change

The rider and the elephant

Recently started reading Switch, a book about how we react to change, I learned about the The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. He's a psychologist and his analogy about the 2 different aspects of  our behavior is very interesting. We have a logical/rational side which is known as the Rider, and emotional side dubbed the Elephant. As you might expect, the Rider is the one in control and guiding the Elephant. However, this is only an illusion because when both sides can't agree with each other, the Elephant is going to win most of the time. The Rider will be outmatched by the Elephant whenever there's a conflict between them.

This is a problem because the Elephant side of us is usually lazy and prefer instant gratifications. The Elephant is all about short term gain where the Rider prefer to analyze and plan for the future. But the Rider have it's own weakness where it usually spend too much time analyzing and end up doing nothing. The Rider gets analysis paralysis.

The book teaches you how to appeal to both the Elephant and the Rider to get change to happen. I think this applies to everything we do. Elephant is the source of energy where as the Rider is the one with the direction.

Passion without direction is useless. And so is direction without motivation. If you want to get things done, try your best to appeal to both the Elephant and the Rider.

Change the course of history

Four Years Go is a movement to get everyone to start changing our lifestyle to avert the incoming ecological and social collapse. We have to change the course of history in the next 4 years in order to create a better future.

As the Chinese proverb says “If we don’t change our direction, we are likely to end up where we are headed” and in humanity’s case where we are headed is clearly some type of ecological and social collapse.

All of us have to realize the damage we are causing to our planet and rise up to change this. We need to be the change agents that will lead humanity to more sustainable course. Check out the site for more information about this movement.

We are brainwashed!

Seth Godin says that everything, our education, society and corporations brainwashed us into compliant cogs that worship the status quo. His advice is that we do stuff that matters and break free from the norm. He wrote a manifesto on what you need to do to reinvent yourself. Pass this to all your friends, everyone must read this. He also just released his latest book, Linchpin. Can't wait for it to get here.