It’s 11:07am as I write this.
I’ve just come back from the gym down the road form the Airbnb in which I’m staying.
I’ve gone to the gym today even though I’m traveling — I packed my gym clothes and found a local place to go.
I’ve been going to the gym regularly, 3-4 times a week, sometimes more, for the past 15 years, without break or faltering. It’s become one of the most important things I do for my health and sanity and of course my striking good looks.
And yet, for the first few decades of my life, I knew for a fact that I’m not a gym person, that I only like “real” physical activity such as playing tennis or going for a swim, rather than a contrived workout like deadlifts and squats.
“Gym? Pff. Thank you. That’s not me.”
A long time ago, I read a book called Stumbling On Happiness by a Harvard psychologist named Daniel Gilbert. I don’t remember a lot from the book except the central thread of it.
We are terrible at remembering the past, says Gilbert. As an example, ask people who they voted for the in the last election, and a lot of people will actually, honestly claim that they voted for the winning party, even if they didn’t.
It’s not that these people are lying. Like George Costanza, they fully believe what they’re saying.
You might think it’s just some particularly weak-willed people who fool themselves and others like this. But this is something we all do all every day, to some degree, and are never aware of.
But wait, there’s more.
As bad as we are at remembering the past, says Gilbert, we are even worse at imagining the future.
Ask people how they will feel and what they will do if, say, they win the lottery or if their now-happy marriage ends in bitter divorce, and people will tell you lots of stuff, again honestly. Trouble is, it’s wrong, spectacularly wrong, and it has nothing to do with how they will actually feel or what they will do. And yet, this is how we live our lives all the time.
But back to the gym and to the idea of “I’m not the kind of person who…”
Says Gilbert, if you want to find out what something is like, say raising a child, then don’t ask people who have raised a kid 10 or 20 years ago. They will remember wrong, and they will effectively tell you lies, even though they don’t mean to.
Also, don’t ask people who haven’t raised a kid but who are either looking forward to it or dreading it — their predictions mean nothing.
The only kind of person you can ask if you want to get an honest sense of what raising a kid is like is somebody who is doing it right now. Somebody who is not hallucinating about the future, or making up a fairy tale about the past.
And that, I would like to suggest to you, is something that holds even if the person you are asking for advice and opinions is yourself.
Over and over I’ve asked myself, “Will I like this? Can I do this? Am I the kind of person who can be successful here?”
Over and over I’ve told myself, no no no.
Over and over I’ve tried doing the thing nonetheless.
Sometimes it really turned out I wasn’t successful even after putting in a good try. More importantly, sometimes it really turned out I hated the thing, and how it made me feel.
Other times, though, it was just like the gym. The thing became an important part of my life, a part of my identity, something I stuck with for years or even decades, even though I previously knew for a fact it would never be for me.
In the end, I’ve summed it up for myself by saying, “I’m not the kind of person who ever tells himself, ‘I’m not the kind of person who…'” The only way to know how you look and feel with a mohawk is to shave your head and walk around town like that for a few weeks.
And now let me remind you of my new 10 Commandments book, about con men and door-to-door salesemen and pickup artists.
This entire email has been grooming you in a way, in case the mention of those disciplines makes the hackles on the back of your neck stand up.
I’m not suggesting — it would be foolish to do so — that you go against your own deeply held moral values.
But if a part of you says, “I’m not the kind of person who can sell, seduce, confidently and smoothly persuade,” well, you might surprise yourself.
And if you want some tips and pointers on how to do sell, seduce, and persuade, as well as some psychology to help you make the identity leap easier, then take a look here: