Sure, you can try to push Elephants.
However, do not expect to accomplish much when you do it.
Why?
Why am I being so negative about pushing Elephants?
Well, they are big.
And, we are not-so-big.
While I am sure it will be difficult to obtain scientific proof, I believe it is safe to say every minute of time we spend pushing Elephants will be a wasted minute of time.
So…Don’t push Elephants!
***
That’s what I was thinking a year ago as I read Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s book, ‘The Happiness Hypothesis’…specifically, I am talking about the part of the book where Dr. Haidt provides a metaphor describing people’s behaviour as ‘Riders on Elephants on Paths’.
In summary:
Rider – our logical side
Elephant – our emotional side
Paths – the situations we face
Compared to Elephants, Riders are small…about 1/40th the size.
Similarly, our Emotions outweigh our Logic. As one example, consider the maxim:
People base their purchase decisions on their emotions and, later, use logic to justify those decisions.
The way I look at it, as a
General Rule, that is true. When I say
General Rule I mean it will be true almost all of the time. For almost every purchase decision, emotions rule. Then, later, if required, people spend the time to create the logic to justify the decision. Consider, for example, the phenomenon known as
‘post-purchase dissonance’.
Purchasing action is just one example where Elephants [emotions] play the lead role and Riders [logic] play a supporting role.
Most human behaviour is triggered by our emotional Elephants and our Riders face the ongoing task of trying to control our Elephants. Probably, for every 40 pieces of behaviour only 1 is governed by logic. That means, for every 40 pieces of behaviour 39 are governed by emotions.
That 39/40 ratio is as good an estimate as is required to explain much of the behaviour we exhibit and we observe other people exhibiting.
Put another way, our emotional Elephants play the major role in our behaviour.
Recognizing that…Don’t push Elephants!
Recognizing that…do far better things like:
- Learn how help your Rider understand your Elephant
- Learn how to help other Riders understand their Elephants
- Take care to structure Paths so your Elephant is comfortable
- Take care to structure Paths so other people’s Elephants are comfortable
- Think about other ways to gain value from the Riders on Elephants on Paths metaphor
And…of course…
Don’t push Elephants!
Footnotes: