59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot

ALSO BY RICHARD WISEMAN

Quirkology

Did You Spot the Gorilla?

The Luck Factor

Laughlab

To Jeff

CONTENTS

introduction
Self-help exposed, Sophie’s question, and the potential for rapid change

happiness
Why positive thinking often fails and how the real route to happiness involves a pencil, keeping the perfect diary, small acts of kindness, and developing the gratitude attitude

persuasion
Why rewards fail, how to give the flawless interview, improve your social life by making mistakes, never lose your wallet again, and convince anyone of anything by using your pet frog

motivation
The dark side of visualization, how to achieve absolutely anything by creating the ideal plan, overcoming procrastination, and employing “doublethink”

creativity
Exploding the myth of brainstorming, how to get in touch with your inner Leonardo merely by glancing at modern art, lying down, and putting a plant on your desk

attraction
Why you shouldn’t play hard to get, how the subtle art of seduction involves the simplest of touches, roller-coaster rides, and avoiding artificial Christmas trees

relationships
The perils of “active listening,” why Velcro can help couples stick together, words speak louder than actions, and a single photograph can make all the difference

stress
Why not to kick and scream, how to reduce resentment in seconds, harness the power of a four-legged friend, and think your way to low blood pressure

decision making
Why two heads are no better than one, how never to regret a decision again, protect yourself against hidden persuaders, and tell when someone is lying to you

parenting
The Mozart myth, how to choose the best name for a baby, instantly divine a child’s destiny using just three marsh-mallows, and effectively praise young minds

personality
Why not to trust graphology, how to gain an apparently magical insight into other people’s personality from their fingers and thumbs, their pets, and the time they go to bed

conclusion
Sophie’s answer: Ten techniques in 59 seconds

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTES

introduction

Self-help
exposed
,
Sophie’s
question
, and the        
    potential for
rapid change

DO YOU WANT TO IMPROVE
an important aspect of your life? Perhaps lose weight, find your perfect partner, obtain your dream job, or simply be happier? Try this simple exercise. …

Close your eyes and imagine the new you. Think how great you would look in those close-fitting designer jeans, dating Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie, sitting in a luxurious leather chair at the top of the corporate ladder, or sipping a piña colada as the warm waves of the Caribbean gently lap at your feet.

The good news is that this type of exercise has been recommended by some in the self-help industry for years. The bad news is that a large body of research now suggests that such exercises are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, harmful. Although imagining your perfect self may make you feel better, engaging in such mental escapism can also have the unfortunate side effect of leaving you unprepared for the difficulties that crop up on the rocky road to success, thus increasing the chances of your faltering at the first hurdle rather than persisting in the face of failure. Fantasizing about heaven on earth may put a smile on your face, but it is unlikely to help transform your dreams into reality.

Other research suggests that the same goes for many popular techniques that claim to improve your life. Attempting to “think yourself happy” by suppressing negative thoughts can make you obsess on the very thing that makes you unhappy. Group brainstorming can produce fewer and less original
ideas than individuals working alone. Punching a pillow and screaming out loud can increase, rather than decrease, your anger and stress levels.

Then there is the infamous “Yale Goal Study.” According to some writers, in 1953 a team of researchers interviewed Yale’s graduating seniors, asking them whether they had written down the specific goals that they wanted to achieve in life. Twenty years later the researchers tracked down the same cohort and found that the 3 percent of people who had specific goals all those years before had accumulated more personal wealth than the other 97 percent of their classmates combined. It is a great story, frequently cited in self-help books and seminars to illustrate the power of goal setting. There is just one small problem—as far as anyone can tell, the experiment never actually took place. In 2007 writer Lawrence Tabak, from the magazine
Fast Company
, attempted to track down the study, contacting several writers who had cited it, the secretary of the Yale Class of 1953, and other researchers who had tried to discover whether the study had actually happened.
¹
No one could produce any evidence that it had ever been conducted, causing Tabak to conclude that it was almost certainly nothing more than an urban myth. For years, self-help gurus had been happy to describe a study without checking their facts.

Both the public and the business world have bought into modern-day mind myths for years and, in so doing, may have significantly decreased the likelihood of achieving their aims and ambitions. Worse still, such failure often encourages people to believe that they cannot control their lives. This is especially unfortunate, as even the smallest loss of perceived control can have a dramatic effect on people’s confidence, happiness, and life span. In one classic study conducted by Ellen
Langer at Harvard University, half of the residents in a nursing home were given a houseplant and asked to look after it, while the other residents were given an identical plant but told that the staff would take responsibility for it.
²
Six months later, the residents who had been robbed of even this small amount of control over their lives were significantly less happy, healthy, and active than the others. Even more distressing, 30 percent of the residents who had not looked after their plant had died, compared to 15 percent of those who had been allowed to exercise such control. Similar results have been found in many areas, including education, career, health, relationships, and dieting. The message is clear—those who do not feel in control of their lives are less successful, and less psychologically and physically healthy, than those who do feel in control.

A few years ago I was having lunch with a friend named Sophie. Sophie is a bright, successful thirtysomething who holds a senior position in a firm of management consultants. Over lunch Sophie explained that she had recently bought a well-known book on increasing happiness, and she asked me what I thought of the industry. I explained that I had serious reservations about the scientific backing for some of the techniques being promoted, and described how any failure to change could do considerable psychological harm. Sophie looked concerned and then asked whether academic psychology had produced more scientifically supported ways of improving people’s lives. I started to describe some of the quite complex academic work in happiness, and after about fifteen minutes or so Sophie stopped me. She politely explained that interesting though it was, she was a busy person, and she asked whether I could come up with some effective advice that didn’t take quite so much time to implement. I asked
how long I had. Sophie glanced at her watch, smiled, and replied, “About a minute?”

Sophie’s comment made me stop and think. Many people are attracted to self-development and self-improvement because of the lure of quick and easy solutions to various issues in their lives. Unfortunately, most academic psychology either fails to address these issues or presents far more time-consuming and complex answers (thus the scene in Woody Allen’s film
Sleeper
, in which Allen’s character discovers that he has awakened two hundred years in the future, sighs, and explains that had he been in therapy all this time he would almost be cured). I wondered whether there were tips and techniques hidden away in academic journals that were empirically supported but quick to carry out.

Over the course of a few months I carefully searched through endless journals containing research papers from many different areas of psychology. As I examined the work, a promising pattern emerged, with researchers in quite different fields developing techniques that help people achieve their aims and ambitions in minutes, not months. I collected hundreds of these studies, drawn from many different areas of the behavioral sciences. From mood to memory, persuasion to procrastination, resilience to relationships, together they represent a new science of rapid change.

There is a very old story, often told to fill time during training courses, involving a man trying to fix his broken boiler. Despite his best efforts over many months, he simply can’t mend it. Eventually, he gives up and decides to call in an expert. The engineer arrives, gives one gentle tap on the side of the boiler, and stands back as it springs to life. The engineer presents the man with a bill, and the man argues that he should pay only a small fee as the job took the engineer only a few moments. The engineer quietly explains that the man is
not paying for the time he took to tap the boiler but rather the years of experience involved in knowing exactly where to tap. Just like the expert engineer tapping the boiler, the techniques described in this book demonstrate that effective change does not have to be time-consuming. In fact, it can take less than a minute and is often simply a question of knowing exactly where to tap.

happiness

Why positive
thinking
often fails and
how the
real
route to happiness involves a
pencil
,
keeping the perfect
diary
,
small acts of
kindness
, and
developing the
gratitude
attitude

WHY IS IT IMPORTANT TO BE HAPPY?
Well, for one thing, by definition, you will feel better. But there is more to it than that. Happiness does not just make you enjoy life more; it actually affects how successful you are in both your personal life and your professional life.

A few years ago Sonja Lyubomirsky at the University of California and her colleagues set about the mammoth task of reviewing hundreds of studies in which experimenters cheered up selected people and then monitored the effects of their subjects’ newfound joy.
¹
All sorts of procedures were employed to make participants feel happy, including having them smell fresh-cut flowers, read out positive affirmations (“I really am a good person”), eat chocolate cake, dance, or watch a funny film. Sometimes the experimenters resorted to trickery, telling participants that they had performed especially well on an IQ test or ensuring that they “accidentally” found some money in the street. Regardless of the method used, the overall result was clear—happiness doesn’t just flow from success; it actually causes it.

After trawling the data from hundreds of studies involving more than a quarter of a million participants, Lyubomirsky discovered impressive benefits to being happy. Happiness makes people more sociable and altruistic, it increases how much they like themselves and others, it improves their ability to resolve conflict, and it strengthens their immune systems. The cumulative effect means that people have more
satisfying and successful relationships, find more fulfilling careers, and live longer, healthier lives.

Given the emotional and tangible benefits of happiness, it is not surprising that everyone wants a slice of the pie. But what is the most effective way of putting a permanent smile on your face? Ask most people the question, and you are likely to receive a two-word answer: more money. In survey after survey, the need for a fatter wallet consistently tops the “must have” list for happiness.
²
But is it really possible to buy happiness, or do financial aspirations set you on the road to despair?

Part of the answer comes from a remarkable study conducted in the 1970s by Philip Brickman from Northwestern University and his colleagues.
³
Brickman wanted to discover what happens to people’s happiness when their financial dreams come true. Does a huge windfall really create a long-term smile, or does the initial thrill quickly fade away as newfound fortune becomes commonplace? Brickman contacted a group of people who had won a major prize in the Illinois State Lottery, including several who had hit the million-dollar jackpot. For a control group, he randomly selected people from the Illinois telephone directory. Everyone was asked to rate how happy they were at that moment and how happy they expected to be in the future. In addition, they were asked to say how much pleasure they derived from everyday activities in life, such as chatting with friends, hearing a funny joke, or receiving a compliment. The results provide a striking insight into the relationship between happiness and money.