When it comes to experiencing a life-changing epiphany, the way things feel is critical. It involves, as mentioned earlier, unleashing one’s inner quadruped.
The concept began with the classical Greek philosopher Plato. In the fourth century BC, Plato wrote a “dialogue” titled Phaedrus, which contains an allegory about the charioteer. In it, the driver of the chariot represents a person’s more rational self, the guiding force based on intellect and reason. (Because those guys doing the death race in Ben-Hur were totally reasonable.) Conversely, the horses pulling the chariot represent a person’s emotions; they are what provide the power to move forward. And if they want to run wild, the driver of the chariot can do little to control them.
Let’s ignore the part about Plato’s horses having wings, so as not to confuse the issue.
It is important to note that the horses are not like-minded. According to Plato’s tale, one is more virtuous in its passion; the other has a dark side driven by baser appetites. One wants to train for a marathon; the other wants to down tequila shots then go in search of a chili cheese dog to later throw up.
The goal of the charioteer is to obtain the help of the noble horse to overcome the desires of the troublesome one. Otherwise, you’re blowing your groceries in the gutter. I’ve done that. It’s not fun.
The allegory was adapted some millennia later, in 2006, with the publication of The Happiness Hypothesis by New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who referred to the rational, conscious mind as the “rider” and increased the size of the emotion-driven, unconscious-mind quadrupeds to a solitary elephant. Part of the upgrade involved increasing the intelligence of the beast, asserting elephants are smarter than horses. As we’ll see when we examine the neuroscience of attaining sudden insight, Haidt is right. In most cases, the unconscious driver is the correct one; the conscious needs to learn to listen.
A short time later, the rider-vs.-elephant analogy became a core component of the 2010 book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. Chip is a professor of business at Stanford, and Dan is a senior fellow in entrepreneurship at Duke.
A determined elephant will go where it pleases, regardless of the urgings of a more rational rider. To achieve a desired destination, one must appeal to both rider and elephant.
The elephant is the passion and the drive. Whereas the rider may prevaricate and overanalyze, the elephant is the part of the human spirit that can change directions in a flash, and with powerful determination, because it is driven to get shit done. Rather than needing to ponder, it is compelled to act.
Let’s try an experiment in which you talk to your four-legged friend.
How do you feel about changing?
In the introduction, I asked you to awaken your thirst for adventure. I expect you generated some ideas of songs unsung, mountains unclimbed, finish lines uncrossed. And now you’re faced with the opportunity to sing your way across that finish mountain, or something. Have you got it? It doesn’t have to be concrete. Big picture is fine for now. Is it in your brain? Are you thinking about it?
Good. Now stop.
Stop thinking.
Instead, start feeling.
Don’t rationalize this change. Don’t try to think about all the reasons why you should stop doing a thing (like sitting all day, drinking too much, smoking, being angry, overeating treat foods, doing drugs, staying in a dead-end job or relationship, wasting money on stupid crap) or start doing a thing (going back to school, exercising, eating healthier, being kinder, working at your career, spending more quality time with loved ones).
I want you to stop thinking, because of paralysis via analysis. If these goals you imagine—things to stop and things to start—have been around in your brain for a while, you’ve already thought them to death. And yet here you are. Still struggling. You rationalized your way out of change. Well, crud.
Time for a dramatic change of tack.
Ask yourself: How do I feel about this change? You don’t completely cut thinking, but alter the focus. Instead of thinking about this new path, you’re examining your emotions. It’s not about making a list of reasons why and why not. It’s opening your mind to what your heart is saying, metaphorically. I know the heart doesn’t literally control this. It’s still in the brain, just a different part. Enough semantic blather. Let the feelings flow and listen to what they tell you.
Why are you reading this sentence?
You’re supposed to be examining your feelings. Examine your change! You go feel it now. I’ll wait. I’ll even put an extra space between paragraphs to make it easier to pick up again.
Welcome back. How did it go?
Was there a twinge? Did you have a moment? Was there a positive rush of emotion? Did you gain some special insight or wave of motivation to change because you quested to understand your emotional drivers rather than rational ones?
Was the grizzly released from its cage?
Don’t fret if it didn’t happen. We just began and will work through exercises like this at appropriate times throughout the book. And hopefully lightning will strike.
Hopefully.
There are no guarantees. But the harder you work at these exercises, the more you strive and the more you believe epiphany can happen, the greater the likelihood it will.
It’s like that song by Journey, the one about the mythical place called South Detroit we’ve all heard way too many times: “Don’t stop believin’.”
It’s in your head now, isn’t it? My bad. But take something good from it.
Believe. Believe it’s possible to unleash your beast. In The Eureka Factor, Kounios and Beeman write, “Insights are like cats. They can be coaxed but don’t usually come when called.” You must learn to coax your elephant. Or grizzly. Or a really determined kangaroo, if that’s your thing.
Conscious thought rarely incites life-changing epiphanies. Instead, the snap revelations to change in a moment are based on what is often an overwhelming feeling that it is right, arriving from the unconscious. As Plato and subsequent authors revealed, it is such an emotion that gives epiphany its power. I was in fear of losing a beautiful and brilliant woman who let me see her naked, and I felt quite emotional over the impending loss of love. She was not threatening me in any way, but I knew deep down that such a driven woman (she had a perfect GPA and completed medical school at the top of her class) wouldn’t stay for long with a drunken dropout who was letting his health go to hell.
I got my shit together, and we made babies. Told you she was The One.
Beyond ancient philosophy and its modern interpretations, we have the scientific insights of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman. Known as the Father of Behavioral Economics (which we learn more about in coming chapters), Kahneman, an emeritus professor of psychology at Princeton University, is the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow. The “fast” way of thinking is the elephant. It happens when an unconscious idea pops into consciousness. It can also be that emotional driver one needs to effortlessly change. Kahneman refers to this as “System 1,” writing that it “operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.” Conversely, “System 2” is the rider. It “allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.”
Kahneman explains that System 2 is where we make our rational choices, our conscious decisions. His description is telling: “Although System 2 believes itself to be where the action is, the automatic System 1 is the hero of the book.”
You’re damn right it is. System 2 is the supporting character, and an inherently lazy one at that. Kahneman writes that System 2 engages in the “law of least effort.” But that doesn’t mean it’s useless in this