Bodies Beat Beliefs: Skin in the Game

But Inspir-Actions don’t just create foot soldiers in the march toward a goal; they create converts. And they do so because action affects attitude; in fact, it’s a curious truth of human nature that we often adjust our “beliefs” to fit our behavior, not vice versa.

Take sex.

Reverend Ed Young is a sex-pushing evangelical minister. As the pastor of a Dallas-based megachurch, he encouraged his (married) congregants to have sex every day—no matter what—for seven days straight and then, eventually, forty days. He figured the best way to repair tired and frayed marriages was to focus on the behavior of spouses, not their feelings. He called it his “sexperiment.”6

Reverend Young was right. After weeks of daily sex, couples reported an increased intimacy in their relationships, a recharging of their marital vows.

It’s a tactic not limited to love. It works in war as well. Take the torture of boot camp: the very act of waking up each morning to have your ass kicked by a drill sergeant increases the levels of patriotism amongst army recruits.

So, too, with diets: change your eating habits, and your beliefs about food will follow. Give up ice cream and cookies and, sure enough, soon enough, your craving for ice cream and cookies will diminish.

This is all true because our brains are more stubborn than our bodies. Our brains are too hard to change, to move. It takes the slow roll of evolution, in fact. Changing behavior, however, is a relative breeze.

Starbucks has turned this insight about the power of action to transform beliefs into the engine for their business. The ritual of ordering a coffee at a Starbucks—I’ll have a grande half-caff latte with two pumps of caramel, please!—is one of the very things that creates the premium value of the brand. If we want people to believe that our coffee is worth four dollars a cup, they said, let’s start by changing their behavior, herding them into an experience that dramatizes the special-ness of our cups of joe. A “large” coffee might be worth a couple of dollars, but a “venti”—oh no, just saying that word makes the very same coffee seem worth even more. Starbucks is obsessed about what you say, what you do—because they know that behavior drives belief.

Directions Make the Difference

The power of action—of direction-giving language—was also employed by the Obama campaign’s much-vaunted get-out-the-vote operation in 2008. It was an effort that helped propel him to victory, and one that made wonderful use of Inspir-Actions. It was an approach they fine-tuned in 2012, as the campaign team prepared for a heated re-election campaign. They assembled a clandestine team of psychologists, including heavyweight behavioral psychologists like Robert Cialdini and Richard Thaler, to help them fine-tune their pitch to voters.7

One of their most powerful tools was an innovative approach to canvassing—both door-to-door and by telephone. Traditionally, a candidate’s representatives would approach a potential voter, pitch their candidate, and then ask how that voter intended to vote. They’d mark your answer on the spreadsheet on their clipboard—and then the campaign would use that information to determine which “messages” you should receive in the future. With a preponderance of personal data available to marketers, the savviest of these operations would be able to fine-tune that messaging for maximum effect. Knowing your job and your model of car and where your family last vacationed would—could—help them figure out exactly the right way to pitch their candidate to you.

The Obama Campaign made smart use of all this personal data, but they also implemented another strategy. Based on the insight that potential voters were much more likely to be actual voters if they answered three straightforward questions—when would they vote; where would they vote; how would they get there—the Obama canvassers wouldn’t leave a house or end a phone call until a voter talked them through their intended voting routine: After I drop the kids at school but before I go to Starbucks, I’ll pop by the fire house to cast my vote. That Action—making a plan—made all the difference. According to a report from Harvard’s Kennedy School, this Inspir-Action “boosted turnout by 4.1 percentage points.” It was “twice as effective” as the standard approach.8

And so, in tandem with the lofty rhetoric and Delusional Ambition of the Obama Campaign, was at least one simple Inspir-Action: make a plan to vote. Don’t just get moved; get moving.

Golden Rules

Dump water on your head. Double-cover the point guard. Have sex today. Take a full thirty seconds to order your complicated coffee. Picture your route to the polling place. Post #metoo.

All of these examples of Inspir-Actions ask a person to behave in a certain way in a certain moment. They work because they give people something to do, not something to ponder and debate. And some of these examples—like having sex and drinking coffee—can grow into habits and rituals that last a lifetime.

But sometimes our aim stretches beyond a particular moment. We don’t just want to inspire you to vote for our candidate; we want to inspire you to join our cause. We don’t just want you to win this basketball game; we want you to grow into an adult with grit and determination. We don’t just want you to buy a cupcake from the sustainable bakery we opened; we want you to help us save the planet. We don’t just want you to put down the drinks “one day at a time;” we want you to quit drinking, get a job, heal your family, and enjoy a long, full, healthy life.

Sometimes—oftentimes—we don’t just want to “move” an audience in the moment; we want to shift their very existence.

When our ambitions are that sweeping, we need to give our audience something more lasting than short-term directions; we need to give them a Golden Rule—a guideline for what to do in any—in every—situation.

The greatest Golden Rules require very little thinking to execute; they pitch themselves to the heart in your head. Consider the best-known one: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It’s a maxim that all of the world’s major religions promote, and it’s meant to prompt a way of behaving that’s intuitive and easy. At heart, it’s all heart: how would I feel if she did that to me? How would I feel if I were treated that way? It’s an emotional calculation you’re asked to make, one that starts with an act of great creativity: first, imagine the situation were reversed; get yourself inside the other person’s skin; and then, check in with your feelings: if they’re not quite kosher, refrain from doing whatever you were about to do.

The Golden Rule is an act of imagination and empathy, not reason or logic.

I think Sol’s dictum—the idea that we can do anything for thirty seconds—is a Golden Rule. It’s an evergreen instruction to keep going that can be invoked in myriad situations when we just don’t want to. Straining to finish a workout? Think about thirty seconds. Straining to live by the Golden Rule with your obnoxious coworker? Start with thirty seconds.

In fact, most “inspirational quotes”—the homespun wisdom we find on refrigerator magnets and bumper stickers—are Golden Rules: Dance like nobody’s watching… Make your own luck… You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take… These are Golden Rules that extol some very specific virtues: being less self-conscious; working hard; and taking risks, respectively. The problem with these examples, however, is that they’re well-worn clichés and, as we’ll see in the next two chapters, clichés lack the stopping-power that inspiration demands. They become background noise, easy to ignore. The best Golden Rules do exactly what these Hallmark platitudes strive to do—they wrap up a virtue in a memorable instruction.

Three Techniques for Finding Your Inspir-Action

Having identified your Delusional Ambition, it’s now time to find your Inspir-Action—the specific step you’re asking your team, your audience (or yourself) to take towards achieving your goal. The trick is to follow the advice Strunk & White gave in their famous primer on good writing: make it vivid and concrete. “Eat better food” won’t cut it; “eat only vegetables” probably will. “Close more deals this quarter” falls short—but “double your sales calls” doesn’t. Muses have mastered the ability to flit from the grand to the tactical in the flutter of a sentence.

Now, it’s important to remember that the Inspir-Action is probably not the actual thing you want to accomplish itself. If it’s genuinely a wild ambition you’re after, it’s hard to imagine any singular action will achieve it. The road to starting your own company, for example, involves working up your own courage to do so, perhaps quitting your job, securing funding, designing a business plan, and bringing along the support you’ll need from your family and friends. At least.

Here are three techniques that will help you identify the Inspir-Action that will set you in motion toward your desired goal:

Technique 1: One Small Step…

Find the absolute smallest thing that might be done toward achieving your goal. And I mean the smallest. Then the next. Then the next. Breaking down a chain of behavior into its smallest component parts make it instantly less daunting.

Gym trainers have mastered the technique of “first-stepping” their clients to a better, healthier body. They break down a long-term goal—lose twenty pounds, run a marathon—into component steps. Leaders seeking to inspire should do the same: start with your Delusional Ambition and map the steps back to the here-and-now reality. You’ll have your blueprint.

And it might be that achieving your Delusional Ambition will take several steps or involve a variety of concurrent actions. Saving the planet, for example, might involve a series of Inspir-Actions, from recycling to educating children about the effects of energy waste to buying an electric car to donating to an organization influencing public policy about climate change. That’s great. Capture them all. For most of us, there’s nothing more arousing than checking off all the items on a long to-do list.

Technique 2: Create Assassins (and Other Amazing Jobs)

Everybody appreciates being given a special job to do. It’s flattering and motivating. So look at your audience and start assigning them the variety of roles you’ll need to accomplish your goal—and make sure they each sound important or, at least, enjoyable.

Teachers are brilliant at doing this. Good ones have mastered the art of getting unruly kids to behave, and the best of them don’t do so with threats and punishment, but with the curious act of adding to the kid’s burden: they give the kid a “special” job to do. Billy, I need you to be the General of Sticks—and, before you know it, Billy is picking up and organizing all the ice cream pop sticks that the class has been using to learn multiplication. And of course he is: he’s the general of sticks!

One of my sons wasn’t too happy when his soccer coach relegated him to defense—and center back, at that, the position that needs to “stay back” and protect the goal while the rest of the team gets to move upfield and score some points. My son felt bored, even a little punished by his place on the field. I was even worried he’d quit the team—until a chat with a teammate’s father who, coincidentally, also played center back when he was younger. This dad explained to my son that he had the coolest position on the field: he was “the team assassin.” That’s right: it was his job to “take out” anybody that slipped by the mid-field. Suddenly, my son was interested. An assassin? He gets to be an assassin! He gets to be Jason Bourne on a soccer field!

And this isn’t just a technique that works on kids who might not know any better. We all want to feel like we’re contributing to a project in a special way. Look at your team: who do you want to be the “conscience” and who can be the “closer” and who can be the “architect” and who can be the “joy squad?” Look at your team and give them sexy, fun, cool, important roles—the kind of roles that imply very clear action to be taken. You’ll see them throw on the mantle of those positions and get busy.

Technique 3: Write Your Golden Rules

Am I asking you to compose a Golden Rule, like Confucius and Buddha and Jesus and Mohammed? Of course, I am. All along, I’ve been telling you you’re a Muse.

Remember our Three Types of Inspiration. The first was Inspiration by Virtue—the kind of inspiration we feel when we’re moved by the way a person lives her life. Perhaps we’re inspired by the way somebody faces a particular moment, perhaps a tragic moment like cancer or divorce; or maybe we’re inspired by the way a person seems to wake up and face every single day with a spirit that we envy: our mother who works harder than anybody we know; that friend who always follows her heart; heck, the Dalai Lama who does absolutely everything with gentle kindness.

Behind these people, we can likely find a Golden Rule by which they live. They might not ever articulate it. It might be instinctual, second nature, but it’s there: What Would Mom Do? What Would Helen Do? What Would Forrest Gump Do? What Would Bono Do? These are Golden Rules that help us direct behavior—our own and others—across a range of situations and circumstances. They become rules for living.

In fact, if you look at any life and apply a little creativity, you’d likely be able to identify some sort of “code” by which it is lived. That person always says “yes.” That one listens like his life depended upon it. And she never takes bullshit from anybody. Muses give the gift of these Golden Rules to their audiences. They pick the rules that will help achieve their Delusional Ambitions—and they give them to an audience for whom they become the ever-present, never-thinking prompts to do.

So, a simple trick, fill in the blank: What Would ____ Do? Try to find the person who exemplifies the trait or approach that you desperately want your audience to adopt. Do you want a team exude joy? What Would Ellen Do? Or do you want them to win by dint of sheer hard work? What Would Serena Do? Do you want them to show more love? What Would a Puppy Do?

In addition, you should imagine your ideal future, the moment at which your Delusional Ambition becomes an awesome reality. What will be different about your audience then? Will they be collaborating, working together as a smooth-humming team? Will you be twenty pounds lighter and full of vigor? Think about what will be different and then a compose a Golden Rule that asks for that behavior to begin today… Trust your teammate… Eat like you’re at the beach…

And remember what you must never do: at all costs, avoid arguing. Remember my friend Dan Goldstein’s grandmother’s maxim: “Arguments convince nobody.” It’s a rule by which Muses abide. If a coach is detailing why a defensive strategy makes more sense than an offensive play, he has already lost the battle of motivating the team. If Al Gore is debating whether a 15 percent or 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions makes for sounder public policy, the cause of reversing climate change becomes a lost cause. If you’re negotiating, you’re not inspiring.