Page 98 - The Power to Change Anything

Make the Undesirable Desirable 87

to never brush our teeth. Yet we teach ourselves to do the
unnatural. Another characteristic of human nature—per-
haps the one that makes us more human—is our capac-
ity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hence transform
our own nature.

The promise here is significant. If we can find a way to change
the feeling associated with a vital behavior, we can make com-
pulsive bad habits feel as disgusting as going to bed with gritty
teeth. And we can make formerly unappealing activities become
as satisfying as brushing our teeth. And if you miss this important
concept, whenever you try to motivate yourself or others to
change behavior, you’ll turn to perks and wisecracks rather than
find ways to make the activity itself more inherently attractive.
To see how to accomplish all of this transcending and trans-
forming, we must first understand where our likes and dislikes
come from. Once we have a handle on the origins of pleasure
and pain, savvy influencers will teach us what to do with this
knowledge.
Many of our preferences come from our biology. We have
powerful desires for things like food, drink, warmth, rest, sex,
and air. But biology isn’t always destiny. Despite our hard-
wiring, some biological drives—or at least their impacts on our
preferences—are surprisingly easy to change. You’ll recall that
back in the early 1900s, students of Ivan Pavlov completed
dozens of studies that used buzzers, metronomes, or bells to sig-
nal dogs that food was coming. After being fed on cue several
times, the dogs would begin to salivate whenever they heard
the signal.
This kind of learning, using a neutral stimulus to signal a
reward or punishment, is called classical conditioning. What’s
relevant to our discussion of changing what people derive sat-
isfaction from is that classical conditioning causes dogs and
people to “like” or “hate” the bell. When we use a neutral stim-
ulus to signal a strong positive or negative event, we nudge it
off neutral.