CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SIX
I’m going to start this chapter off with a little magic trick. Magic tricks don’t really work very well on paper. But anyway. Here goes.
In front of you are five coins – a 50-pence coin, a 20-pence coin, a 10-pence coin, a 5-pence coin and a penny.
I am going to predict, in advance, which one you are going to hand me in a minute or so. In fact, I have already written my prediction down at the bottom of here.
OK, so what I want you to do first is to pick THREE coins and push them towards me. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you choose the 50-pence, 20-pence and penny coins – discarding the 5p and 10p.
Happy with that? Good!
So next what I want you to do is choose ONE of the three coins and discard it. Let’s say, again for the sake of argument, that this time you choose the 20p.
So now we are left with just two coins on the table.
For your next move I want you to choose ONE of those coins and push it towards me. Let’s say it’s the 50p.
This means that you should be left with just ONE coin in front of you – the penny.
Pick the penny up and hand it to me – and now turn to here to see if my prediction was correct.
That’s magic, folks!
Actually, folks, it isn’t magic at all. But then you knew that, didn’t you? Instead, it’s a very clever piece of psychology called the Principle of Forced Choice.
And I’ve just done it on Andy.
‘Forced choice? Yeah, I had a bit of that in Baghdad!’ he says, looking out the window across the Deer Park. ‘Bit different to this, though. Go on, then – let’s have another bash.’
Andy has come up to Oxford to visit me in Magdalen College and we’re sitting in my office at the Calleva Research Centre in the New Building. It’s called ‘new’ because it was built in the 1730s and the rest of the college dates back to the late fifteenth century. As does some of the plumbing.
‘Don’t know about Baghdad,’ I say, trying to bang some water out of the tap into the kettle. ‘But forced choice actually forms the basis of most “demonstrations” of mind control and is extremely powerful. That’s because when it’s done well, it’s the mindreader’s equivalent of carbon monoxide. Colourless, odourless, and virtually undetectable. But it’s also extremely simple.’
Oddly enough, I figured that you – like Andy – might want another ‘bash’ so I’ve made a second prediction that I’ve written down here.
Let’s say that this time, in STEP ONE, you push the 50-pence, 20-pence and 10-pence coins towards me – leaving behind the 5-pence and the penny. This actually makes my job easier and cuts out a step!
Because in STEP TWO all I now need to ask you to do is to remove the three coins you have pushed towards me and to pick up one of the two coins left behind. If the coin you pick up is the penny, I will ask you to discard it on to the pile with the other three.
That just leaves the 5-pence coin on the table.
But if, on the other hand, you pick up the 5-pence coin, leaving the 1p coin on the table, I will simply ask you to hand it straight to me.
Now check to see if my second prediction was correct.
That’s not magic, folks. That’s psychology!
At this stage you may be wondering where we’re going with this. Why start off a chapter on having the courage of your convictions, on being your own person, with a two-bob magic trick that, in reality, operates by actively removing any semblance of free will from the decision-making process?
(Which, as I’m sure you’re aware by now, is how it does operate: I make up my mind in advance which coin I want you to end up with and then work backwards adjusting the protocol accordingly.)fn1
Well, the answer to that question may surprise you. One of the things that we all have in common is that we make decisions. All day. Every day. There is no way around it. No decision-making concessions. For any of us.
You might think that you can go a whole day without making a decision. But in truth you’ve made thousands.
In fact, every single second of every single day packs a decision:
•The decision to sit in this position.
•The decision to sit in that position.
•The decision to scratch your leg.
•The decision to scratch your nose.
•The decision to move in.
•The decision to move out.
•The decision to buy this book.
•The decision to stop reading this book.
True, many of these decisions are unconscious. You may not be aware that you’re putting in any effort to make them. You may not feel that you’ve had to decide to make them. But you’ve still ‘made’ them.
Now, scientists are beginning to uncover something very interesting about the way we make decisions. Something which is causing them – and should be causing us – to take a long, hard look at how we live our lives:
Not just when it comes to trivial decisions such as whether we cross our legs or take a sip of our tea. But when it comes to bigger decisions, too. Such as whether we give to charity. Or whether we find an action morally right or wrong. Even when it comes to how anxious or confident we feel.
‘Moreover,’ I say to Andy, as we give up on the plumbing and head out to the Senior Common Room instead, ‘it takes just the simplest and subtlest of nudges to change the way we act – touches which, through centuries of unconscious exposure, we have unwittingly coded into the language of everyday life.’
Studies have shown, for instance, that:
•We really do ‘take the moral high ground’ – that we are more likely to put money in a charity box if it is at the top of an escalator than at the bottom.
•We really do ‘wash our hands of it’ – that we make harsher moral judgements with clean hands than with dirty hands.
•We really do feel ‘weighed down’ by anxiety – that in virtual simulations of everyday life we feel way less confident in our surroundings if our height, unbeknownst to us, is shortened by a head (around 25cm).
‘Which is why, I guess, we say we “look down” on people,’ Andy comments.
In other words, a lot of the time when we think we’re making up our own minds, we are in fact being swayed by influences that are operating completely outside of our awareness. The Principle of Forced Choice may well have us fooled when we’re performing a simple coin-choosing task. But that’s not the half of it.
Once we’ve chosen those coins, it may also have a say in what we do with them.
Back in the 1950s an American social psychologist called Solomon Asch conducted a now classic experiment which demonstrated the effects of the most powerful influence of all on our behaviour and our decision-making: THE BEHAVIOUR AND DECISION-MAKING OF OTHERS.
What Asch did was incredibly – and worryingly – simple.
He assembled a group of nine volunteers in front of a slide projector and presented them with a series of line judgement tasks like the one shown overleaf.
Trial one: 1p.
The volunteers’ job was easy. They had to state out loud which of the three vertical lines shown in diagram A was the same length as the one in diagram B.
‘It’s a doddle, right?’ says Andy. ‘You’d need your eyes and your brain tested if you got it wrong. Unless, of course, it’s another of your tricks . . .?’
‘No, no trick,’ I say. ‘But you know what? As it turned out that’s exactly what over three-quarters of the volunteers ended up doing at least once during the course of the study. They got it wrong!’
‘Why?’
‘Because,’ I say, ‘on closer inspection the experiment wasn’t quite what it seemed. In actual fact, eight of the nine volunteers in each trial were fiendishly “in on the act” and had been instructed by Asch to give the same predetermined wrong answer on some of the comparisons. Crucially, these eight flunkies gave their answers first so the pressure was on the ninth guy – the real volunteer – to follow suit. Which 76 per cent of them did – ignoring, into the bargain, the evidence of their own eyes so as not to appear stupid.’
The bottom line is chilling.
So intent are we on fitting in that most of us are prepared to bin our own opinions and recycle the viewpoints of others. So hell bent are we on not standing out that we’re prepared to side with complete strangers against ourselves.
‘Even when we “know” that we’re right and they’re wrong,’ as Andy points out. The gravitational pull of the group is, it would seem, one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Few of us can hold out against it.
It’s not difficult to appreciate the power of the group. You only have to look around you. Football matches, pop concerts, political parties, religious faiths, Facebook . . .
‘Oxford colleges,’ interjects Andy, as we pour ourselves a coffee.
. . . the group is everywhere.
‘But why?’ he asks. ‘What’s the fascination?’
‘Actually, the answer to that question is really quite simple,’ I say. ‘Basically, our brains still think that they’re back on the plains of East Africa, some two million years ago in our evolutionary history.
‘The brain we had in those days is in many ways pretty similar to the one we have now and the primeval neural infrastructure that governed our lives back then – the pipes and wires of simplicity, subsistence and survival – still run the show today, creaking and clanking under the infinitely more complex demands of modern society.’
‘Sounds like the taps in your office!’
‘Now think about it. In prehistoric times, in the wilds of the African savannah or the depths of the Mongolian steppes, being ostracized from the group usually ended in tears. Predators, climatic conditions and starvation were all better dealt with within a group setting than they were singlehandedly.
‘Today, that’s not the case. We’ve got the benefit service, social housing schemes, the NHS . . . all of which safeguard against a pitiless prehistoric demise.’
‘It’s basically the old-fashioned tribal system, isn’t it?’ says Andy. ‘The army’s another example. Ask any soldier and he’ll tell you the same thing. The regiment he’s in is the best in the army and the battalion he’s in is the best in the regiment. It’s funny, but deadly serious at the same time. On the one hand the set-up promotes competition between units. And that’s a good thing. But on the other hand, even more importantly, what it gives you is lots of tightly knit tribes that aren’t fighting for Queen and Country but for each other. You know, studies have even shown that the more cohesive fighting units are, the less they are at risk of PTSD.’
‘Good shout,’ I say. ‘And the Ghost of Ostracization Past is still with us. Everywhere! We go along with what the boss says even though we know it’s crap. We spend Christmas with the in-laws again even though every year it’s the same old shit.’
‘We cop the same hairdo as Harry Styles even though it makes us look like a dick?’ Andy cuts in.
I take a slurp of my coffee.
‘Ahem, anyway,’ I continue, ‘we’re terrified of standing out, of being on the “outside”. And it’s incredible how deep this feeling goes. One study, for instance, showed that the brains of African-Americans registered hurt when they were given the cold shoulder by none other than a group of Ku Klux Klan. Another showed that even if you pay people to get the group elbow it still stings. Every culture has their own way of blackballing someone. Jehovah’s Witnesses disfellowship; Catholics excommunicate; Mennonites shun; clubs, fraternities and social groups expel . . .’
‘And in the Forces it’s a dishonourable discharge,’ says Andy. ‘Stays with you for life.’
‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘And it’s all to maintain standards. Keep things ticking over. Enforce a moral code. It’s all to make sure that everyone sticks together. Because all it takes is one person to go off and start doing their own thing . . .’
‘. . . and the curtain comes down on everything,’ says Andy.
‘Everyone starts leaving the cave.’
Just how subtle the pressure to conform can be in everyday life may be seen from a brilliant study which attempted to do the impossible: get hotel guests to reuse their towels.
The study was very simple. Basically, the researchers placed five different recycling request cards in over two hundred hotel rooms and totted up the number of guests from each room who bought in.
The cards were distributed randomly and each room got one of the following:
•Help the hotel save energy
•Help save the environment
•Partner with us to help save the environment
•Help save resources for future generations
•Join your fellow guests in helping to save the environment. (In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75 per cent of the guests participated in our resource savings program by using their towels more than once . . .)
Which one do you think came out best? If you think it’s the last one then you’re not alone. Forty-four per cent of the guests who saw this card in their room reused their towels.
The least effective was the first one – the one that benefited the hotel. Less than 16 per cent of guests bought that.
And that’s not all.
When the successful request was personalized to read as follows:
•Join your fellow guests in helping to save the environment. (In a study conducted in Fall 2003, 75 per cent of the guests who STAYED IN THIS ROOM (e.g. #123) participated in our new resource savings program by using their towels more than once . . .)
. . . compliance increased even more. To almost half.
‘I guess if you’re in two minds about something,’ Andy points out, ‘you’re always going to go with the flow. You’ll just follow the rest of the herd.’
Which is true. And which is great if the herd is doing the right thing – like helping to save the environment. But not if its motives are vague or misguided or harmful and no one is any the wiser.
‘One of the funniest examples of this I’ve ever come across,’ I tell Andy, ‘although it wasn’t funny at the time – happened when I was a boy.’
One evening, when I was around nine or ten, my father took me out to an Indian restaurant. As he’s paying the bill, he turns round to me and says:
‘Kev, if there’s one thing I want you to remember in life, it’s this. Persuasion ain’t about getting people to do what they don’t want to do. It’s about giving people a reason to do what they do want to do. Watch and learn.’
So he picks up a spoon and tinkles it against his glass. The room falls silent. Dad gets to his feet.
‘I’d like to thank everyone for coming,’ he announces. ‘Now I know that some of you have come from just around the corner and some of you have come from a little bit further afield. But I want you to know that you’re all very welcome, and that it’s very much appreciated . . . Oh, and there’s a small reception in the King’s Arms across the road after this. It’d be great to see you there!’
With that, he starts to clap . . . as, of course, does everyone else.
You can picture the scene. A restaurant full of strangers who we’ve never seen before, who’ve never seen each other before, all applauding wildly because they don’t want to look like the gatecrashers to the party!
As we make our way out I can’t help myself.
‘Dad,’ I ask, ‘we’re not really going to the pub, are we?’
He puts his arm around me.
‘Course not, son,’ he laughs, gesturing back towards the restaurant. ‘But you know what? That lot are – and my old mate Malcolm has just taken over as landlord. He’ll make a few quid tonight!’
My father’s little wheeze in the Indian restaurant all those years ago might well have made a few quid. Who knows how many bewildered diners traipsed across the road to the King’s Arms to raise their glasses at a non-existent party? If half as many people followed each other over as gave him a round of applause, then Malcolm, or whatever the hell his name was, would’ve done all right for himself that night.
But there are other, equally instinctive yet infinitely more injurious ways in which our deep-rooted tendency to follow the crowd can cost us money. Foremost among these is the perilous phenomenon of groupthink. Groupthink is what happens when groups – committees, task forces, think tanks, families, you name it – fail to critically evaluate the ideas they come up with because of a desire to minimize conflict.
We’ve all been there.
The pitch everyone thought ticked all the right boxes . . . but which turned out to tick all the wrong ones. The practical joke everyone agreed seemed a great idea at the time but which ended up a total disaster (stand up Messrs Ross and Brand).
‘The Iraq invasion in 2003?’ Andy offers. ‘There was certainly a lot of what you’re talking about going on after 9/11.’
Maybe.
The result is less than optimal decision-making – sometimes on a disastrous scale – facilitated by the members of whichever group is in question setting aside doubts and personal reservations in favour of smooth, swift, unanimous consensus. The causes are well documented. The process has been studied extensively by psychologists over the years and a number of contributing factors have been identified.
These include:
•A dominant, charismatic leader.
•Bombardment with positive pointers (especially those which are difficult to verify or debate).
•External pressures to ‘get the job done’.
•The discouragement, or active snuffing out, of dissenting perspectives and viewpoints.
No group is immune to the paralysing psychological nerve agent that is groupthink. But in some groups, of course, it can be way more costly than others.
Investment bankers, security analysts, business leaders, technological innovators, and political and religious alliances all have a bit more to lose than a bunch of diners in an all-you-can-eat Indian restaurant if they fail to think independently of each other and instead protect, reinforce or exaggerate their group’s prevailing mindset.
‘You wonder why fund managers can’t beat the S and P 500?’ our old friend Gordon Gekko asks in Wall Street. ‘Because they’re sheep. And sheep get slaughtered . . . Gimme guys who are poor, smart, and hungry – and no feelings. You win a few, you lose a few, but you keep on fighting. And if you need a friend, get a dog.’
No danger of him getting swallowed by the group!
Fortunately, however – though unfortunately, perhaps, for Mr Gekko – groupthink may be remedied by a very simple antidote: the incidence of one, lone dissenting voice in the ranks.
The presence of a Devil’s Advocate.
‘When Asch ran his study a second time, for instance,’ I tell Andy, as he picks up Robert Robinson’s1947 Nobel Prize for Chemistry from the mantelpiece over the fire, ‘all it took was one of his eight co-conspirators to break rank and blurt out the correct answer and the power of the group was gone.
‘The real volunteer made the right choice every time.’
But, in everyday life, it’s easier said than done.
To stick your head above the parapet; to risk being bollocked, or barracked, or belittled by the boss, or the chairperson or the ‘acknowledged expert in the field’ takes considerable fortitude – as Ed Snowden and any number of whistleblowers and contrepreneurs before him have discovered to their cost.
Added to which you may, in fact, be wrong. And they might actually be right. At the time you just don’t know. All you have to go on is the courage of your convictions.
‘You know, the intelligence services operate along exactly these lines in the fight against terrorism,’ Andy points out, putting the Nobel gong back carefully into its case and returning it to the mantelpiece. ‘At grass roots level it’s a psychological struggle, not an armed one. It’s a piece of piss to radicalize someone. Even the IRA found it easy to get young guys to become suicide bombers. But both politically and tactically it was an outrageous no-no, so in the end they decided not to use them.
‘But the recruiting job itself was easy. They just got a group of like-minded people in a room, showed them some propaganda, told them a bit about the cause and, over time, their positions hardened and they became more extreme.
‘You can do it anywhere to anyone. It’s not just a hardline Islamist thing. Sure, some of the recruits will fall by the wayside and decide they want a life. But others won’t and before you know it they’re sniffing round the rucksacks in Black’s. Mind you, it’s also easy to throw a spanner in the works – though the secret’s knowing where and when to throw it. If you get it right, all you have to do is plant someone in the group, organization or whatever it is who questions the cause or the propaganda, and that’s it. Then the whole thing goes down like a pack of cards.’
You can drown in a group.
Until it springs a leak.
Andy and I are walking around Cloister Quad, the ancient sepulchral heart of Magdalen College. It’s a beautiful spring morning and the sun is lancing across the upper slopes of the bell tower – the Hillary Step of the Oxbridge Himalaya. We pause as Andy peruses the Wall of Remembrance, the names of the Magdalen alumni who lost their lives in the two world wars.
For a moment, he seems lost in thought.
‘It’s funny,’ I say as his eyes move from column to column. ‘No one knows for certain how the psychopathic personality might have got started back in evolutionary history. Or, in fact, how it’s stood the test of time. But there’s no shortage of theories – and I wouldn’t mind betting that the capacity to be unpopular, to put your neck on the line and stick two fingers up to what other people might be thinking without batting an eye, might well have had something to do with it.’
‘How’s that?’ asks Andy, back in the land of the living.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘in the days of our ancestors, when just about every communal decision had an immediate bearing on survival, the presence of groupthink had the potential to wipe families, small groups and even entire communities clean off the face of the planet. Having the instruments to puncture it would, quite literally, have been a lifesaver.’
As we continue around the quad, I explain to Andy in a little more detail what I mean.
‘Perhaps the most obvious theory concerning the origins of psychopathy,’ I say, ‘is what I call the popular demand theory. Research has shown that individuals who score high on psychopathic traits such as confidence, charisma, ruthlessness, fearlessness, mental toughness and risk-taking – the “James Bond” profile, you might say – have more sexual partners than those who score lower on such traits.’
‘So purely on the law of averages,’ Andy butts in, ‘psychopathic genes are going to get around a bit!’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘But other theories, ironically, focus on the more dubious aspects of psychopathy. There’s a study just out, for instance, which reveals an intriguing link between creativity and cheating – both, you might say, examples of rule-breaking behaviour, one admirable and beneficial to the team or the group, the other not so admirable and downright harmful to it. Anyway, the results of the study have shed an interesting new light on the pros and cons of thinking outside the box. The researchers found that volunteers who cheated on a problem-solving task not only did better on a subsequent task involving creative thinking but also reported feeling less constrained by rules and regulations in general.’
‘Funny that,’ says Andy. ‘Even as a kid I never believed rules applied to me. I decided not to worry about them but just let everyone think I did. As far as I was concerned, they were for other kids who were a bit slow on the uptake! So, go on then. What’s the bottom line? What does this experiment say about me?’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘let’s put it this way. What it shows is that rule-breakers are rule-breakers. People who break social rules are also more likely to break other kinds of rules too – like thinking and problem-solving rules. They’re more likely to come up with creative solutions to problems, be innovators, inventors, to think originally about things. In the days of our ancestors, people like that would’ve been invaluable. As they are now. The fact that you maybe couldn’t trust them might well have been a price worth paying.’
‘So let me get this right,’ says Andy, as we stop by the entrance to Addison’s Walk. ‘Are you lot now saying that cheating is good for us?’
I cough.
‘If we’re lucky,’ I say, ‘we might see some deer in here.’
The findings of this latest study are actually in line with my own personal hunch about the origins of psychopathy: that ‘it’ didn’t evolve at all but rather the individual personality traits that comprise the psychopath mixing desk beefed themselves up on evolutionary steroids over time as they gradually became more useful.
These traits, by pure random chance, then happened to wind up in the same primeval individual one dark Darwinian day who, in the brief, basic, brutal few years that followed managed to keep their head above the floodwaters of natural selection for a sufficient – and productive enough – length of time to start the genetic ball rolling down through all future generations.
‘OK, so that might be simplifying things a tad!’ I tell Andy.
But the point I am making is one that goes right the way back to our mixing-desk analogy of earlier.
To Kierkegaard’s concept of the ‘dizziness of freedom’.
To Sartre’s dream of being everything we can be.
And to Nietzsche’s incitement to challenge the status quo.
It goes right the way back to the fundamental difference between being a GOOD psychopath and a BAD psychopath.
Ever since the days of our prehistoric ancestors, there has always been a need for risk-takers in society. There has always been a need for the ruthless in society. There has always been a need for the charming, the charismatic and the deceptive in society. And there has always been a need for the emotionally robust in society.
These are the people:
•Who don’t need to be liked.
•Who don’t need to belong.
•Who have no need for validation or affirmation.
•Who aren’t afraid to challenge prevailing norms.
Remember, the key to success is to deploy these personality traits – as Andy does – with both discretion and restraint:
•At the right LEVELS
•In the right COMBINATION
•In the right CONTEXT
And having the courage of your convictions to go against the grain, to be your own person and do your own thing regardless of what other people may think of you, is no exception.
‘You know,’ I say to Andy as we set off around Addison’s Walk, ‘whenever I ask someone: “If I could turn you into a psychopath for half an hour, with total impunity, what would you do?” most people fall into one of two camps. They either immediately come up with a catalogue of gleeful revenge against all those bastards who’ve pissed them off down the years. Or they say that they would tell the person they had never told they loved . . . that they loved them. Or something along those lines.
‘Now the key phrase in what I just said there is “with total impunity”. As soon as the thirty minutes is up, everything returns to normal as if nothing has happened. No regrets. No embarrassment. Nothing.’
‘Which is, of course, the primary difference between us psychopaths and the rest of you,’ Andy points out. ‘We couldn’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks of us.’
We pass Oscar Wilde’s seat.
‘I agree,’ I continue. ‘And right there, I think, lies the allure of the psychopath to most people. I think in a world where our behaviour is coming under closer and closer scrutiny – did you know that in the UK there’s roughly one CCTV camera for every twenty people, and what are we up to now on Facebook: almost a billion users? – we long more than ever to be free from the shackles of societal restraint, from the burden of our own self-consciousness, though we know, deep down, that we probably couldn’t handle the moral and emotional fall-out if we were. But you guys – you psychopaths – can! And I think in that sense we envy you your existential freedom. You fan the flames of our feverish libertine fantasies.’
‘Fan what?’ asks Andy.
‘Never mind,’ I say. ‘In fact, I think if Freud were alive he might say we have “psychopath envy”!’
Andy and I have retraced our steps and are sitting in Oscar’s seat. The meadow in front of us is in full bloom – a magic carpet of white and yellow haze that would’ve changed very little since Wilde’s day.
Who knows what odes, what secret golden verses this timeless little vista might have inspired? Andy says:
You know, I’ve never understood this reluctance to throw down the gauntlet. The hesitation to go for life’s jugular. Even as a kid I never had any problem making decisions. When I was about 13 and starting to think about girls, I realized I had acne and a 36-inch waist. Something had to be done.
Not having a clue about healthy diets (my breakfast would normally consist of a can of Pepsi and a Mars bar), I went to my local doctor and asked him. He gave me a sheet of paper telling me to eat apples and tomatoes, things like that, so that’s what I did.
I lost a stone over the summer holidays and still stay away from sugar even now. I made the decision and that was that. Job done.
Then there was all the gang stuff. Like most of the kids on our estate, I ran about with one lot or another. But I was never the leader of any of them. Far from it. I never wanted to be a leader because gang leaders were always getting the piss taken out of them – or even worse, getting the shit kicked out of them – when they fucked up.
So what was the point? Absolutely jack shit! I preferred to stay in the background watching and listening and then making up my own mind what I wanted to do instead of being told by some knob who didn’t know his arse from his elbow.
I never did anything I didn’t want to do. No one could make me and if they tried they usually wished they hadn’t. I never smoked, for example. The gang started when we were about nine or ten. But it never made any sense to me so I just didn’t do it.
The other kids stank of tobacco, it cost more money than any of us had, and smoking dog ends picked up from the estate’s stairwells just didn’t do it for me. If that meant that I didn’t fit in, well, fuck it.
Mind you, all this being in the background stuff ended when I was 16 years old and joined the army. I was sent to the Infantry Junior Leaders Battalion and was told on day one that as well as being trained to take orders as a basic infantry soldier I was also going to be trained to give them.
So whether I liked it or not, I was going to have to be a gang leader after all – and do all of the things that went with it. I was going to have to make decisions that would affect not only my life but also the lives of others. But in a much bigger way than I was ever going to do in Peckham.
Then again, some things never change – and just like the kids in the gangs back home, I soon learnt that every other Junior Leader always had a better plan than yours. And whether they did or whether they didn’t – and, to be fair, some did! – always jumped up and down like Blakey from On the Buses ramming it down your throat if yours went tits up.
Funnily enough, though, you never saw those people stand up and be counted in the planning phase of a project, at the time when opinions and decisions were actually needed.
Nooo . . . they only piped up afterwards!
‘Like you were saying,’ Andy continues, ‘people seem to have this fear of failure, this automatic self-protection module built into them. When the finger is pointed they don’t want it pointing at them.’
‘So how do you actually go about making decisions?’ I ask. ‘What kind of thought process goes on in your head?’
Andy leans back and gazes up at the comatose blue sky. Magdalen airspace is cloudless. This is what he says:
Well, as I see it, there are two ways to make a decision. The first is when it’s calm and there is time to learn more about whatever situation you’re making the decision about. That’s when you seek opinions and get ideas from whoever is involved in the outcome. Everyone should be encouraged to share their opinions. And everyone should be encouraged to listen to them.
In the SAS this is a tried-and-tested system because you work as part of a four-man team and everyone involved in carrying out the plan has their own individual skills and their own individual input – and so all are part of the process.
It’s a useful system because at the end of the day everyone wants to stay alive!
But out here in the real world, where the emphasis isn’t always on staying alive, I’ve discovered things work a bit differently. Just like in the Junior Leaders Battalion all those years ago, if a plan is successful everyone’s suddenly a part of it.
But if the plan turns to rat shit and everything goes tits up exactly the same people will turn round and tell you: ‘I told you!’
Fine by me!
From their point of view – from the coward’s point of view – it’s a win-win situation, isn’t it?
But that’s not the way I operate. Never has been and never will be.
I like to put my neck on the line. After listening to everyone, I’ll make a decision and stick to it. I mean, when all is said and done – and as someone once said, there’s a lot more said than done! – coming up with a plan isn’t exactly rocket science, is it? All you can do is make the best decision you can based on your experience, your training and your knowledge.
Everyone else then either falls in behind me and gets on with it. Or they step aside and let the ones who do want to move forward get going.
The second decision-making process kicks in when you have to make an instant decision. This is when the shit’s hit the fan and everyone is looking for an immediate answer to a problem.
In the past, I’ve had to make life and death decisions within seconds – the shepherd boy in Iraq, for instance. That’s just the way it is.
Sometimes I’ve had my experience, training or knowledge to call on. And that’s great. But sometimes I haven’t – and that’s also great! If something has to be done, then it has to be done no matter what you know or don’t know. Any delay just ends up making things worse. You just have crack on and do it.
Lead, follow, or get out of the way!
‘Simple as that?’ I ask.
Andy looks at me blankly.
‘Yeah, simple as that,’ he says. ‘Any plan or decision I make immediately becomes my mission. And nothing else matters apart from that mission. Nothing diverts me from it because I am one hundred per cent confident that the mission will work. It dominates everything else going on inside my head.’
‘But where does that confidence come from?’ I ask. ‘Have you always had it or is it something you’ve learned over the years?’
Andy stands up.
‘I’ve always had it,’ he says. ‘I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid I knew I’d get out of trouble. OK, I might end up in a little bit of shit. You know, I might only get 80 per cent out of trouble. But that didn’t matter. I just knew I’d get out in the end. I’ll give you an example. During the BTZ patrol my eight-man unit was, as you know, exposed in the desert. As the Iraqis started advancing on us in their armoured vehicles, all we had were our assault rifles and one disposable anti-tank rocket per man.
‘We could hear the armoured vehicles’ tracks about to come over the high ground to our left. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide – we’d already established that! – and we were in the middle of the fucking desert. If we ran what difference would it make? All it would mean is we’d die out of breath.
‘Now it was as clear as crystal in my mind that as soon as those armoured vehicles came over the rise we were history. So anything we did was a bonus. I had to make an instant decision. What would it be? Surrender? Run? Fight? Fight! It had to be! I decided to face the Iraqis head on and attack!’
‘And is it the same now?’ I ask, ‘on Civvy Street? Are you as decisive in everyday life as you were on the battlefield?’
‘Absolutely!’ says Andy. ‘Once I left the SAS and joined the real world, I found that exactly the same thought processes work in business. I’ll give you another example.’
At the time when mobile phones were in the process of becoming smart phones with all the geeky gadgetry and shit, a friend and I were convinced that there would be an explosion in the digital book market. So we came up with a plan to get books on mobiles – you know, to provide the software and that – and then to sign all the publishers and mobile phone companies up to subscribe to it.
That became my mission. And if a publisher or phone company knocked us back to begin with, so what? I just kept ploughing on with the mission because in my head I was certain that both sides would ‘get it’ in the end and come round to our way of seeing things.
As it turned out – they did! And so did Tesco’s as a matter of fact, the UK’s biggest booksellers. They ended up buying our company in a multi-million-pound deal as part of their digital empire. Of course, we’re talking here about ‘professional’ contexts, Kev. About making a stand for a living. Or in my case to keep on living!
But it’s also important just to stand up for yourself. You know, in everyday life. If you’re always being pushed around, if you’re always doing what other people want and not what you want, then you’re never going to know who you really are – and neither will anyone else.
You’ll be everybody and nobody.
Your whole personality will be a patchwork quilt of everyone else’s – stitched together by the need to be liked or the need to fit in or the need to be someone.
But the irony is: you’ll never be anyone if you live like that. You’ll just be an alias. You’ll be a temporary Word file that keeps on appearing and disappearing but which actually has nothing in it.
Andy’s right, of course. And his observations won’t come as a surprise to too many of you out there, I’m sure. But what might well come as a surprise is the fact that by being a bit more curmudgeonly you could do a bit better for yourself in life.
A recent study entitled Do Nice Guys – and Gals – Really Finish Last?, for instance, comes up with an answer to that question: a resounding, if rather unpalatable YES!
Male employees who score below average on the personality trait ‘agreeableness’ earn around 18 per cent more per annum than those who chill out at the smilier end of the scale. Tougher-minded women, on the other hand, fare a little worse, but still come out on top: earning around 5 per cent more.
One of the reasons for this differential, the researchers suggest, is surprisingly simple. Ball-breakers are more likely to secure higher salaries for themselves across the negotiating table. Either to begin with, when offered the job. Or later, when getting a raise.
But there are other, less proximal reasons.
Ballbreakers are also more likely to:
•Be respected (if not exactly liked).
•Give it to you straight (even if it hurts).
•Push both themselves and their employees harder.
In short, you’re more likely to know where you stand with a ball-breaker.
And that, in modern-day business culture, is a way more valuable asset than simply being liked.
‘Talking of being liked, I once heard a story about one of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers,’ I tell Andy, as we come out of Addison’s Walk and double back on ourselves to the New Building.
In the middle of the night, around 3 a.m., he dials up his secretary and gets her out of bed.
‘What’s the problem?’ she mumbles, half asleep.
‘I need a mouse,’ he replies, casually. ‘Could you pop out and get one for me?’
The woman is gobsmacked.
‘Er, I don’t wish to be rude,’ she stammers. ‘But do you have any idea what time it is? I mean, do you really need to have one now? Can’t you just wait until the computer guys get in in the morning?’
There’s a moment of silence.
Then a moment of horror as the awful realization dawns.
‘I’m afraid you don’t understand,’ says her boss. ‘I’m not talking about my computer. My computer is working fine. No, when I say mouse, I mean a real mouse. You know, for my cat. She’s bored.’
Back in my rooms Andy opens the wardrobe. Ever since I told him it was C.S. Lewis’s old pad when he was here back in the 1920s he’s been hell bent on it.
It’s one stonker of an anti-climax. No lions or witches to speak of. Just a West Ham scarf.
He pulls it out. Then tosses it back in.
‘You know, your story about the Mouse Man doesn’t surprise me one bit,’ he says, closing the door on the magic of Narnia for ever. ‘Guys like him are actually more common than you might think in the city. And you know what? The reason we don’t hear more about them is precisely because they’re SUCCESSFUL.
‘The moment things go tits up – that’s when the skeletons come tumbling out of the closets.’
I think Andy may well have a point and I tell him about an exercise I once ran to demonstrate precisely how willing we are to cede ruthlessness to success.
The idea was pretty simple.
I handed the following fictitious description of a company CEO to a bunch of first-year psychology students and asked them to indicate, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good a boss they rated him:
Paul Jones is 38 years old and is the head of a major city investment corporation. He is a maverick nonconformist with an explosive temper who is prone to pushing boundaries and who occasionally operates on the borders of ethical practice. He is a flamboyant risk-taker and is ice-cool under pressure but is known for his tendency to reduce senior colleagues to tears and to fire them on the spot if their level of performance fails to match up to his own remorseless standards. Last year, under his stewardship, the bank’s annual pre-tax profit stood at a record-breaking £8 billion.
On the basis of this description, Paul’s average rating weighed in at a commendable 8.3 out of 10.
That’s a point for every billion!
Yet when I showed the profile to another group of students his share price plummeted to a diminutive 0.6 on the key substitution of just a single, significant detail:
Paul Jones is 38 years old and is the head of a major city investment corporation. He is a maverick nonconformist with an explosive temper who is prone to pushing boundaries and who occasionally operates on the borders of ethical practice. He is a flamboyant risk-taker and is ice-cool under pressure but is known for his tendency to reduce senior colleagues to tears and to fire them on the spot if their level of performance fails to match up to his own remorseless standards. Last year, under his stewardship, the bank MADE A RECORD-BREAKING PRE-TAX LOSS OF £2 BILLION.
‘If you’re going to be ruthless you’d better make it count!’ I say to Andy.
He smiles. ‘That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,’ he says. ‘But another way might be this: if you want to count, you’d better make sure you’re ruthless!’
I grab my jacket and we head back across the cloisters to the dining hall.
Lunch then punting then something cold by the river is the order of the rest of the day.
‘You going to let me have a go?’ asks Andy.
‘At drinking by the river?’ I say. ‘Not sure, mate. They’re nice people round here. To be honest, they just don’t need it.’
Suddenly, Ray Winstone joins us. ‘I’m not talking about your poncey Pimms,’ he snarls. ‘I mean punting!’
I smile.
‘Oh punting! Yes, of course mate,’ I say. ‘Why wouldn’t I? In fact, you’ll be doing more than just having a go. The old back’s starting to play up. You’ll be at it all day.’
While Andy and I were writing this chapter Carla, a friend of mine, took a particular interest. Carla is a secretary at a top London law firm and, on first impressions at least, seems – or should I say, seemed – like the poster girl for job satisfaction.
She was outgoing, intelligent, had a good sense of humour – all the things you get in the personal ads – but if you scratched beneath the surface the picture was a little less rosy. Beneath the veneer of sassy sophistication, Carla was exhausted, depressed and run off her feet – and all because of a simple glitch in her personality.
She couldn’t say no. To anyone. This one single character flaw was ruining Carla’s life. It had already cost her a relationship (when she was getting in from work she was switching on the computer and putting in another shift at home); at least one good friend (having got hold of some tickets for a Bruce Springsteen gig two months in advance she’d then stayed in the office preparing the company audit); and also, ironically, an unblemished employment record (mistakes were beginning to creep in and she’d been given an official warning).
She was desperate for something – anything – to stem the flow of ‘yes’.
Could befriending her inner GOOD PSYCHOPATH possibly help?
Andy and I had a long chat with Carla and afterwards put our heads together. What we came up with was a three-month programme based on the principles laid out below. When the three months were up we had another chat with Carla. But this time a much shorter one. In just that brief period of GOOD PSYCHOPATH training she’d managed to get her life completely back on track.
She’d become her OWN PERSON. Not everyone else’s. She had a new job, a new boyfriend, and a new life. But this time one that she was in control of. She was still the same ‘old’ Carla: warm, friendly and outgoing. But it was no longer just a façade. She now felt that way for real.
In fact, her inner GOOD PSYCHOPATH actually enjoyed saying no. Each time she said it, it felt like a pat on the back.
Carla the doormat was suddenly YES-terday’s news.
‘Well, it certainly works!’ she told us when we met up with her the second time. ‘It really has made a difference. And if it’s done the trick for me it’s definitely going to work for other people.’
Sounds like an ad, doesn’t it? Which it is! But it really won’t be long before you start to notice a difference.
‘And if you don’t,’ says Andy, ‘so what? You’re not exactly going to do anything about it, are you?’
Remember Andy’s mate Tony, the plastic Jock, in Chapter Five – the Regiment guy who bought the Highland cottage only to discover he never really wanted it in the first place?
Well, here’s the deal.
The Number One principle for getting what you want is also the Number One principle for avoiding what you don’t want:
Work out precisely what it is that you want to do with your time – because if you don’t know what you DO want to do with it, you won’t know what you DON’T want to do with it!
In other words:
•Before you can become your own person, you first have to know who that person is.
•Before you go your own way, you first need to know exactly where that way leads.
•Before you turn people down you, first need to know that you want to turn them down.
‘A good way of starting the ball rolling,’ says Andy, ‘is to keep a diary of all the times when you say yes when you mean no. Or better still, all the times when you should’ve said no but said yes. That way you’ll be able to identify triggers – feelings, situations, people – which will then give you a heads-up for the next time you find yourself in that position. I guarantee two things will happen:
‘First, you’ll be surprised at how many times you do it.
‘Secondly, once you start keeping a record of all your unnecessary yeses – all your “unyecessaries”! – you’ll start cutting down on them anyway.’
‘If people are putting pressure on you to do something,’ says Andy, ‘you should treat it as a compliment. It means they value what you’ve got to offer – otherwise they wouldn’t bother.’
He’s right. And this way of looking at it – unusual though it is – allows you to do something you may never have thought of before. It allows you to RESPOND from a position of STRENGTH as opposed to REACTING from one of WEAKNESS.
This distinction between RESPONDING and REACTING is fundamental to becoming your own person.
RESPONDING is:
•Measured
•Authoritative
•Empowering
REACTING is:
•Knee-jerk
•Defensive
•Exhausting
So how does this difference between RESPONDING and REACTING pan out in your dealings with others? Well, it enables you to do a number of things that make it easier to stay true to yourself.
By RESPONDING to REQUESTS as opposed to REACTING to PEOPLE, you depersonalize interactions and draw an important line between REJECTING WHAT A PERSON IS ASKING and REJECTING THE PERSON THEMSELVES.
How many times have you found yourself saying something like this:
‘Well, under ordinary circumstances, no, but seeing as it’s you.’
Or: ‘I wouldn’t normally. But because he’s a mate . . .’
When the messenger becomes part of the message, it’s easy to feel outnumbered. It’s easy to feel that it’s suddenly two against one.
‘It was exactly like that in Northern Ireland,’ says Andy. ‘If I’d grown up on the Bogside instead of an estate in Peckham I’d probably have been one of the players. I know it seems hard to believe but some of them were actually all right. At the end of the day it wasn’t the lads themselves that we were fighting against. It was what they were doing. And that’s exactly why we called them “players”.
‘There wasn’t anything personal about it. It was all strictly business. Everything was just a “game” – albeit a very unpleasant one.’
Research has shown that the simple act of providing a reason for your behaviour – even if it’s utter nonsense! – makes it far more acceptable than if you don’t give one at all.
One famous study, for instance, showed that if people barged into a photocopier queue without explaining why, they were quickly sent packing. But if, on the other hand, they asked if they could go to the front because they ‘really needed to use the photocopier’ – duh! – that was fine. They got away scot free!
‘Imagine that your boss asks you to do something but you’re already up to your neck in it working on a crucial presentation for next week,’ says Andy. ‘Instead of saying “yes”, invoke the Perceived Self-Interest principle of persuasion and say something like this:
I’d love to help but I really want to make sure next week’s presentation is streets ahead of our competitors’ and I need to devote all my resources to ensuring that’s the case.
‘Not only have you got off the extra work – you’ve gone up in your boss’s estimation!’
Everyone knows what happened to the guy who built his house on sand: the first storm and the house collapsed.
Well, what’s true for houses is also true for people. If you want to stand up for yourself – and you want to remain standing – you need to have a solid foundation.
The bedrock of that foundation is CONFIDENCE.
Confidence is integral to standing on your own two feet because it builds SELF-ESTEEM. People with HIGH self-esteem feel GOOD about themselves and people with LOW self-esteem feel BAD about themselves – and the problem with feeling bad about yourself is that it sets off a vicious circle.
If I don’t feel good about myself, low self-esteem sufferers think, then why should anyone else? And in an attempt to give them a reason they do anything they can to please.
So how do you go about building up your confidence? How do you put an end to this cycle of self-despair? A number of simple pointers may help.
Quite literally, according to Andy.
‘Confident soldiers,’ he says, ‘and, of course, I’m not just talking about soldiers here, are those who put the hours in. That’s why in the Regiment confidence is always sky high. You have to work your bollocks off in the first place to get in. And then you have to work them back on again to stay in! Give me two soldiers of equal ability – one who gives his all in everything he does and another who just goes through the motions – and I’ll tell you who’s the more confident.
‘Confidence doesn’t just come from doing a good job. Confidence comes from knowing you’ve done a good job.’
Andy’s observations have significant implications for the way we conduct not just our interactions with other people but also our lives in general.
Core confidence comes from:
•Facing up to our responsibilities on a daily basis.
•Discharging them judiciously.
•Overcoming the challenges they bring.
If you’re a performer – an athlete, musician or actor, for instance – you should be practising every day otherwise, deep down, you’ll realize that you’re ‘burying your talents’ and your self-esteem will suffer.
If you’re a working mum (or dad) who’s not spending enough time with your kids, then again, deep down, you may have the sense that you’re ‘not quite up to it’ . . . and that nagging sense of falling short as a parent will translate into low self-esteem.
At the same time, of course, as we saw in Chapter Four, it’s important not to go down the perfectionist road. All of us fall short on an impressively regular basis and goading ourselves, kicking ourselves and beating ourselves up about it is not going to change that any time soon.
The answer lies in finding the right balance – and maintaining that balance – as opposed to scampering like crazy from one end of life’s manically teetering seesaw to the other, REACTING to the ups and downs.
In balance you find control.
And in control you find confidence.
And in confidence you find YOURSELF.
We’ve all heard the saying: ‘You can look the part but can you be the part?’ But research suggests that there’s more to ‘looking’ than meets the eye.
One study, for instance, has shown that adopting an authoritative pose for two minutes (legs a couple of feet apart and hands on hips) can raise testosterone (the body’s confidence hormone) levels by as much as 20 per cent.
‘So next time you’re facing a difficult meeting,’ says Andy, ‘shut the door, put up the “Do Not Disturb” sign, and bung on a couple of Wonder Woman DVDs.’
But the way you look doesn’t just boost your own confidence. It can also inspire confidence in others.
‘I know a German arms dealer who wears a made-in-the-USA suit, button-down-collar shirt and understated watch when he is selling in the US,’ Andy tells me, ‘but cargos, same shirt and a chunky Breitling when he’s working in Kabul.
‘Everywhere he goes, he carries a manicure set with him at all times, to make sure his nails are immaculate. As he says, “When you look like your customers they warm to you because their unconscious tells them that you are one of them. But being just that little bit more smartly dressed than them tells them I am the same, only just a little better. So then they want a piece of the action.’
Of course, it’s also important to look the part during the meeting itself – and anything that conveys anxiety, regret or discomfort to other people should be hunted down to extinction and ruthlessly put out of its misery:
•Avoidance of eye contact
•Fidgeting
•Nervous tics
•A hunched, submissive posture . . .
. . . they’ve all got to go.
Find out what it is that gives YOU away – and give IT away!
Because the more you look like what you’re saying, the more it’ll look like you mean business.
‘A few years ago I worked on the action film Heat as a technical advisor,’ says Andy. ‘The film starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro along with an arsenal of automatic weapons in downtown LA. What’s not to like?
‘Anyway, while I was there I learned a lot from the film’s director, Michael Mann. One thing he taught me, during a show-and-tell session at the production office, was how important it is to get the details right. In the meeting, we had all the main characters’ minor accessories spread out on a table – rings, watches, tie pins, stuff like that. Michael was checking that he was happy with the final selection. As it turned out one of the items – one of the actors’ watches that was only ever going to appear in the film for ten seconds max – took up an hour’s discussion. I just couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. Who cared if it was a Rolex or a Timex? Did it really mean anything in the grand scheme of things?
‘You bet it did! It meant everything. The character being discussed was called Nate, a sophisticated underworld middleman played by John Voight. The scene in which we see the watch is when he’s on the phone, drinking a glass of champagne. Now, this guy is über-cool. He just wouldn’t wear a chunky, flashy bit of bling. Instead, he’d wear something much more understated – and so that’s what Michael chose for him.
‘I learned a big lesson that day from Michael Mann. And it was this. In life, it’s not just people in the know who get things. It’s all of us. Whether we’re aware of it at the time or not. I guess, from my own line of work, I kind of knew that anyway – you know, all the little details I was telling you about when you’re working undercover and blending into local communities and shit. But—’
‘But when it’s not a matter of life and death, the level of detail surprised you?’ I interject.
Andy shakes his head. ‘You don’t know Michael Mann, Kev,’ he says. ‘To him making movies is a matter of life and death! But yeah, you’re right I suppose. So anyway, if you’re sitting in the pictures munching popcorn when Nate takes his drink and you see a big lump of bling on his wrist, your unconscious is instantly going to scream at you that something is wrong. And just that one, small, seemingly insignificant detail can fuck up your enjoyment of the film.
‘But if, on the other hand, Nate wears a cool, sophisticated, understated watch, we don’t care if we don’t know how expensive it is. Or what make it is. Instead, what matters is that our brains recognize that it is expensive. And that it is cool. Just like Nate. We then gain even more satisfaction from the film because our unconscious gives us a little pat on the back to tell us how clever we are in appreciating this detail.’
I stare at Andy in stunned silence.
If I’d closed my eyes there for a moment I could have been forgiven for thinking there was another psychologist in the boat. Not only that but, much to my annoyance, he’d also managed to punt us up and down the Cherwell without so much as a single drop of water entering our craft.
As we enter the shade of the moorings under Magdalen bridge, I have to admit the temptation is overwhelming. One quick shove and the bastard’s in the lilies!
But much to my regret, and unlike Oscar Wilde perhaps, I manage to resist it.
‘Quite the psychologist, aren’t we?’ I mutter instead.
‘Well, we need at least one,’ he says.
He secures the boat and jumps out.
A leg goes in.
I pretend I haven’t noticed.
But I know he knows I have.
Now we know the above is a lot to take in, so while you’re working on it . . .
. . . we’re going to end with an emergency course in assertiveness first aid just in case you need to say ‘NO!’ tomorrow!
If you’re used to saying ‘yes’ or not sticking your neck out, then, let’s face it, like any habit you’re going to find it difficult to give up.
‘But just being aware of that fact,’ says Andy, ‘should make it a little bit easier. Once you realize that you need to be a little bit brave . . . it’s amazing how often you can be!’
Next time you find yourself in a position where you’re being put under pressure to do something you really don’t want to do, just think to yourself: ‘There are some people in life who actually enjoy saying no!’ Then see if there’s anything in it!
‘Or just imagine you’re one of the dragons in Dragon’s Den,’ says Andy. ‘“Thanks for coming but this time I won’t be investing. Good luck!” You’ll be surprised by the reaction you get from the other side. It’ll be nothing compared to what you thought it was going be. What you have to remember is this: they have just as much going on in their lives as you do in yours. They’ll quickly move on.’
You may feel like a bad friend, a lousy colleague, an uncaring partner. But that’s all it is: a feeling. It’ll pass – and quicker than you might think. In fact, any awkwardness or anxiety you feel is a good thing. It’s a healing, healthy pain as opposed to a malignant, malevolent one.
It’s the pain of you getting your life back.
So what if your boss, or friend, or workmates are inconvenienced, disappointed or surprised by the fact you’ve knocked them back?
‘That’s their emotions,’ says Andy. ‘And their responsibility. Not yours. You’ve got absolutely no control over what they think. So why worry about them? If they find what you are saying is unreasonable, that’s their problem. Get over it.’
So what if you miss out on an opportunity this time? There’ll be others. And again, as Andy rightly points out:
‘It’s not all or nothing. When you close the door on something you don’t want to do, you open another on something you do want to do.’
If you’re caught in an influence ambush, and discover, to your horror, that your ‘no’ gun isn’t loaded, retreat to a safe position under the pretext of checking your diary (or some other such reason appropriate to the context) and quickly slot in points 1, 2 and 3!
Then it’s safety catch off and ALL SYSTEMS NO!
Giving yourself that vital bit of breathing space puts any decision you might suddenly have to make on a functional, emotional bypass, enabling you, as we said earlier, to surgically remove the request from the person making it and to evaluate its merits calmly, rationally and under a local psychological anaesthetic.
Today! Pick some soft targets and start off with those, then gradually build up to some harder ones. Go into a shop, for example, and when the sales assistant asks if they can help you say: ‘No.’ On a train, if someone asks you if you mind if they open the window say: ‘Yes.’ Or in a restaurant, if the food or the staff fails to measure up, don’t leave a tip or ask that the service charge be deducted from your bill.
Just like any other muscle the ‘no’ muscle needs to be toned.
Andy suggests working out on cold-callers.
‘Don’t just put the phone down on them,’ he says. ‘Why would you want to do that? You’re passing up a free training session! Tell them straight that you’re not interested in whatever shit they’re trying to flog you and then stay on the line to hear what they’ve got to say. If you’re not match fit and need a bit of a warm-up, it’s just what the doctor ordered. And you don’t even pay for the call! I think cold-callers should be available on the NHS.’
‘Is that what you do?’ I ask, as the sun puts its feet up over Christ Church meadow and the first beer of the evening hits the spot. ‘Give them the run around?’
He wrings out his sock. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Where’s the fun in that? I just ask them if they’ve let Jesus into their lives. Nine times out of ten the next thing you hear is a dial tone!’
Trial two: 5p.
0–11 You possess about as much individualism as an ant colony and a profile so low it’s almost subterranean. No wonder no one knows who you are. You don’t know who you are!
12–17 You have little appetite for conflict and a strong need to fit in. Time to get out more!
18–22 You’re no pushover but prefer not to upset the applecart if you can help it. You are affable and easy-going. Ish!
23–28 You can give as good as you get and don’t take crap from anyone. A psychological street-fighter!
29–33 Thinking outside the box? What box?
fn1 For instance in TRIAL 1, STEP 2 – if my prediction had been 20p, as soon as you had picked up the 20p to ‘discard’ it I would’ve asked you to hand it to me and declared my prediction correct. In TRIAL 1, STEP 3 – if my prediction had been 50p, I would’ve framed your pushing it towards me as evidence of you ‘selecting’ it, not discarding it.