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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video I want to talk about the rider elephant analogy okay so what is the rider elephant analogy how does this work and why are we talking about it well this analogy comes from an amazing book called the happiness hypothesis by jonathan hate he also wrote the righteous mind two really great books about really understanding yourself understanding human psychology so the analogy he makes there AC says that you and your mind is like a rider on an elephant now what does this mean what he's talking about is that you and your mind are really we tend to think intuitively or naively that there is just like one of us right there's one you but really there's different fragments of your mind and this is a model that explains why we have difficulty accomplishing certain things in our lives right this for example explains why sometimes you're sitting on the couch watching TV and you know that your alarm rings to go to the gym and you don't want to go to the gym because you're comfortable you don't want to get up and then on the one hand part of your mind is saying alright you're really need to get to the gym to work off all these potato chips that you've eaten and to stay in shape and to keep on top of your new year's resolution right and then the other part of your mind says but I'm so comfortable I just want to sit here a little bit more how about five more minutes or or I can go to the gym tomorrow starts coming up with excuses right and maybe there's even a third part so there's various parts in your mind that are kind of exerting influence over each other and then ultimately you don't really know which one is gonna win out sometimes one part of the bond wins out sometimes the other part maybe you're gonna sit there on the couch all day and veg out remember you gonna decide you know what no we're gonna cut that off and we're gonna go to the gym who knows but that's a very human thing right is that inner struggle that inner conflict that we always face and that conflict we face it not with just with small things like going up and getting up and going to the gym but we face it at work we face it when we want - really embark on something new in our lives we face it when we want to start a new project if you want to write a book if you want to start a new business if you want to raise a good family if you want to enter a new relationship you're always facing these these inner tensions and with Jonathan hate came up with this brilliant analogy of writer and elephant is what he's saying is that your mind and these are some ancient analogies that came about really back from the Greek and the Hindu days back in classical antiquity is that they compared your mind to being like an animal that you have to cultivate that you have to domesticate right and that the point in this analogy is that and then even a domesticated animal is not fully domesticated so your mind with this elephant rider analogy is like you have the logical part of your mind which is the rider which is sitting on top of the elephant and it's directing right it's holding the reins and it's telling the elephant where to go and that's like your logical conscious mind but then you have the subconscious mind and that's the mind that's really responsible for a lot of the results that you're getting in your life except you probably don't realize that unless you've studied this idea and unless you've really thought about it and you've really closely observed your own behavior in action because in that example of sitting on the couch eating potato chips and then not wanting it to go to the gym what's happening is that your logical mind the rider on this elephant is saying okay elephant let's turn to the right we need to turn to the right now there's a cliff up ahead let's turn to the right but the elephant is behaving the way it wants to behave and it's not really obedient and the elephant is much bigger than the writer and the writer is sitting on top of the elephant so wherever the elephant goes the rider ends up going along with them and so what ends up happening is that the elephant is saying no I don't want to turn right I want to keep going straight which in your case sitting on the couch you continue to sit on the couch right and your rider knows that's not the smartest thing to be doing right now because you need to go and work on your fitness and watch your nutrition and you don't want to be vegging out all day but elephant it has kind of a mind of its own and when it sets its mind on something there's nothing the rider can do about it that's what's powerful about this analogy is that these are not equal parts and the reason this is is because your brain evolved over time over millions of years basically your brain evolved so that it can handle things automatically you have a really powerful subconscious mind and one of the most effective personal development techniques out there is getting your subconscious mind aligned with your conscious mind because when your goals when you're conscious goals are aligned their subconscious mind it's like having an elephant and a rider that are both on the same page and it's like having a writer that knows how to control the elephant it's having an elephant that's obedient to the rider and then what happens then is you get a good performance then the elephant goes where it needs to go and then you can get from point A to point B it can do a nice long trip no problems but now think about the case where the rider is totally inept totally unskilled doesn't understand the elephant and then the elephant is like a wild elephant that hasn't been tamed and doesn't have any obedience to the rider think about how that scenario is gonna play out what if I want to travel a thousand miles go on a thousand mile trip using that combination of rider and elephant do you think I'll get very far do you think that's gonna be a struggle you think that's gonna be painful yes and for most of us we know that situation very intimately in fact maybe you're in that situation right now is that there are certain things that you want to be doing that you know you should be doing but you're just not able to do no matter how hard you try because your elephant is going to other direction and it's not listening to you your rider well this is a brilliant analogy and this analogy has been made like I said since antiquity and really a lot of times people don't realize that this is the case and that really the trick is that your mind evolved to prioritize the elephant because the elephant is your subconscious mind and it's taking care of a lot of things for you right now right now your subconscious mind is taking care of beating your heart and it's taking care of your breathing it's taking care of blinking your eyes it's care of some of the underlying thought processes that are going through because you're not totally in control of which thoughts are coming up next for you a lot of times that's on autopilot and your unconscious mind is also responsible for all the routines that you're running throughout your life that you don't even realize that you're running you know it's it's helping you walk down the street it's helping you chew your food it's helping you move your eyes to focus on the things that are important in your in your environment it's helping you protect you from threats like cars that are that are whizzing by you when you're crossing the street it's helping you drive your car it's helping you do all these things and it's helping you do your work - even the conscious stuff that you're doing on some level you're you're delegating most of stuff from your conscious mind into your subconscious mind and only then is it getting executed right you're not thinking about every word that you're saying you're not thinking about every hand gesture that you're making when you're talking these things are handled automatically for you by the elephant and so the trick and the point of personal development really is to get your Rider and your elephant to come into better alignment with each other so I think this is a really good analogy to get you to start thinking and observing yourself so what I really want you to take away from this is start observing how your rider is working and how your elephant is working and the interaction between the two how is your rider communicating with your elephant what kind of words is he saying what kind of things is he thinking about the elephant and observe what kind of mind the elephant has you know what are the preferences of the elephant what does the elephant want to be doing that maybe the rider doesn't want to be doing so this is a really good exercise to do and to continue to do and this builds awareness for developing self-control because ultimately when you're successful in life it is about having your psychology dialed in and what that means is it's having a rider that understands the elephant and an elephant understands the rider and what you really need to be doing to get amazing results for personal development is not just educating the rider I find that this is a huge problem and especially for me I tend to be an analytical Tonica type of guy and I like to accumulated a lot of knowledge and wisdom and sometimes what that turns into is a lot of mental masturbation where what I'm doing is I'm educating my conscious mind I'm educating the rider and the rider becomes this super smart pompous guy who's sitting on top this elephant and this rider thinks that he's perfect he knows everything but the problem is he knows everything except how to control the elephant and how good do you think that is how good do you think of a result he's gonna get not a very good result because even though he knows exactly where he needs to go he knows the layout of the terrain he knows everything that the elephant should be doing he doesn't actually have very good coordination of the reins on the elephant and he doesn't have really a good understanding of how to manipulate the elephant in the right ways so the lesson here is that when you're taking in information and don't take in too much theory you have to really what you got to focus on is going to focus on the training of the elephant so smart rider knows this a smart rider understands that after a certain while accumulating more self-help theories techniques and strategies is not going to do it reading more books is not going to do it's not going to really create a substantial change in your life it's not going to give you the real results if you want real results what you got to do is you got to undertake a process of training the elephant just like they would in a circus right if you take a wild elephant you got to train that thing before you can get a performance out of it and the same thing here is that every technique that you're looking for them in a book every tip that you're getting from me every principle that I'm sharing with you you got to ask yourself how do I train my elephant now that technique is in my riders brain how do I train the elephant to understand it as well and that's really the work and self development is what you got to do is you got to find ways to habitual eyes this stuff to actually practice it to make it routine and the best way to do that is to do it on a consistent and daily basis so you take one principle one thing and then you work on it every day for a period of a month or two to get your elephant trained up and then only when your elephant is trained up only then do you really see the result only then do you really feel it which means that if you get some tip in a book about how to make more or how to kind of think more positively or how to improve your relationship or how to how to improve your fitness then that's all well and good but you got to realize that's right now in the riders mind that's not part of the elephant rider combination yet and so a smart rider will then create habits to train the elephant and then once the elephant understands then you've got a really powerful combination because what you've done is you've aligned your subconscious with your conscious the two are now together they make a perfect combo they can work like a team to get you to where you want to go all right so that's the elephant rider combination I'm going to end it there share your comments let me know how the elephant rider has worked for you how it's played out in your life where has it really hurt you and where hasn't really helped you tell me about a time where the two were aligned and tell me about a time where they were not alright pizza