One Lesson To Guarantee a Successful Future

In his early 20s the special operations officer had already served two tours of duty in a bloody war. Back then people didn’t admit, or even know anything about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) so he had to deal with the emotional serpents that snaked through his consciousness on his own. At one moment he was killing the enemy by the dozens and in a flash even more were surrendering helplessly. The soldier could only look down upon them with pity and empathy. He twisted in suffering and confusion.

He had to escape the pain when his tour ended. This flight led to work in a mine far away from civilization. A desolate, primitive existence, without any hint of comfort, not only healed him it shaped a significant future. These Spartan conditions were the catalysts for new hope.

One of the many luxuries the mine lacked was toilet paper. Who would have guessed this man’s morning trek to the camp’s outhouse, would lead to a Noble prize?

As was the custom on the way to do his business, he grabbed a section of newspaper and methodically tore it into hand-width strips. Suddenly an ad jumped out at him – it was a notice of a new psychology program at Hebrew University. Immediately the young man made a choice based on the opportunity in front, or more accurately; behind him. He quit the mine and found his way to Jerusalem and the former monastery that served as the campus for Hebrew University. This was a choice that would change the world, and would lead to one of the most important theories in behavioral economics.

Amos Tversky, went straight from the mine to a seat in the most coveted university program in Israel. His fascination with psychology drove him the pinnacle of education – a PhD. The dedication he wrote in his doctoral thesis illustrates one of the best lessons any parent could teach his or her child and one of the pillars of greatness.

Before you read the dedication let me remind you what Amos did to change the world, and why the dedication is a great lesson to reflect on today for yourself and your children. 

Tversky teamed up with one of his professors, Daniel Kahneman, to create several ground-breaking theories that would change the world. The one that won them a Nobel prize in economics (that’s right two psychology professors had won the most coveted award in economics) was the theory of loss aversion. Kahneman and Tversky proved that people illogically assign twice the value to a loss as they do to a gain.

The pair proved this by showing that most people needed twice the pay-off to risk a loss. For instance if we were to flip a coin and you give me $20 if it lands on heads (you lose $20) and I give you $20 if it lands on tails (you win $20) most people wouldn’t take the bet. The odds of winning are 50% so logically if you get anything more than equal payout it’s a smart bet. For example I give you $21 if you win and you give me $20 if you lose - that is a sound decision. But most people won’t do it. Amos found people place twice the value on a loss as they do on a gain – so they need to win $40 to risk their $20 even at 50-50 odds. People irrationally put twice the emphasis on loss as gain (see below for the neuroscience to why this happens).

Loss aversion is one version of a fear-based decision. There are many things that influence decision making in our life, but from a neurological perspective we make decisions based on only two criteria – fear or opportunity. 

It was just in 2017 that scientists at M.I.T. led by Dr. Kay Tye, were able to show the two networks that make decisions based on something good (opportunity) and something bad (fear) by recording thousands of synaptic connections on two separate neurological pathways and watching that activity in the brain. Learning to overcome our natural and subconscious default to fear-based decisions making is one of the key themes of my upcoming book Fear is Fuel?

Tversky’s guidance from his father, mentioned in the dedication, is one of the most powerful lessons we can learn to achieve success, happiness and fulfillment. However it takes training because we tend to avoid fear, when if fact we need to find more of it in our life and challenge our status quo. Neuroscience has shown taking his advice actually uses more of the brain, so it makes you smarter!

The first sentence in Tversky’s PhD dissertation is:

“This work is dedicated to my father who taught me to wonder.”

In our cave-dwelling past amazement and wonder mostly led to death – imagine wondering if a saber-tooth tiger liked to be scratched behind the ears? Curiosity was not a very valuable attribute to ensure our genes got to the next generation. Our hyper-efficient brain makes fear or opportunity, good or bad, right or wrong decisions before we even consciously realize it based on our database of past memories, instincts and experiences. This is what neuroscientists call valence and it allow us to make split-second decision that might have impacted our survival long ago. 

Lightening fast decisions were good for evolving the species but are often bad for our personal fulfillment. Developing wonder, curiosity and challenging what we believe (and store in our subconscious database) is a less efficient way for the brain to operate since it uses more synapses, electrical energy and oxygen, however in a modern world where survival isn’t at stake every day, but happiness is; wonder is what leads to Nobel-prize winning breakthroughs. Use both sides of your brain, instead of just one, by becoming curious about everything.

What is stored in your personal database that you can wonder about today?

_______________________________________________________________________________________ Neuroscience deeper dive:

The neuroscience behind making decisions goes back hundreds of thousands of years when the only thing that mattered to homosapiens was passing genes along to the next generation. Staying alive and procreating was what our brains were built for, most times this required speed and efficiency. In other words, having a cave that was twice as big as our current cave, with a swimming pool out back, wasn’t really a priority if it came with a risk of dying because we got too far away from the tribe.

The loss aversion or a risk averse behavior (defined by Amos) served humans well when survival was a daily challenge, however as the world evolved and became safer and risk of death more unlikely, our mental system is more and more a barrier to happiness and success. The quick survival instincts needed more of a social modern flair to move beyond survival. That modern mind has been evolving, however much slower than the security of our current existence. About 50,000 years ago we developed the prefrontal cortex (PFC) which I call adult supervision for the rest of the brain. This conscious-level actor is what stops us from sprinting away when the grass rustles; it helps us realize it’s the neighbor’s poodle not a saber-tooth tiger.

While some philosophy or psychology scholars may think saying we make decisions based only on fear or opportunity is reducing the world down too simplistically, called reductionism (as one of my friends from Oxford University suggested) deciding based on fear of not procreating vs the opportunity for a better life is just the opposite, it is the foundation that allowed humans to pass on our genes over hundreds and thousands of years and eventually thrive.

Decisions made based out of fear are driven by the amygdala and other connected parts of the brain that handle the fight, flight or freeze response. This part of the brain is sometimes referred to as our lizard brain – it is the most basic and oldest of components that engineered our survival.

The lizard brain is the genesis (little creationist humor there) for where we made decisions, or the foundation, so I’ll call it foundationism, the making of decisions based on fear of death, abandonment, rejection from the tribe – anything that would impede procreation.

Almost all our choices are made before we even consciously know it. Studies by some of the world’s top neuroscientist shows the brain can accesses stored information, data we have gathered during our lifetime, and use it to make astonishingly quick decisions. The choices happen so quickly and subconsciously that it creates an instinctive feeling about which choice feels right and which feels wrong, way before we can consciously explain why a decision make sense to us. In other words, fear of something impeding the next generation is usually the driver.

As the PFC developed we started to imagine a future better than the present and a bold few began to search out new prospects. This led to another category of choice; opportunity. All our decisions can be distilled down to opportunity or fear. Certainly we can build on top of that foundation more complexities or nuances in decision making. Influences like culture, social structure, environment and even materialism are subtle drivers however they still originate from a fear of not finding a mate, getting rejected from the tribe, dying, etc. Much of our decision making isn't even of our own free will because of the subconscious and because of how our memory was populated. Our parents determine where we live, what language we speak, what is good or bad and that creates information which is sent to our mind's hard drive. It is that stored database that orients us in our specific reality. The information we store are the points we recall to determine if someone speaking our language, with our skin and hair type, is friendly or a threat. We can even decide subconsciously if someone is angry or happy in less time than it takes to blink an eye.

The research at MIT shows that valence theory is the most efficient way to make decision – if there is something we can classify as good it gets quickly shortcut to our let hemisphere for further action. If it is bad it goes to our right hemisphere. While this uses the least amount of processing power by relying on well used pathways, it misses out on different perspectives if we immediately judge a person say with tons of tattoos, or piercings, or colored hair or a uniform as “bad” and then miss the chance of experiencing what good they have.

By questioning each choice we make as we first think of judging something it forces us to engage the opposite hemisphere. Because of neuroplasticity our database and processes can change. Anyone can learn to use curiosity to make even more fulfilling decisions. As Amos’s dad would have put it – to wonder.

About the author: Patrick Sweeney is a motivational speaker, award-winning documentary film producer, fear guru, and adventurer. He started four companies and invested in over 30 other start-ups from Slack to Boosted Boards to Bright Farms. He is a two-times TEDx Speaker and award winning virtual speaker. He sits on the business school board for Trinity College, Dublin, and is the author of two books and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling book called Fear is Fuel featuring methods using the latest neuroscience research to transform your life or organization using the surprising power of fear. For a great keynote speaker ideas check out his speakers demo videos which he has presented at Google, TEDx, eBay, Intel, and many other organizations.

Don't forget to check out Patrick's speaking site if you are looking for an engaging keynote speaker or if you want more great life advice and neuroscience insight in plain language try the Brain Blog!