The Elephant & the Rider

I’m reading this book entitled Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Dan Heath and Chip Heath. They reference NYU psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s lovely analogy about the Elephant and the Rider to represent the two systems at work in our brain. The emotional side is represented by the elephant and the rational side is the rider. The rider of the elephant looks to be in charge, but when there’s a disagreement between the elephant and the rider, which do you think wins?

Dan and Chip, talk about directing the rider (rational brain: responsible for planning and direction, but can get paralyzed overthinking things) and motivating the elephant (emotional brain: prefers quick gratification over long term, but gets things done). Have you ever noticed that when you are tired you tend to make choices you don’t’ really want to? Imagine changing the direction of an elephant. This task would be exhausting. This might explain why it is difficult to stick with a diet for any extended period. Your elephant wants to constantly go for things you are used to while the rider is attempting to steer towards the healthier choices. You can keep it up for a little while, but the elephant wins in the end. If you want to make sustainable, meaningful change, the rider and elephant need to work together.

Direct the Rider

The rider loves to contemplate and analyze, doing this with a negative bias, focusing on problems over solutions becoming easily frustrated by uncertainty. How do you direct the rider? Follow the bright spots, see what works and clone it. Script the critical moves. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. Point to the destination. Change is easier when you know where you are going and why it is worth it.

Motivate the Elephant

The elephant is easily spooked and hates doing things with no immediate benefit. It is stubborn, needs reassurance, and is quickly demoralized. But it is powerful, tireless and difficult to actively direct. How do you motivate the elephant? Find the feeling. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make it somehow felt. Shrink the change. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the elephant.

Shape the Path

Without a clear vision of the destination, change will not happen as the elephant tends to follow the path of least resistance. This means focusing on the surrounding environment to make change easier. How do we shape the path? Tweak the environment. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So, change the situation. Build habits. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free” and doesn’t tax the rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.

Those are the Facts

I would like to share my point of view and how I apply this and get the rider and elephant to work together. Here is a personal example; a few years ago, I completely changed my diet because I wanted to be a healthier version of myself. In order to initiate the change, I read material put out by bright spots, by people who struggled with becoming healthier. This allowed my rider to formulate a plan. From the material I was reading I found out that some foods caused inflammation in my body. I visualized myself purposely giving myself bruises. This visualization caused an emotional reaction motivating my elephant. The change to becoming healthier was now directed at cutting out all the foods that could cause my body inflammation. Shaping the path, I started with throwing out all the foods in my kitchen that could potentially cause inflammation and learned to make a few easy things to help remove any obstacles from my path to becoming healthier. How powerful is this? One day I wanted sweet potato fries and I was too tired to make them from scratch. I took a drive to the grocery store and found a bag of frozen ones and read the ingredients which contained some inflammatory items and the elephant kicked in and said “NOPE” and I ended up making them from scratch.

Now, whenever I find my elephant off tract or my rider spinning wheels, I ask myself, “How can I get the elephant and the rider moving together?”

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