DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.-BORIS PASTERNAK

Do you remember when Jimmy Carter was still the President of the United States, the Empire was striking back, Yoda and Pac Man were the rage, and nothing came between Brooke Shields and her Calvins? The Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power in Iran and held our fellow Americans hostage. In Poland, an electrician from the Gdansk shipyards named Lech Walesa did the unthinkable: he decided to take a stand against the Communist hold. He led his co-workers in a strike, and when they tried to lock him out of his place of work, he simply climbed over the wall. A lot of walls have come down since then, haven't they?

Do you remember hearing the news that John Lennon was murdered? Do you remember when Mount Saint Helens erupted, leveling 150 square miles? Did you cheer when the underdog U.S. hockey team beat the Soviets, and went on to win the Olympic gold medal? That was 1980, a little more than ten years ago. Think for a moment. Where were you then? What were you like? Who were your friends? What were your hopes and dreams? If someone had asked you, "Where will you be in ten or fifteen years?" what would you have told them? Are you today where you wanted to be back then? A decade can pass quickly, can't it? More importantly, maybe we should be asking ourselves, "How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What's important to me right now, and what will be important to me in the long term? What actions can I take today that will shape my ultimate destiny?"

You see, ten years from now, you will surely arrive. The question is: Where? Who will you have become? How will you live? What will you contribute? Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life—not once they're over. We must seize the moment. We're already immersed in the early pan of a new decade, and we're entering the final years of the twentieth century/ And shortly we'll be in the twenty-first century, a new millennium. The year 2000 will be here before you know it, and in a mere ten years, you'll be looking back on this day and remembering it like you do 1980. Will you be pleased when you look back on the nineties, or perturbed? Delighted, or disturbed? In the beginning of 1980,1 was a nineteen-year-old kid. I felt alone and frustrated. I had virtually no financial resources. There were no success coaches available to me, no successful friends or mentors, no clear-cut goals. I was floundering and fat. Yet within a few short years I discovered a power that I used to transform virtually every area of my life. And once I'd mastered it, I used it to revolutionize my life in less than a year. It was the tool I used to dramatically increase my level of confidence and therefore my ability to take action and produce measurable results. I also used it to take back control of my physical well-being and permanently rid myself of thirty-eight pounds of fat. Through it, I attracted the woman of my dreams, married her, and created the family I desired. I used this power to change my income from subsistence level to over $1 million a year. It moved me from my tiny apartment (where I was washing my dishes in the bathtub because there was no kitchen) to my family's current home, the Del Mar Castle. This one distinction took me from feeling completely alone and insignificant to feeling grateful for new opportunities to contribute something to millions of people around the world. And it's a power I continue to use every single day of my life to shape my personal destiny.

In Unlimited Power, I made it abundantly clear that the most powerful way to shape our lives is to get ourselves to take action. The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they've done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results. Why? Because any action is a cause set in motion, and its effect builds on past effects to move us in a definite direction. Every direction leads to an ultimate destination: our destiny. In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. The key and most important question, then, is this: What precedes all of our actions? What determines what actions we take, and therefore, who we become, and what our ultimate destination is in life? What is the father of action? The answer, of course, is what I've been alluding to all along: the power of decision. Everything that happens in your life—both what you're thrilled with and what you're challenged by— began with a decision. I believe that it's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. The decisions that you're making right now, every day, will shape how you feel today as well as who you're going to become in the nineties and beyond. As you look back over the last ten years, were there times when a different decision would have made your life radically different from today, either for better or for worse? Maybe, for example, you made a career decision that changed your life. Or maybe you failed to make one. Maybe you decided during the last ten years to get married—or divorced. You might have purchased a tape, a book, or attended a seminar and, as a result, changed your beliefs and actions. Maybe you decided to have children, or to put it off in pursuit of a career. Perhaps you decided to invest in a home or a business. Maybe you decided to start exercising, or to give it up. It could be that you decided to stop smoking. Maybe you decided to move to another part of the country, or to take a trip around the world. How have these decisions brought you to this point in your life? Did you experience emotions of tragedy and frustration, injustice or hopelessness during the last decade of your life? I know I certainly did. If so, what did you decide to do about them? Did you push beyond your limits, or did you just give up? How have these decisions shaped your current life path?

Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

More than anything else, I believe it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny. You and I both know that there are people who were born with advantages: they've had genetic advantages, environmental advantages, family advantages, or relationship advantages. Yet you and I also know that we constantly meet, read, and hear about people who against all odds have exploded beyond the limitations of their conditions by making new decisions about what to do with their lives. They've become examples of the unlimited power of the human spirit. If we decide to, you and I can make our lives one of these inspiring examples. How? Simply by making decisions today about how we're going to live in the nineties and beyond. If you don't make decisions about how you're going to live, then you've already made a decision, haven't you? You're making a decision to be directed by the environment instead of shaping your own destiny. My whole life changed in just one day—the day I determined not just what I'd like to have in my life or what I wanted to become, but when I decided who and what I was committed to having and being in my life. That's a simple distinction, but a critical one. Think for a moment. Is there a difference between being interested in something, and being committed to it? You bet there is! Many times people say things like, "Gosh, I really would like to make more money," or "I'd like to be closer to my kids," or "You know, I'd really like to make a difference in the world." But that kind of statement is not a commitment at all. It's merely stating a preference, saying, "I'm interested in having this happen, if I don't have to do anything." That's not power! It's a weak prayer made without even the faith to launch it. Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you're committed to becoming. As we discussed in Chapter 1, you have to set standards for what you consider to be acceptable behavior for yourself, and decide what you should expect from those you care about. If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. You need to set and live by these standards no matter what happens in your life. Even if it all goes wrong, even if it rains on your parade, even if the stock market crashes, even if your lover leaves you even if no one gives you the support that you need, you still must stay committed to your decision that you will live your life at the highest level.

Unfortunately, most people never do this because they're too busy making excuses. The reason they haven't achieved their goals or are not living the lives they desire is because of the way their parents treated them, or because of the lack of opportunities that they experienced in their youth, or because of the education they missed, or because they're too old, or because they're too young. All of these excuses are nothing but B.S. (Belief Systems)! And they're not only limiting, they're destructive. Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every pan of your life in an instant. It can change your relationships, your working environment, your level of physical fitness, your income, and your emotional states. It can determine whether you're happy or sad, whether you're frustrated or excited, enslaved by circumstances, or expressing your freedom. It's the source of change within an individual, a family, a community, a society, our world.

What's changed everything in Eastern Europe in the last few years? The people there—people like you and me—have made new decisions about what they'll stand for, what's acceptable and unacceptable to them and what they'll no longer tolerate. Certainly Gorbatchows decisions helped pave the way, but Lech Walesa's determination and commitment to a higher standard built the road to massive economic and political change. I often ask people who complain about their jobs, "Why did you go to work today?" Their answer usually is, "Because I had to." You and I need to remember one thing: there is virtually nothing that we have to do in this country. You certainly don't have to go to work. Not here! And you certainly don't have to work at a particular location on a particular day. Not in America! You don't have to do what you've done for the last ten years. You can decide to do something else, something new, today. Right now you can make a decision: to go back to school, to master dancing or singing, to take control of your finances, to learn to fly a helicopter, to turn your body into an inspiration, to begin meditating, to enroll' in ballroom dancing, to attend a NASA space camp, to learn to speak French, to read more to your children, to spend more time in the flower garden, even to fly to Fiji and live on an island. If you truly decide to you can do almost anything. So if you don't like the current relationship you're in, make the decision now to change it. If you don't like your current job, change it. If you don't like the way you feel about yourself, change it. If it's a higher level of physical vitality and health you want, you can change it now. In a moment you can seize the same power that has shaped history.

You must know that you can make a new decision right now that will immediately change your life—a decision about a habit you'll change or a skill that you'll master, or how you'll treat people, or a call that you'll now make to someone you haven't spoken to in years. Maybe there's someone you should contact to take your career to the next level. Maybe you could make a decision right now to enjoy and cultivate the most positive emotions that you deserve to experience daily. Is it possible you might choose more joy or more fun or more confidence or more peace of mind? Even before you turn the page, you can make use of the power that already resides within you. Make the decision now that can send you in a new, positive, and powerful direction for growth and happiness.

Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Who would have thought that the determination and conviction of a quiet, unassuming man—a lawyer by trade and a pacifist by principle—would have the power to topple a vast empire? Yet Ma-hatma Gandhi's indomitable decision to rid India of British rule was a virtual powder keg that set in motion a chain of events that would forever change the balance of world power. People didn't see how he could accomplish his aims, but he'd left himself no other choice than to act according to his conscience. He simply wouldn't accept any other possibility.

Decision was the source of John F. Kennedy's power as he faced off Nikita Khrushchev during the tense Cuban Missile Crisis and averted World War III. Decision was the source of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s power as he gave voice so eloquently to the frustrations and aspirations of a people who would no longer be denied, and forced the world to take notice. Decision was the source of Donald Trump's meteoric rise to the top of the financial world, and also the source of his devastating downfall. It's the power that allowed Pete Rose to maximize his physical abilities to Hall of Fame potential—and then ultimately to destroy his life's dream. Decisions act as the source of both problems and incredible joys and opportunities. This is the power that sparks the process of turning the invisible into the visible. True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality. The most exciting thing about this force, this power, is that you already possess it. The explosive impetus of decision is not something reserved for a select few with the right credentials or money or family background. It's available to the common laborer as well as the king. It's available to you now as you hold this book in your hands. In the very next moment you can use this mighty force that lies waiting within you if you merely muster the courage to claim it. Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you've been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start by proclaiming, "This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I'm going to do. Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied!" Consider a fiercely proud individual, a woman named Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955 stepped onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to give up her seat to a white person as she was legally required to do. Her one quiet act of civil disobedience sparked a firestorm of controversy and became a symbol for generations to follow. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement, a consciousness-awakening ground swell that we are grappling with even today as we redefine the meaning of equality, opportunity, and justice for all Americans regardless of race, creed, or sex. Was Rosa Parks thinking of the future when she refused to give up her seat in that bus? Did she have a divine plan for how she could change the structure of a society? Perhaps. But what is more likely is that her decision to hold herself to a higher standard compelled her to act. What a far-reaching effect one woman's decision has had! If you're thinking, "I'd love to make decisions like that, but I've experienced real tragedies," let me offer you the example of Ed Roberts. He is an "ordinary" man confined to a wheelchair who became extraordinary by his decision to act beyond his apparent limitations. Ed has been paralyzed from the neck down since he was fourteen years old. He uses a breathing device that he's mastered against great odds to lead a "normal" life by day, and he spends every night in an iron lung. Having fought a battle against polio, several times almost losing his life, he certainly could have decided to focus on his own pain, but instead chose to make a difference for others. Just what has he managed to do? For the last fifteen years, his decision to fight against a world he often found condescending has resulted in many enhancements to the quality of life for the disabled. Facing a multitude of myths about the capabilities of the physically challenged, Ed educated the public and initiated everything from wheelchair access ramps and special parking spaces to grab bars. He became the first quadriplegic to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, and he eventually held the position of director of the California State Department of Rehabilitation, again pioneering this position for the disabled. Ed Roberts is powerful evidence that it's not where you start out but the decisions you make about where you're determined to end up that matter. All of his actions were founded in a single, powerful, committed moment of decision. What could you do with your life if you really decided to? Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what. In Unlimited Power, I outlined what I call "The Ultimate Success Formula," which is an elementary process for getting you where you want to go: 1) Decide what you want, 2) Take action, 3) Notice what's working or not, and 4) Change your approach until you achieve what you want. Deciding to produce a result causes events to be set in motion. If you simply decide what it is you want, get yourself to take action, learn from it, and change your approach, then you will create the momentum to achieve the result. As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the "how" will reveal itself.

This kind of clarity gives you power. With clarity, you can produce the results that you really want for your life. The challenge for most of us is that we haven't made a decision in so long we've forgotten what it feels like. We've got flabby decision-making muscles! Some people even have a hard time deciding what they're going to have for dinner. So how do we strengthen these muscles? Give them a workout! The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don't seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future. Realize that decision making, like any skill you focus on improving, gets better the more often you do it. The more often you make decisions, the more you'll realize that you truly are in control of your life. You'll look forward to future challenges, and you'll see them as an opportunity to make new distinctions and move your life to the next level. I can't overemphasize the power and value of gaining even one, single distinction—a sole piece of information—that can be used to change the course of your life. Information is power when it's acted upon, and one of my criteria for a true decision is that action flows from it. The exciting thing is that you never know when you're going to get it! The reason I read over 700 books, listened to tapes, and went to so many seminars is that I understood the power of a single distinction. It might be on the next page or in the next chapter of this book. It might even be something you already know. But for some reason, this is the time it finally sinks in and you begin to use it. Remember that repetition is the mother of skill. Distinctions empower us to make better decisions and, therefore, create the results that we desire for ourselves. Not having certain distinctions can cause you major pain. For example, many of the most famous people in our culture have achieved their dreams but have still not found a way to enjoy them. They often turn to drugs because they feel unfulfilled. This is because they are missing the distinction between achieving one's goals and living one's values, something you will learn to master in the pages to follow. Another distinction that many people don't have causes pain in their relationships on a regular basis. It's a rules distinction, another key element we'll be examining in our journey of self-discovery. Sometimes, not having a certain distinction can cost you everything. People who run strenuously8 yet continue to eat fatty foods, clogging up their arteries, court heart attacks. For most of my life, I've pursued what the famed business expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming calls profound knowledge. To me, profound knowledge is any simple distinction, strategy, belief, skill, or tool that, the minute we understand it, we can apply it to make immediate increases in the quality of our lives. This book and my life have been committed to pursuing profound knowledge that has universal application to improving our personal and professional lives. I'm constantly figuring out how to communicate this knowledge with people in ways that truly empower them to improve their mental, emotional, physical, and financial destinies. It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. —ANTHONY ROBB1NS

thanks for reading

(c)2016 Mercurial TECH

DECISIONS: THE PATHWAY TO POWER

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.-BORIS PASTERNAK

Do you remember when Jimmy Carter was still the President of the United States, the Empire was striking back, Yoda and Pac Man were the rage, and nothing came between Brooke Shields and her Calvins? The Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power in Iran and held our fellow Americans hostage. In Poland, an electrician from the Gdansk shipyards named Lech Walesa did the unthinkable: he decided to take a stand against the Communist hold. He led his co-workers in a strike, and when they tried to lock him out of his place of work, he simply climbed over the wall. A lot of walls have come down since then, haven't they?

Do you remember hearing the news that John Lennon was murdered? Do you remember when Mount Saint Helens erupted, leveling 150 square miles? Did you cheer when the underdog U.S. hockey team beat the Soviets, and went on to win the Olympic gold medal? That was 1980, a little more than ten years ago. Think for a moment. Where were you then? What were you like? Who were your friends? What were your hopes and dreams? If someone had asked you, "Where will you be in ten or fifteen years?" what would you have told them? Are you today where you wanted to be back then? A decade can pass quickly, can't it? More importantly, maybe we should be asking ourselves, "How am I going to live the next ten years of my life? How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to? What am I going to stand for from now on? What's important to me right now, and what will be important to me in the long term? What actions can I take today that will shape my ultimate destiny?"

You see, ten years from now, you will surely arrive. The question is: Where? Who will you have become? How will you live? What will you contribute? Now is the time to design the next ten years of your life—not once they're over. We must seize the moment. We're already immersed in the early pan of a new decade, and we're entering the final years of the twentieth century/ And shortly we'll be in the twenty-first century, a new millennium. The year 2000 will be here before you know it, and in a mere ten years, you'll be looking back on this day and remembering it like you do 1980. Will you be pleased when you look back on the nineties, or perturbed? Delighted, or disturbed? In the beginning of 1980,1 was a nineteen-year-old kid. I felt alone and frustrated. I had virtually no financial resources. There were no success coaches available to me, no successful friends or mentors, no clear-cut goals. I was floundering and fat. Yet within a few short years I discovered a power that I used to transform virtually every area of my life. And once I'd mastered it, I used it to revolutionize my life in less than a year. It was the tool I used to dramatically increase my level of confidence and therefore my ability to take action and produce measurable results. I also used it to take back control of my physical well-being and permanently rid myself of thirty-eight pounds of fat. Through it, I attracted the woman of my dreams, married her, and created the family I desired. I used this power to change my income from subsistence level to over $1 million a year. It moved me from my tiny apartment (where I was washing my dishes in the bathtub because there was no kitchen) to my family's current home, the Del Mar Castle. This one distinction took me from feeling completely alone and insignificant to feeling grateful for new opportunities to contribute something to millions of people around the world. And it's a power I continue to use every single day of my life to shape my personal destiny.

In Unlimited Power, I made it abundantly clear that the most powerful way to shape our lives is to get ourselves to take action. The difference in the results that people produce comes down to what they've done differently from others in the same situations. Different actions produce different results. Why? Because any action is a cause set in motion, and its effect builds on past effects to move us in a definite direction. Every direction leads to an ultimate destination: our destiny. In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently. The key and most important question, then, is this: What precedes all of our actions? What determines what actions we take, and therefore, who we become, and what our ultimate destination is in life? What is the father of action? The answer, of course, is what I've been alluding to all along: the power of decision. Everything that happens in your life—both what you're thrilled with and what you're challenged by— began with a decision. I believe that it's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. The decisions that you're making right now, every day, will shape how you feel today as well as who you're going to become in the nineties and beyond. As you look back over the last ten years, were there times when a different decision would have made your life radically different from today, either for better or for worse? Maybe, for example, you made a career decision that changed your life. Or maybe you failed to make one. Maybe you decided during the last ten years to get married—or divorced. You might have purchased a tape, a book, or attended a seminar and, as a result, changed your beliefs and actions. Maybe you decided to have children, or to put it off in pursuit of a career. Perhaps you decided to invest in a home or a business. Maybe you decided to start exercising, or to give it up. It could be that you decided to stop smoking. Maybe you decided to move to another part of the country, or to take a trip around the world. How have these decisions brought you to this point in your life? Did you experience emotions of tragedy and frustration, injustice or hopelessness during the last decade of your life? I know I certainly did. If so, what did you decide to do about them? Did you push beyond your limits, or did you just give up? How have these decisions shaped your current life path?

Man is not the creature of circumstances; circumstances are the creatures of men.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

More than anything else, I believe it's our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny. You and I both know that there are people who were born with advantages: they've had genetic advantages, environmental advantages, family advantages, or relationship advantages. Yet you and I also know that we constantly meet, read, and hear about people who against all odds have exploded beyond the limitations of their conditions by making new decisions about what to do with their lives. They've become examples of the unlimited power of the human spirit. If we decide to, you and I can make our lives one of these inspiring examples. How? Simply by making decisions today about how we're going to live in the nineties and beyond. If you don't make decisions about how you're going to live, then you've already made a decision, haven't you? You're making a decision to be directed by the environment instead of shaping your own destiny. My whole life changed in just one day—the day I determined not just what I'd like to have in my life or what I wanted to become, but when I decided who and what I was committed to having and being in my life. That's a simple distinction, but a critical one. Think for a moment. Is there a difference between being interested in something, and being committed to it? You bet there is! Many times people say things like, "Gosh, I really would like to make more money," or "I'd like to be closer to my kids," or "You know, I'd really like to make a difference in the world." But that kind of statement is not a commitment at all. It's merely stating a preference, saying, "I'm interested in having this happen, if I don't have to do anything." That's not power! It's a weak prayer made without even the faith to launch it. Not only do you have to decide what results you are committed to, but also the kind of person that you're committed to becoming. As we discussed in Chapter 1, you have to set standards for what you consider to be acceptable behavior for yourself, and decide what you should expect from those you care about. If you don't set a baseline standard for what you'll accept in your life, you'll find it's easy to slip into behaviors and attitudes or a quality of life that's far below what you deserve. You need to set and live by these standards no matter what happens in your life. Even if it all goes wrong, even if it rains on your parade, even if the stock market crashes, even if your lover leaves you even if no one gives you the support that you need, you still must stay committed to your decision that you will live your life at the highest level.

Unfortunately, most people never do this because they're too busy making excuses. The reason they haven't achieved their goals or are not living the lives they desire is because of the way their parents treated them, or because of the lack of opportunities that they experienced in their youth, or because of the education they missed, or because they're too old, or because they're too young. All of these excuses are nothing but B.S. (Belief Systems)! And they're not only limiting, they're destructive. Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every pan of your life in an instant. It can change your relationships, your working environment, your level of physical fitness, your income, and your emotional states. It can determine whether you're happy or sad, whether you're frustrated or excited, enslaved by circumstances, or expressing your freedom. It's the source of change within an individual, a family, a community, a society, our world.

What's changed everything in Eastern Europe in the last few years? The people there—people like you and me—have made new decisions about what they'll stand for, what's acceptable and unacceptable to them and what they'll no longer tolerate. Certainly Gorbatchows decisions helped pave the way, but Lech Walesa's determination and commitment to a higher standard built the road to massive economic and political change. I often ask people who complain about their jobs, "Why did you go to work today?" Their answer usually is, "Because I had to." You and I need to remember one thing: there is virtually nothing that we have to do in this country. You certainly don't have to go to work. Not here! And you certainly don't have to work at a particular location on a particular day. Not in America! You don't have to do what you've done for the last ten years. You can decide to do something else, something new, today. Right now you can make a decision: to go back to school, to master dancing or singing, to take control of your finances, to learn to fly a helicopter, to turn your body into an inspiration, to begin meditating, to enroll' in ballroom dancing, to attend a NASA space camp, to learn to speak French, to read more to your children, to spend more time in the flower garden, even to fly to Fiji and live on an island. If you truly decide to you can do almost anything. So if you don't like the current relationship you're in, make the decision now to change it. If you don't like your current job, change it. If you don't like the way you feel about yourself, change it. If it's a higher level of physical vitality and health you want, you can change it now. In a moment you can seize the same power that has shaped history.

You must know that you can make a new decision right now that will immediately change your life—a decision about a habit you'll change or a skill that you'll master, or how you'll treat people, or a call that you'll now make to someone you haven't spoken to in years. Maybe there's someone you should contact to take your career to the next level. Maybe you could make a decision right now to enjoy and cultivate the most positive emotions that you deserve to experience daily. Is it possible you might choose more joy or more fun or more confidence or more peace of mind? Even before you turn the page, you can make use of the power that already resides within you. Make the decision now that can send you in a new, positive, and powerful direction for growth and happiness.

Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.-BENJAMIN DISRAELI

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Who would have thought that the determination and conviction of a quiet, unassuming man—a lawyer by trade and a pacifist by principle—would have the power to topple a vast empire? Yet Ma-hatma Gandhi's indomitable decision to rid India of British rule was a virtual powder keg that set in motion a chain of events that would forever change the balance of world power. People didn't see how he could accomplish his aims, but he'd left himself no other choice than to act according to his conscience. He simply wouldn't accept any other possibility.

Decision was the source of John F. Kennedy's power as he faced off Nikita Khrushchev during the tense Cuban Missile Crisis and averted World War III. Decision was the source of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s power as he gave voice so eloquently to the frustrations and aspirations of a people who would no longer be denied, and forced the world to take notice. Decision was the source of Donald Trump's meteoric rise to the top of the financial world, and also the source of his devastating downfall. It's the power that allowed Pete Rose to maximize his physical abilities to Hall of Fame potential—and then ultimately to destroy his life's dream. Decisions act as the source of both problems and incredible joys and opportunities. This is the power that sparks the process of turning the invisible into the visible. True decisions are the catalyst for turning our dreams into reality. The most exciting thing about this force, this power, is that you already possess it. The explosive impetus of decision is not something reserved for a select few with the right credentials or money or family background. It's available to the common laborer as well as the king. It's available to you now as you hold this book in your hands. In the very next moment you can use this mighty force that lies waiting within you if you merely muster the courage to claim it. Will today be the day you finally decide that who you are as a person is much more than you've been demonstrating? Will today be the day you decide once and for all to make your life consistent with the quality of your spirit? Then start by proclaiming, "This is who I am. This is what my life is about. And this is what I'm going to do. Nothing will stop me from achieving my destiny. I will not be denied!" Consider a fiercely proud individual, a woman named Rosa Parks, who one day in 1955 stepped onto a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and refused to give up her seat to a white person as she was legally required to do. Her one quiet act of civil disobedience sparked a firestorm of controversy and became a symbol for generations to follow. It was the beginning of the civil rights movement, a consciousness-awakening ground swell that we are grappling with even today as we redefine the meaning of equality, opportunity, and justice for all Americans regardless of race, creed, or sex. Was Rosa Parks thinking of the future when she refused to give up her seat in that bus? Did she have a divine plan for how she could change the structure of a society? Perhaps. But what is more likely is that her decision to hold herself to a higher standard compelled her to act. What a far-reaching effect one woman's decision has had! If you're thinking, "I'd love to make decisions like that, but I've experienced real tragedies," let me offer you the example of Ed Roberts. He is an "ordinary" man confined to a wheelchair who became extraordinary by his decision to act beyond his apparent limitations. Ed has been paralyzed from the neck down since he was fourteen years old. He uses a breathing device that he's mastered against great odds to lead a "normal" life by day, and he spends every night in an iron lung. Having fought a battle against polio, several times almost losing his life, he certainly could have decided to focus on his own pain, but instead chose to make a difference for others. Just what has he managed to do? For the last fifteen years, his decision to fight against a world he often found condescending has resulted in many enhancements to the quality of life for the disabled. Facing a multitude of myths about the capabilities of the physically challenged, Ed educated the public and initiated everything from wheelchair access ramps and special parking spaces to grab bars. He became the first quadriplegic to graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, and he eventually held the position of director of the California State Department of Rehabilitation, again pioneering this position for the disabled. Ed Roberts is powerful evidence that it's not where you start out but the decisions you make about where you're determined to end up that matter. All of his actions were founded in a single, powerful, committed moment of decision. What could you do with your life if you really decided to? Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what. In Unlimited Power, I outlined what I call "The Ultimate Success Formula," which is an elementary process for getting you where you want to go: 1) Decide what you want, 2) Take action, 3) Notice what's working or not, and 4) Change your approach until you achieve what you want. Deciding to produce a result causes events to be set in motion. If you simply decide what it is you want, get yourself to take action, learn from it, and change your approach, then you will create the momentum to achieve the result. As soon as you truly commit to making something happen, the "how" will reveal itself.

This kind of clarity gives you power. With clarity, you can produce the results that you really want for your life. The challenge for most of us is that we haven't made a decision in so long we've forgotten what it feels like. We've got flabby decision-making muscles! Some people even have a hard time deciding what they're going to have for dinner. So how do we strengthen these muscles? Give them a workout! The way to make better decisions is to make more of them. Then make sure you learn from each one, including those that don't seem to work out in the short term: they will provide valuable distinctions to make better evaluations and therefore decisions in the future. Realize that decision making, like any skill you focus on improving, gets better the more often you do it. The more often you make decisions, the more you'll realize that you truly are in control of your life. You'll look forward to future challenges, and you'll see them as an opportunity to make new distinctions and move your life to the next level. I can't overemphasize the power and value of gaining even one, single distinction—a sole piece of information—that can be used to change the course of your life. Information is power when it's acted upon, and one of my criteria for a true decision is that action flows from it. The exciting thing is that you never know when you're going to get it! The reason I read over 700 books, listened to tapes, and went to so many seminars is that I understood the power of a single distinction. It might be on the next page or in the next chapter of this book. It might even be something you already know. But for some reason, this is the time it finally sinks in and you begin to use it. Remember that repetition is the mother of skill. Distinctions empower us to make better decisions and, therefore, create the results that we desire for ourselves. Not having certain distinctions can cause you major pain. For example, many of the most famous people in our culture have achieved their dreams but have still not found a way to enjoy them. They often turn to drugs because they feel unfulfilled. This is because they are missing the distinction between achieving one's goals and living one's values, something you will learn to master in the pages to follow. Another distinction that many people don't have causes pain in their relationships on a regular basis. It's a rules distinction, another key element we'll be examining in our journey of self-discovery. Sometimes, not having a certain distinction can cost you everything. People who run strenuously8 yet continue to eat fatty foods, clogging up their arteries, court heart attacks. For most of my life, I've pursued what the famed business expert Dr. W. Edwards Deming calls profound knowledge. To me, profound knowledge is any simple distinction, strategy, belief, skill, or tool that, the minute we understand it, we can apply it to make immediate increases in the quality of our lives. This book and my life have been committed to pursuing profound knowledge that has universal application to improving our personal and professional lives. I'm constantly figuring out how to communicate this knowledge with people in ways that truly empower them to improve their mental, emotional, physical, and financial destinies. It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped. —ANTHONY ROBB1NS

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The 21 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Money

One of your major goals in life should be financial independence. You must aim to reach the point where you have enough money so that you never have to worry about money again. The good news is that financial independence is easier to achieve today than it has ever been before. We live in the richest country at the richest time in all of human history. We are surrounded by more wealth and affluence than ever before. Your goal should be to participate fully in what many people are starting to refer to as the “Golden Age”of mankind.

Money has energy of its own and it is largely attracted to people who treat it well. Money tends to flow toward those people who can use it in the most productive ways to produce valuable goods and services, and who can invest it to create employment and opportunities that benefit others. At the same time, money flows away from those who use it poorly, or who spend it in non-productive ways. Your job is to acquire as much money as you honestly can and then to use it enhance the quality of your life and the lives of those you care about. Here now are the Twenty-one Absolutely Unbreakable Laws 0f Money:

1. The Law of Cause and Effect – Everything happens for a reason; there is a cause for every effect.

This is the “Iron Law” of human destiny. This law says that we live in a world governed by law, not chance. It says that everything happens for a -5- 5 reason, whether or not we know what it is. Every effect, success or failure, wealth or poverty, has a specific cause or causes. Every cause or action has an effect or consequence of some kind or another, whether we can see it, or whether we like it or not. This law says that all achievement, wealth, happiness, prosperity and success are the direct and indirect effects or results of specific causes or actions. What this means is that, if you can be clear about the effect or result you want, you can probably achieve it. You can study others who have accomplished the same goal, and by doing what they did, you can get the same results. The Law of Cause and Effect applies to money as much as to any other subject. This law says that financial success is an effect. As such, it proceeds from certain, specific causes. When you identify these causes and implement them in your own life and activities, you will get the same effects that hundreds of thousands, and even millions of others have gotten. You can acquire whatever amount of money you really want if you will just do what others have done before you to achieve the same results. And if you don’t, you won’t. It is as simple as that.

The most important expression of this universal law is that, “Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.”

Put another way, “Thought is creative.” Your thoughts are the primary creative forces in your life. You create your entire world by the way you think. All the people and situations of your life have been created by your own thinking. And when you change your thinking, you change your life, sometimes in seconds! -6- 6 The most important principle of personal or business success is simply this: You become what you think about most of the time. It is not what happens to you but how you think about what happens to you that determines how you feel and react. It is not the world outside of you that dictates your circumstances or conditions. It is the world inside of you that creates the conditions of your life. Specifically, it is the way you think about money and about your financial situation that largely determines your financial conditions today. Accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Look at the most important parts of your life - your family, your health, your work, your financial situation, and observe the cause-effect relationships between what you think, say, feel and do and the results you are getting. Be honest with yourself.

2. The Law of Belief: Whatever you truly believe, with feeling, becomes your reality.

This law says that you always act in a manner consistent with your beliefs, especially your beliefs about yourself. Your beliefs act like a set of filters that screen out information that is inconsistent with them. You do not necessarily believe what you see but rather you see what you already believe. You reject information that contradicts what you have already decided to believe, whether or not your beliefs, your prejudices, are based on fact or fantasy. This is especially true with regard to money. The best belief that you can develop within yourself is that you are destined to be a big success financially. When you are absolutely convinced -7- 7 that you are a financial success in the making, you will engage in the behaviors that will make it come true. The worst beliefs you can have are “Self limiting beliefs.” These exist whenever you believe yourself to be limited in some way. The fact is that no one is better than you are and no one is smarter than you are. If someone else is doing better, it is largely because he has developed his natural talents and abilities more than you have. He has learned the laws of cause and effect that apply to his life and finances before you have. But anything anyone else has done, within reason, you can probably do as well. You just need to learn how.

What one great thing would you dare to dream if you knew you could not fail? If you had no limitations, if you had all the time, money, talent, skills and contacts you could ever want, what would you want to do or be or have in your life?

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The Pleasure of Cognitive Ease

An article titled “Mind at Ease Puts a Smile on the Face” describes an
experiment in which participants were briefly shown pictures of objects.
Some of these pictures were made easier to recognize by showing the
outline of the object just before the complete image was shown, so briefly
that the contours were never noticed. Emotional reactions were measured
by recording electrical impulses from facial muscles, registering changes
of expression that are too slight and too brief to be detectable by
observers. As expected, people showed a faint smile and relaxed brows
when the pictures were easier to see. It appears to be a feature of System
1 that cognitive ease is associated with good feelings.
As expected, easily pronounced words evoke a favorable attitude.
Companies with pronounceable names dmisorrectlo better than others for
the first week after the stock is issued, though the effect disappears over
time. Stocks with pronounceable trading symbols (like KAR or LUNMOO)
outperform those with tongue-twisting tickers like PXG or RDO—and they
appear to retain a small advantage over some time. A study conducted in
Switzerland found that investors believe that stocks with fluent names like
Emmi, Swissfirst, and Comet will earn higher returns than those with clunky
labels like Geberit and Ypsomed.
As we saw in figure 5, repetition induces cognitive ease and a
comforting feeling of familiarity. The famed psychologist Robert Zajonc
dedicated much of his career to the study of the link between the repetition
of an arbitrary stimulus and the mild affection that people eventually have
for it. Zajonc called it the mere exposure effect. A demonstration
conducted in the student newspapers of the University of Michigan and of
Michigan State University is one of my favorite experiments. For a period
of some weeks, an ad-like box appeared on the front page of the paper,
which contained one of the following Turkish (or Turkish-sounding) words:
kadirga, saricik, biwonjni, nansoma, and iktitaf. The frequency with which
the words were repeated varied: one of the words was shown only once,
the others appeared on two, five, ten, or twenty-five separate occasions.
(The words that were presented most often in one of the university papers
were the least frequent in the other.) No explanation was offered, and
readers’ queries were answered by the statement that “the purchaser of
the display wished for anonymity.”
When the mysterious series of ads ended, the investigators sent
questionnaires to the university communities, asking for impressions of
whether each of the words “means something ‘good’ or something ‘bad.’”
The results were spectacular: the words that were presented more
frequently were rated much more favorably than the words that had been
shown only once or twice. The finding has been confirmed in many
experiments, using Chinese ideographs, faces, and randomly shaped
polygons.
The mere exposure effect does not depend on the conscious
experience of familiarity. In fact, the effect does not depend on
consciousness at all: it occurs even when the repeated words or pictures
are shown so quickly that the observers never become aware of having
seen them. They still end up liking the words or pictures that were
presented more frequently. As should be clear by now, System 1 can
respond to impressions of events of which System 2 is unaware. Indeed,
the mere exposure effect is actually stronger for stimuli that the individual
never consciously sees.
Zajonc argued that the effect of repetition on liking is a profoundly
important biological fact, and that it extends to all animals. To survive in a
frequently dangerous world, an organism should react cautiously to a novel
stimulus, with withdrawal and fear. Survival prospects are poor for an
animal that is not suspicious of novelty. However, it is also adaptive for the
initial caution to fade if the stimulus is actually safe. The mere exposure
effect occurs, Zajonc claimed, because the repeated exposure of a
stimulus is followed by nothing bad. Such a stimulus will eventually become
a safety signal, and safety is good. Obviously, this argument is not
restricted to humans. To make that point, one of Zajonc’s associates
exposed two sets of fertile chicken eggs to different tones. After they
hatched, the chicks consistently emitted fewer distress calls when exposed
to the tone they had heard while inhabiting the shell.
Zajonc offered an eloquent summary of hing icts program of research:
Zajonc offered an eloquent summary of hing icts program of research:
The consequences of repeated exposures benefit the organism
in its relations to the immediate animate and inanimate
environment. They allow the organism to distinguish objects and
habitats that are safe from those that are not, and they are the
most primitive basis of social attachments. Therefore, they form
the basis for social organization and cohesion—the basic
sources of psychological and social stability.
The link between positive emotion and cognitive ease in System 1 has a
long evolutionary history.

Mental Effort

If you wish to experience your System 2 working at full tilt, the following
exercise will do; it should br"0%e ca Tting you to the limits of your cognitive
abilities within 5 seconds. To start, make up several strings of 4 digits, all
different, and write each string on an index card. Place a blank card on top
of the deck. The task that you will perform is called Add-1. Here is how it
goes:
Start beating a steady rhythm (or better yet, set a metronome at
1/sec). Remove the blank card and read the four digits aloud.
Wait for two beats, then report a string in which each of the
original digits is incremented by 1. If the digits on the card are
5294, the correct response is 6305. Keeping the rhythm is
important.
Few people can cope with more than four digits in the Add-1 task, but if
you want a harder challenge, please try Add-3.
If you would like to know what your body is doing while your mind is hard
at work, set up two piles of books on a sturdy table, place a video camera
on one and lean your chin on the other, get the video going, and stare at
the camera lens while you work on Add-1 or Add-3 exercises. Later, you
will find in the changing size of your pupils a faithful record of how hard you
worked.
I have a long personal history with the Add-1 task. Early in my career I
spent a year at the University of Michigan, as a visitor in a laboratory that
studied hypnosis. Casting about for a useful topic of research, I found an
article in Scientific American in which the psychologist Eckhard Hess
described the pupil of the eye as a window to the soul. I reread it recently
and again found it inspiring. It begins with Hess reporting that his wife had
noticed his pupils widening as he watched beautiful nature pictures, and it
ends with two striking pictures of the same good-looking woman, who
somehow appears much more attractive in one than in the other. There is
only one difference: the pupils of the eyes appear dilated in the attractive
picture and constricted in the other. Hess also wrote of belladonna, a pupildilating
substance that was used as a cosmetic, and of bazaar shoppers
who wear dark glasses in order to hide their level of interest from
merchants.
One of Hess’s findings especially captured my attention. He had noticed
that the pupils are sensitive indicators of mental effort—they dilate
substantially when people multiply two-digit numbers, and they dilate more
if the problems are hard than if they are easy. His observations indicated
that the response to mental effort is distinct from emotional arousal. Hess’s
work did not have much to do with hypnosis, but I concluded that the idea
of a visible indication of mental effort had promise as a research topic. A
graduate student in the lab, Jackson Beatty, shared my enthusiasm and we
got to work.
Beatty and I developed a setup similar to an optician’s examination
room, in which the experimental participant leaned her head on a chin-andforehead
rest and stared at a camera while listening to prerecorded
information and answering questions on the recorded beats of a
metronome. The beats triggered an infrared flash every second, causing a
picture to be taken. At the end of each experimental session, we would
rush to have the film developed, project the images of the pupil on a
screen, and go to work with a ruler. The method was a perfect fit for young
and impatient researchers: we knew our results almost immediately, and
they always told a clear story.
Beatty and I focused on paced tasks, such as Add-1, in which we knew
precisely what was on the subject’s mind at any time. We recorded strings
of digits on beats of the metronome and instructed the subject to repeat or
transform the digits one indigits onby one, maintaining the same rhythm.
We soon discovered that the size of the pupil varied second by second,
reflecting the changing demands of the task. The shape of the response
was an inverted V. As you experienced it if you tried Add-1 or Add-3, effort
builds up with every added digit that you hear, reaches an almost
intolerable peak as you rush to produce a transformed string during and
immediately after the pause, and relaxes gradually as you “unload” your
short-term memory. The pupil data corresponded precisely to subjective
experience: longer strings reliably caused larger dilations, the
transformation task compounded the effort, and the peak of pupil size
coincided with maximum effort. Add-1 with four digits caused a larger
dilation than the task of holding seven digits for immediate recall. Add-3,
which is much more difficult, is the most demanding that I ever observed. In
the first 5 seconds, the pupil dilates by about 50% of its original area and
heart rate increases by about 7 beats per minute. This is as hard as
people can work—they give up if more is asked of them. When we
exposed our subjects to more digits than they could remember, their pupils
stopped dilating or actually shrank.
We worked for some months in a spacious basement suite in which we
had set up a closed-circuit system that projected an image of the subject’s
pupil on a screen in the corridor; we also could hear what was happening
in the laboratory. The diameter of the projected pupil was about a foot;
watching it dilate and contract when the participant was at work was a
fascinating sight, quite an attraction for visitors in our lab. We amused
ourselves and impressed our guests by our ability to divine when the
participant gave up on a task. During a mental multiplication, the pupil
normally dilated to a large size within a few seconds and stayed large as
long as the individual kept working on the problem; it contracted
immediately when she found a solution or gave up. As we watched from
the corridor, we would sometimes surprise both the owner of the pupil and
our guests by asking, “Why did you stop working just now?” The answer
from inside the lab was often, “How did you know?” to which we would
reply, “We have a window to your soul.”
The casual observations we made from the corridor were sometimes as
informative as the formal experiments. I made a significant discovery as I
was idly watching a woman’s pupil during a break between two tasks. She
had kept her position on the chin rest, so I could see the image of her eye
while she engaged in routine conversation with the experimenter. I was
surprised to see that the pupil remained small and did not noticeably dilate
as she talked and listened. Unlike the tasks that we were studying, the
mundane conversation apparently demanded little or no effort—no more
than retaining two or three digits. This was a eureka moment: I realized that
the tasks we had chosen for study were exceptionally effortful. An image
came to mind: mental life—today I would speak of the life of System 2—is
normally conducted at the pace of a comfortable walk, sometimes
interrupted by episodes of jogging and on rare occasions by a frantic
sprint. The Add-1 and Add-3 exercises are sprints, and casual chatting is
a stroll.
We found that people, when engaged in a mental sprint, may become
effectively blind. The authors of The Invisible Gorilla had made the gorilla
“invisible” by keeping the observers intensely busy counting passes. We
reported a rather less dramatic example of blindness during Add-1. Our
subjects were exposed to a series of rapidly flashing letters while they
worked. They were told to give the task complete priority, but they were
also asked to report, at the end of the digit task, whether the letter K had
appeared at any rored at antime during the trial. The main finding was that
the ability to detect and report the target letter changed in the course of the
10 seconds of the exercise. The observers almost never missed a K that
was shown at the beginning or near the end of the Add-1 task but they
missed the target almost half the time when mental effort was at its peak,
although we had pictures of their wide-open eye staring straight at it.
Failures of detection followed the same inverted-V pattern as the dilating
pupil. The similarity was reassuring: the pupil was a good measure of the
physical arousal that accompanies mental effort, and we could go ahead
and use it to understand how the mind works.
Much like the electricity meter outside your house or apartment, the
pupils offer an index of the current rate at which mental energy is used. The
analogy goes deep. Your use of electricity depends on what you choose to
do, whether to light a room or toast a piece of bread. When you turn on a
bulb or a toaster, it draws the energy it needs but no more. Similarly, we
decide what to do, but we have limited control over the effort of doing it.
Suppose you are shown four digits, say, 9462, and told that your life
depends on holding them in memory for 10 seconds. However much you
want to live, you cannot exert as much effort in this task as you would be
forced to invest to complete an Add-3 transformation on the same digits.
System 2 and the electrical circuits in your home both have limited
capacity, but they respond differently to threatened overload. A breaker
trips when the demand for current is excessive, causing all devices on that
circuit to lose power at once. In contrast, the response to mental overload
is selective and precise: System 2 protects the most important activity, so
it receives the attention it needs; “spare capacity” is allocated second by
second to other tasks. In our version of the gorilla experiment, we
instructed the participants to assign priority to the digit task. We know that
they followed that instruction, because the timing of the visual target had no
effect on the main task. If the critical letter was presented at a time of high
demand, the subjects simply did not see it. When the transformation task
was less demanding, detection performance was better.
The sophisticated allocation of attention has been honed by a long
evolutionary history. Orienting and responding quickly to the gravest threats
or most promising opportunities improved the chance of survival, and this
capability is certainly not restricted to humans. Even in modern humans,
System 1 takes over in emergencies and assigns total priority to selfprotective
actions. Imagine yourself at the wheel of a car that unexpectedly
skids on a large oil slick. You will find that you have responded to the threat
before you became fully conscious of it.
Beatty and I worked together for only a year, but our collaboration had a
large effect on our subsequent careers. He eventually became the leading
authority on “cognitive pupillometry,” and I wrote a book titled Attention and
Effort, which was based in large part on what we learned together and on
follow-up research I did at Harvard the following year. We learned a great
deal about the working mind—which I now think of as System 2—from
measuring pupils in a wide variety of tasks.
As you become skilled in a task, its demand for energy diminishes.
Studies of the brain have shown that the pattern of activity associated with
an action changes as skill increases, with fewer brain regions involved.
Talent has similar effects. Highly intelligent individuals need less effort to
solve the same problems, as indicated by both pupil size and brain activity.
A general “law of least effort” appd t” alies to cognitive as well as physical
exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the
same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course
of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of
skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep
into our nature.
The tasks that we studied varied considerably in their effects on the
pupil. At baseline, our subjects were awake, aware, and ready to engage
in a task—probably at a higher level of arousal and cognitive readiness
than usual. Holding one or two digits in memory or learning to associate a
word with a digit (3 = door) produced reliable effects on momentary
arousal above that baseline, but the effects were minuscule, only 5% of the
increase in pupil diameter associated with Add-3. A task that required
discriminating between the pitch of two tones yielded significantly larger
dilations. Recent research has shown that inhibiting the tendency to read
distracting words (as in figure 2 of the preceding chapter) also induces
moderate effort. Tests of short-term memory for six or seven digits were
more effortful. As you can experience, the request to retrieve and say aloud
your phone number or your spouse’s birthday also requires a brief but
significant effort, because the entire string must be held in memory as a
response is organized. Mental multiplication of two-digit numbers and the
Add-3 task are near the limit of what most people can do.
What makes some cognitive operations more demanding and effortful
than others? What outcomes must we purchase in the currency of
attention? What can System 2 do that System 1 cannot? We now have
tentative answers to these questions.
Effort is required to maintain simultaneously in memory several ideas
that require separate actions, or that need to be combined according to a
rule—rehearsing your shopping list as you enter the supermarket,
choosing between the fish and the veal at a restaurant, or combining a
surprising result from a survey with the information that the sample was
small, for example. System 2 is the only one that can follow rules, compare
objects on several attributes, and make deliberate choices between
options. The automatic System 1 does not have these capabilities. System
1 detects simple relations (“they are all alike,” “the son is much taller than
the father”) and excels at integrating information about one thing, but it
does not deal with multiple distinct topics at once, nor is it adept at using
purely statistical information. System 1 will detect that a person described
as “a meek and tidy soul, with a need for order and structure, and a
passion for detail” resembles a caricature librarian, but combining this
intuition with knowledge about the small number of librarians is a task that
only System 2 can perform—if System 2 knows how to do so, which is true
of few people.
A crucial capability of System 2 is the adoption of “task sets”: it can
program memory to obey an instruction that overrides habitual responses.
Consider the following: Count all occurrences of the letter f in this page.
This is not a task you have ever performed before and it will not come
naturally to you, but your System 2 can take it on. It will be effortful to set
yourself up for this exercise, and effortful to carry it out, though you will
surely improve with practice. Psychologists speak of “executive control” to
describe the adoption and termination of task sets, and neuroscientists
have identified the main regions of the brain that serve the executive
function. One of these regions is involved whenever a conflict must be
resolved. Another is the prefrontal area of the brain, a region that is
substantially more developed in humans tht un humans an in other
primates, and is involved in operations that we associate with intelligence.
Now suppose that at the end of the page you get another instruction:
count all the commas in the next page. This will be harder, because you will
have to overcome the newly acquired tendency to focus attention on the
letter f. One of the significant discoveries of cognitive psychologists in
recent decades is that switching from one task to another is effortful,
especially under time pressure. The need for rapid switching is one of the
reasons that Add-3 and mental multiplication are so difficult. To perform
the Add-3 task, you must hold several digits in your working memory at the
same time, associating each with a particular operation: some digits are in
the queue to be transformed, one is in the process of transformation, and
others, already transformed, are retained for reporting. Modern tests of
working memory require the individual to switch repeatedly between two
demanding tasks, retaining the results of one operation while performing
the other. People who do well on these tests tend to do well on tests of
general intelligence. However, the ability to control attention is not simply a
measure of intelligence; measures of efficiency in the control of attention
predict performance of air traffic controllers and of Israeli Air Force pilots
beyond the effects of intelligence.
Time pressure is another driver of effort. As you carried out the Add-3
exercise, the rush was imposed in part by the metronome and in part by
the load on memory. Like a juggler with several balls in the air, you cannot
afford to slow down; the rate at which material decays in memory forces
the pace, driving you to refresh and rehearse information before it is lost.
Any task that requires you to keep several ideas in mind at the same time
has the same hurried character. Unless you have the good fortune of a
capacious working memory, you may be forced to work uncomfortably
hard. The most effortful forms of slow thinking are those that require you to
think fast.
You surely observed as you performed Add-3 how unusual it is for your
mind to work so hard. Even if you think for a living, few of the mental tasks
in which you engage in the course of a working day are as demanding as
Add-3, or even as demanding as storing six digits for immediate recall.
We normally avoid mental overload by dividing our tasks into multiple easy
steps, committing intermediate results to long-term memory or to paper
rather than to an easily overloaded working memory. We cover long
distances by taking our time and conduct our mental lives by the law of
least effort.
Speaking of Attention and Effort
“I won’t try to solve this while driving. This is a pupil-dilating task. It
requires mental effort!”
“The law of least effort is operating here. He will think as little as
possible.”
“She did not forget about the meeting. She was completely
focused on something else when the meeting was set and she
just didn’t hear you.”
“What came quickly to my mind was an intuition from System 1. I’ll
have to start over and search my memory deliberately.”