Mastering the Elephant of Unconscious Thought
August 22, 2007 by Maile
The other day on the Positive Psychology Blog, Dave Shearon discussed a metaphor which was new to me. He said:
Jon Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis suggests the metaphor of a rider on an elephant for how we live life. The rider is our conscious thoughts (and emotions). The elephant is our unconscious emotions (and thoughts).
There’s great value to be gained, Shearon says, from having elephants and riders in harmony. So today, I’m doing an exercise to see if I can make this happen. The key, as always, is attention, noticing when your conscious and unconscious thoughts are pulling in opposite directions. It’s easy to feel: think of the battle that goes on when you’re on a diet and approach a plate full of Christmas cookies.
Not sure if paying attention will lead to any changes in behavior, but it usually does. If anything astounding happens, I’ll let you know.
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That’s a wonderful metaphor. As a family therapist for many years and now a business coach, I have been acutely aware of the power of your unconscious mind. It explains why many of my ambitions business clients know what to do to improve their business so they make more money, but they don’t do it. They say they’ll do it. They’ll agree it’s important to do it. I urge them to do it, but they still don’t do it.
I am reminded about the owner of a home care facility. He had a long time worker who got cancer and insisted upon working. She wasn’t able to keep up with her duties and was providing poor service to patients. This went on for a year in spite of our discussions that he needed to let her go. Nothing happened because his “elephant” was not in agreement. He felt too sorry for her. When I told him she probably really wanted to quit, but felt too guilty and he would be doing her a favor by letting her go, he agreed and finally acted. He was able to finally act because his change of perspective mollified is elephant and brought it into agreement with his ego (conscious mind). He had a mess to clean up after her, but it would have been worse if he had waited.
Resolving conflicts with your elephant is crucial for effective action. Just like an elephant, your unconscious will always win. Sometimes it takes two riders to guide an elephant. Sometimes it takes two conscious minds to guide your unconscious.
I know what you mean about it sometimes taking two riders. Better yet, have someone on the ground who can see both you and the elephant at the same time.
The trick then is to get your conscious mind to listen to the person’s feedback.
Glad you found the post interesting! The Happiness Hypothesis is very well written and I think you would enjoy it. Best of luck with your efforts here!
Recently there were some scientific experiments demonstrating that unconscious thought can result in better decisions than conscious thought. Of course, this is just stating what we already know intuitively, but I found it interesting to have experimental verification. You can read about it here:
http://spiritualinquiry.com/articles/less-thinking-leads-to-better-decisions/