of life. And whether you're a carpenter or a plumber or a lawyer, your soul is still going to hunger for some deeper form of identity. And you're not going to get that without having your practical identity encapsulated in something that's greater from a philosophical perspective, and perhaps even deeper than philosophy, which I think the archetypal stories, they're the structure within which philosophy itself is embedded. And outside of that is a behavioral structure. We've talked about how those evolve. There's a behavioral evolution of something approximating a consensual morality, and then stories about that consensual morality emerge, and then inside that, the structures of philosophy nest. And all of those things have to be addressed by your identity to some degree, or you're weak. That's the problem. You're beset by doubts, you're beset by anxiety, you're easy to stop, and you don't have much motivation. And none of that's good. It's not good at all because life presents you with enough real obstacles in the face of genuine suffering, so that unless you're strongly grounded and have a real reason for moving forward, you're going to get stopped. And as soon as you're stopped, you are one miserable thing. It's almost like the definition of human misery is to be paralyzed by anxiety and emotional pain, and also have no motive force forward. It's a terrible state, and so you don't want to be in that state, and you have to have an identity that's powerful enough and deeply rooted enough, so the most profound doubts that might emerge about your life are met by something of equivalent force.
Hey, before you go, remember this. Influence is not about words, it is about identity. The moment someone accepts, "I am this kind of person," their behavior starts to follow without them realizing it. But here is what most people miss. That same mechanism is controlling you. Your habits, your limits, even your self-sabotage, all come from the identity you have accepted without questioning. So, watch closely. Not what people say, but who they believe they are. And more importantly, who you believe you are. Because the moment that shifts, everything else follows.
Just one last thing. I see messages from people who didn't realize they weren't subscribed, so take a second and double-check. It's a simple, free way to support the channel. And if you're here often, you're already part of this journey. I really appreciate you being here. Stay sharp, and I'll see you in the next one.