L.O.G. 150 Ten Rules of Human Behavior

Hello and welcome to the video version of The Human Behavior Podcast. I'm Brian Marren, the host and creator of the show. As always, I will be joined by human behavior expert, Mr. Greg Williams, who the show is affectionately named after. On the show, we discuss different topics through the lenses of what we call human behavior pattern recognition analysis. If you'd like to find out more about what that is, please check the links in the episode details and go to our website to learn more. Please don't forget to follow us on social media; the links are also in the episode details. And hit the like and subscribe button to help support our work. Thanks for tuning in, and we hope you enjoy the show.

Your last comment, your intro comments, I always wait to hit record until you get whatever, whatever. Thanks.

Get it out of my system.

That the listeners don't need to hear.

So, today's topic is, we haven't really kind of done one like this before, but we're talking about what you write up as the Top 10 Rules of Human Behavior. And we've had stuff like this on the website, and we use all of these different sayings or terms in classes that we teach. And throughout the podcast, we always have. So today, I guess we'll kind of define it for everyone what we mean. And you know, a couple things from our one, these Top 10 Lists, I always hate. You know, it's always clickbait when you see, "Oh, the 10 things you need to know!" That's not what this is.

The funny thing too is that there are no distinct order; they just happen to be like recipes that we've always used. You know what I'm saying?

And that's a good way to look at it. These are 10 ingredients you need to have in your kitchen. There you go. So, whether you're, if you don't have these in your pantry to make cupcakes, to, you know, make whatever sauce. You know what I mean? But you, without these things, you know, it's like not having salt and pepper in your house. Those are the two things, right?

Right. Right, exactly.

So, I would kind of approach it from that. And again, like you said, they're in no particular order, and we'll just go ahead and jump into them. Like I said, we've posted some of this on the website before. We've talked about all these things, but they're all very important. So, we're speaking almost at a 30,000-foot view; we're speaking in generalizations. So, when we're talking about human behavior, and we're speaking in generalizations, that's what we are, right? So, you have to then apply it to a specific context. We keep things general, right? When you're generalizing, you have to keep things general. So, that's fine, that's kind of what we're doing with this. But I'll go ahead and just start off, and again, in no particular order, but right off the top of the list that I have here is: You have attention. Humans won't pay attention unless they have to. So, first, I would ask you to kind of define what you mean by attention, and then what you mean by they won't pay attention unless they have to.

Okay. So, the entire back of your head is your visual field, from your ear to your ear, the entire back of your head, which means vision is important. Your nose is above your mouth, which means a sense of smell, olfactory senses, are hugely important. Your arms reach out away from your body, which means that they don't want things to touch you before you're aware of them. Those are things that your brain has to attend to with your limbic system, with all of the different senses, the onboard ability to sense make your environment. So, you can't problem solve without sense-making, and attention is the critical element of that. And people won't pay attention unless they're forced to, which means that even though it's the best thing for you, and all you have to do is come off the gas and look around you. You heard the old, "Stop and smell the roses." Do you get what I'm trying to say? If you don't do that once in a while, what happens is your brain ceases to be amazed by sensory input around it that's novel or that's dangerous. So, you'll miss these big honking cues. I'll give you just an example.

You know that it was just Christmas, and so being in a store for Christmas, seeing a complete person that is predisposed to cause trouble in an environment.

Okay, so you would call it a disorderly, bordering on, or emotionally disturbed person, or something.

Yeah, yeah, there are different terms, and it doesn't matter what their motivation is, and I don't want to get into that. So, you're exactly right, it could be emotionally disturbed, it could be just the person's at the, their cup is full, and they're coming out, and one more fruitcake is going to put them over the edge, and it's going to be stabby time. So, this person is standing there, and I looked at Shel, and Shel's a million miles away because she's going down this mental list of what we're about to do. And I look at her, I go, "At my six!" And she immediately snapped out of where she was and orients towards the threat. And I go, "You know what, I'm blessed because I have a human with me that can do that." You know how many other humans would have, first of all, missed all those signals, right? And then, Brian trying to call somebody else on a potential threat to get them oriented mentally, "Okay, what would they have done? What? Where? Who are you talking—?" Well, now the whole moment's blown with fluff. Did you see? Survival instincts are based on nanoseconds. And so, if you're not in the moment predicting this may be a danger, and humans won't. Now, now what's going to happen? Pop, pop, pop. And the next thing that they're going to say is, "Oh, I thought that there were balloons going off in the mall!" Do you get how that time lag creates an extra loop, Brian, that does not have to be?

And so, so when you say they won't pay attention unless they have to, so we're now at a point, kind of in the human species where we're at, and societally where there's not a lot that we have, because it's based in survival. This is what you're saying. We won't pay attention. Now, the things that we do pay attention to are so small because there's so much competing for our attention in our environment. So, there's a flashing sign, there's your phone, there's the kids screaming, there's the voice over the intercom at the store you're at, there's billions spent on marketing and advertising to put the right thing at the right eye level to catch that attention for you to spend money. I mean, remember, this is all about you; it's about spending money for the most part that we're around. So, that's what we're now attending to in our environment. We're not attending to other humans in our environment. We're not attending to the overall situation and potential for danger because we haven't had to attend to those for so long, for so long.

Let me throw one at you, Brian. I've got a lot on my mind. I'm getting older. I want to forget things that I shouldn't be forgetting. And so, I had a lot going on with all the snow mitigation. I sent you some of the photos, and the video just got dumped out. Feel free to post one of those if the viewers and listeners don't believe it. But went out the front of the house — the entire Rogue Manor West — (Sorry, for a demo, shout out! I'd love to take your buddy.) So, walking down the stairs, Brian, to warm up the death sled and to go around and grab some wood for the fire, I had all these things going on. And for the first time in my life, the first time in 60 years, I locked myself out of the house.

Oh, man.

Okay. Well, Rogue Manor West is impenetrable, just so you know. Second thing is, it's zero. It wasn't below zero, it wasn't above zero, it's zero degrees. There's no such thing as wind chill unless you had—and check it, folks, it's a matter of record—we had gusts up to 55 miles an hour outside. So, you've got snow, you've got cold, you've got me wearing a T-shirt running outside to turn on my truck. So, now, thank God, I've got my cell phone in my back pocket. So, I made one call. A friend of mine came over that's got the, you know, the code to the garage, opened up the garage for me and let me in. Brian, I was outside probably about 40 minutes, and it was almost a death sentence.

Yeah.

I walked around. I had all these emergency plans, places I could stand. But no extra set of keys outside; I'm not that guy. So, I went around to the back deck where the barbecue is, but the barbecue grill's propane was frozen, so I couldn't turn on the propane to have that source of heat, even though that was my emergency plan. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

So, you know, burn barrels? Well, you've got to have all the elements to go in a burn barrel to start that. So, I was unprepared, and I didn't have to pay attention until I had to. Now, that's too late in the game. I'll give you another example, a very brief one. Brian, on the phone, "What's your mom's phone number?" Well, for most people, you know what it is: "Mom!" And if you ask them what the numbers were that it corresponds to, they would have no idea. So, what I'm telling you is unless you're in the trick bag, you look at life differently because we've had it easy for so long. And those things, Brian, how many times when we're driving, we're constantly on the ball, and we gauge where the vehicle is at the intersection with the stop sign, so we always have a way out. And what are we doing when we look around? People putting on their makeup, people texting on their phone. So, attention is such an easy thing to master, right? And we've lost the fine art of paying attention.

Okay, that's a good explanation, I think, there. I want to kind of keep moving. But, yeah, so that's attention, obviously, is extremely important. I would put that probably first in all of these, but I know they're not in any particular order. So, the next one is predictability, and your statement is, "Humans are predictable." Okay, well, why are we so predictable?

Yeah. So, one, don't mistake predictability with habit. Habit's a completely different thing we'll talk about later.

Yeah, okay.

So, predictability is that once you've done a path through the woods, it's much less calorie-intensive for you to follow that path. Now, if we had something that there was an orange or a banana or a deer at the end of that path, then our electrochemical neurotransmitters in our brain etch that and say, "Point A to Point B, this way. I didn't have to wade through a bog or climb through the trees, and there was a prize at the end of it—a male or a female or a dog I could pet," whatever it was, Brian. And so, each time I have now a choice coming out of the cave from where you live, right? I'm coming out, each time I have a choice, and my choice is 360 degrees in a circle, but I remember that if I went towards the cedar tree and took a left, I got to the hot spring. You understand? So, what happens is that that reward circuitry in the brain activates, and now I'm getting the dopamine fix saying, "This one was the easiest path." Well, now what happens, Brian, let's fast forward to where we are now. You find a way to get to work. And guess what? After that first day that you found a way, do you go out and try to conduct tests? You call MythBusters and figure out the mileage and the fuel consumption? No, you repeat that behavior over and over. So, humans are predictable. And if I saw you at the Starbucks yesterday at 10 o'clock in the morning, and I want to kill you, I have a really good chance if I'm there at 9:59 to see you walking up, and I can put two in your caboose. So, that's all I'm saying. I'm saying that that my estimation and my scientific answer would be that humans are very predictable.

Okay, yeah. And, you know, this gets into, people have different theories on how this stuff works. And especially like, you can go as, you know, as small or as micro as, you know, someone across from a table or the same room as you. And then like, you know, you'll have economists at scale try to make predictions about how humans are predictable. And you can in those areas, like within a defined context. People, and I just want to bring this up real quick, because you say humans are predictable. People talk a lot about free will, and humans can do anything. And they can, well, they can make a choice to do this, which is technically true, you can, but no one ever does. Meaning, there's a finite set of responses that you have. There's a finite set of choices you have. There's a finite set of things you're going to do throughout your day. And they're going to be based on, predicated on, basic survival systems and, like you said, the different habits that we'll get into later. But of what you're likely going to do throughout the day, so there's only so many things. So, the idea is, "Well, this could happen in any place or they could do anything." Well, no, they, I mean, they're not going to. It's unlikely. Everyone, you know, you don't, you do something with a purpose. You don't just get up and drive around most of the time, right? You go to the store, or you go to the gym, or you go pick up your kid from school, right? So, there's only, it goes into, humans are a lot more predictable than we kind of think and we give them credit for.

I would say, imagine, conduct your own limited objective experiment. Imagine your route to the Safeway or to the 7-Eleven, or whatever's in your community. The thing that your brain immediately goes to is your mental map of your environment. So, if I was trying to predict where you would go, what streets you would take, what turns you would make, I would likely be right if I just looked at you and looked for the lowest-calorie intervention. This is the safest route or this is the fastest route. That's where I'm going to put my money to surveil you or to follow you or do something else. And again, we're going to talk about habit. Habit is different. Habit is you repeating behavior over and over because of the memory and emotion links associated with predictability. For example, it's predictable which door you'll take when you walk into a Walmart, no matter which one is marked "In" and "Out." And Walmart's different than most stores that you go to because of the way that their cashiers are set up. They have all the cashiers set up in one area, but the exit is right in front of the cashiers, and they don't want loss prevention, so they limit the size of the exit, right? So, the entrances are huge, you get what I'm trying to say? But what's predictable if I'm going to steal an item from the store shelf? Could you predict where I'm likely to exit the store? Yes. So, humans, even in the moment, even if they've never done it before, Brian, will be predictable. That's the big separator there.

Okay, so the next one kind of goes into what you're talking about is intent. And you know, you make the statement that the harder humans try to mask or hide their true behaviors, the more those behavioral traits will stick out. And when we talk about intent, that's what we focus everything on, right? What is someone's intent? What are they likely going to do? Not what do they think, what do they believe, what do they feel, what their motive or motivation is, like what their ideology is, right? We get into intent. What does this person intend to do? So, explain what you mean by intent.

So, remember, intent doesn't have to be a bad thing. The intent is the goal at the end of whatever problem needs to be solved. So, I'll give you one from my own family, because that's where all my best examples come from. So, I love my brother Jeff dearly. And if you go over to Jeff's house, what you'll notice is this change during the months of the year. If I go over and I see pictures of Uncle Harry and Uncle Harry's grandkids and the nephews and all that other stuff, I know Harry's coming for a visit. Why? Because my brother Jeff doesn't want any strife, so his intent is always to make the people coming to visit him in Colorado feel welcome. And so, he'll put those things out. Okay, now that's intentional. He does it for a reason, and the reason is he doesn't want to be off-putting. Okay, so intent and intentional, hey, that's an easy standard to go for. So, if a person intends to steal a 12-pack of Rolling Rock from their local 7-Eleven, right back to high school, but yeah. There's the old hit and run where you come screeching up like The Dukes of Hazzard, you run in the front door screaming, you grab it, and then you try to bail out the same way. Well, that's going to draw the attention of everybody. Even the, you know, old homeless Pete sitting at the front is going to look up and pay attention. If your intent is to get by and steal, you know, be nefarious, then what's going to happen is you're going to walk differently and stand differently and conduct a little counter-surveillance. And you're going to take the item and lay your hands on it once, and, you know, maybe move it, shift it a little bit, but then go over and check out the price on the Funyuns, Brian. All of those, each one of those little behavior traits demonstrates intent. I'm preparing to do something. I'm setting up for the big caper that's coming. And guess what? The more you do that, the more your brain's chemistry goes, "Oh, I get it, we're trying to be stealthy." And so, now you're doing the tiptoe. Do you get what I'm trying to say?

Yeah.

You're putting on the glasses, right?

And so, explain that part. What you mean when you say the harder humans try to mask or hide their true behaviors, the more they will stick out.

Like what your brain is ahead of you. So, your brain is always trying to go, "Oh, I see what you're trying to do. You're trying to get here before you go there." And so, your brain is going to start doing things, like, for example, you're preparing to run, so you're going to start puffing up your chest. Well, guess what? I'm preparing to fight; I'm going to ball up my fist.

Yeah, shoulders will come up. You don't notice you're doing that.

Yeah, nose will open up more. Yeah, exactly. Well, and the histamines, you know, you've got histones that are on board. Histamines read like, like for example, histones are meant to read, "Hey, there's an infection, so let's ball up and create a wall of defenses against them." "Hey, you know, he's got a cold or he's got the flu, so let's do this." Well, guess what? Your autonomic system is running all the time. So, even though you're thinking in the moment right now, your brain starts forecasting what's likely going to happen. And it's good if you're in a fire fight, the brain starts pulling the oxygenated blood away from the skin because it might need it somewhere else. So, all of these, you know, your vision, my peripheral vision is less important in a survival situation, so I'll be more focused, Brian. And that mission focus will stand out.

Okay, yeah, so I think that that that covers intent pretty well. And I know we go into that a lot because it's far more important to understand what someone's likely to do and what, you know, I would rather focus on what someone's intent is, not what that really doesn't matter because that group didn't exist five years ago. So, but that person still did, they're still doing the same thing. So, maybe that can...

Can I throw one more?

Yeah.

Okay, so the recent shooting in Michigan. So, some journalist—I don't know if I do the air quotes on journalists anymore—some journalist wrote a thing. It said, "Hey, the kid, the shooter, lost his dog. His dog died the week before the shooting, and nine days before the shooting, his best friend moved out of the neighborhood, and three days before the shooting, he brought a dead baby bird in a jar to school," or whatever. And what they're trying to do is they're trying to make sense of a situation where there's no logic and no sense. Okay, listen, you lost your dog, you had your best friend, and you didn't become a school shooter, do you understand? So, the intent is the basis of it. He intended to kill his schoolmates. He intend—everything that he. And so, don't try to reach in and go, "Oh, you know what, his Campbell's Soup spelled out 'death' this morning!" Do you see what I'm trying to say, though, about people just fishing and fishing for something that's not scientific? Scientific is: Take a look at the behavior pattern. What does the behavior pattern tell you that's likely? And if it's more likely they're going to do A than B, then guess what? That's predictive analysis. So, prediction and intent are very, very firmly, yeah, very clearly related.

Okay, got it. Okay, so the next one is just divided attention. "Your brain hates divided attention." So, we talked at first about attention, and then we started getting a little bit, but what do you mean by your brain hates divided attention?

So, your brain has got a schism with reality anytime it has too much information because it's already made a decision before you think, "I need to make a decision." Your brain's already chosen. So, the idea is that you could be in conflict, you could have turbulence anytime that you have more than one option when your brain is already going, "Yeah, I'm past that. I got it. I'll take it from here." And I'll give you a perfect example: Driving. Have you ever been driving, and you've driven the route many times before, and all of a sudden you look up and go, "Oh, there's my exit!" And the entire time before, you go, "Oh my gosh, I don't remember anything from this point to this point!" Why? Because your brain says, "Hey, I got it, I'll take it from here." It's the same thing when you say, "How is it I can take four hours in a doctor's office, but I can't stand for two minutes in a line at the pharmacy?" Well, your brain knows that it's going to be in that situation. So, your brain shuts off the external focus and just goes, "Okay, I'm going to be down and in. I'm going to be a tree sloth and look at this gosh-darn High Life magazine until the doctor calls my name." So, when your brain has too much information coming in, it gets to the point where it starts saying, "Listen, I, I'll give you a perfect example: If you look at a carpet and drapes that don't match." Your brain is constantly trying to make order out of chaos. So, that is another schism. You're looking at that, going, "Oh, it should be, 'Oh, why the color?'" You're exhausted five minutes into it. You're exhausted why? Because your brain's working overtime trying to solve math problems you don't even see. So, if you are single-minded in purpose, you only have 100% of attention, right? You'll likely do good.

Right, right. And it's almost like, you know, I think multitasking would be another good example. Like, you, meaning you, your brain likes to do one thing at a time and focus on one thing, right? Or just a few things. It can't handle a whole lot at once. And so, if you get too much at once, it'll, it's going to start kicking something out. And or it's going to start letting something go. Of course, we know that in basic performance, human performance, and like stressful situations and boring situations, right, there's a lot less that you can do because your brain can only focus on so much. But the divided attention really comes into, you know, it's like they take a group of people and they say, "All right, who here is really good at multitasking?" And half the class raises their hand, right? That group. They go, "Who sucks at it?" Everyone else is like, "Yeah, I suck at it." And they put them through a bunch of multitasking, you know, tests. And it turns out the people who said that they suck at multitasking actually do way better at them. Because why? Because they actually end up only focusing on one thing at a time, where the people like, "Oh, I can do seven things at once!" Well, no, you can't, because your brain doesn't like the divided attention.

That's a single point of focus. So, your brain has—gosh, I want to say echolocation just to put it in people's minds. I want you to think of echolocation, but it's not exactly the same. When you're walking on a street, and there are other people that are walking on the same street, the direction you turn to avoid them, your internal avoidance system for collision, your early warning system, is operational all the time. Now, what do we know that screws it up? Drugs and alcohol. Okay, so what else screws it up? Cell phone. Why? Because your cell phone steals a significant amount of your attention. And now when you're walking down the street, what are you constantly doing? You're bumping into people, "Sorry!" Stepping in front of a car. Okay, all of those things happen because your onboard system says, "I can deal with this many people at a time, but now you've exceeded my capacity because you demand that I look at something else." Brian, if I'm a hunter, and there are hunters in the audience—and it's just, you know, ending most hunting seasons right now—a hunter will say, "You know what? I'm sitting in my tree stand, and all of a sudden, I look over to my left, and here's this deer, and it came out of nowhere!" Well, the deer didn't come out of nowhere. What happened is, you exceeded the amount of information that you can pay attention to. And so, now the deer slowly walked in, and because it didn't ask for more attention (Humans won't pay attention unless they have to), what happened is all of a sudden you looked and you went, "Yeah, it's a deer." We do that in our environment all the time.

Yeah, all the time. "Where are my glasses?" "Oh, they're on top of your head."

Yeah, exactly.

"I can't find my phone!" You're holding it in your hand. You know, that stuff, it happens all the time. Like you said, those slow, subtle changes, because it doesn't require my attention or doesn't immediately grasp my attention, I miss that stuff. So, all right. Well, the next one is, you know, you kind of defined intent. The next one you talk about is telegraphing intent. "All humans telegraph their intentions unknowingly." What do you, what do you mean by that?

So, everybody right now is going to go, "Hey, wait a minute, this ice cube tray is kind of spilling into the other ones!" Yeah, of course they are, because we're humans, and every one of our systems is intertwined with other systems. So, there are no seams and gaps, and there are several nodes. There's no separate and distinct "this falls into this bucket," "this falls into this bucket." And you gave the ice cube tray analogy, so I want everyone to think: If you're listening, a lot of education and training tries to do, or anytime we try any descriptive analytic or we're trying to codify something, we like these nice little, you know, ice cube trays where this fits in here, this fits in here. So, we take that ice cube tray, we just, we fill it with water, we, the ice is melted. And so, if you lean one way, all the buckets start to fill up, and the other ones get smaller. And then you lean the other way, and they can flow back and forth. So, think about just literally an ice cube tray full of water that hasn't been frozen, because that's how all these buckets are; they go into each little gap. If you think about even further, Brian's analogy is spot on, but I folks, I want you to think water never goes away. So, it hardens and then it softens, and then it gets absorbed, and then it turns into humidity, then it hardens again, and then it falls here. So, that's a perfect analogy of it, but I want you to think of telegraphing your intention. There's a wonderful tool that's on your car if you're a driver or even if you're a passenger all the time in the back of an Uber. And it's a little stick that's up by the steering wheel because it's very important. And you can manipulate it with any one of your fingers, and that stick turns on a light that tells people to go left or right. If the person that you're following is exceeding the speed limit, there's one, and they're not telegraphing their intentions by giving you the idea, "I'm going to go left, I'm going to go right," you can conduct a quick predictive analysis that person is like that in their entire life. Okay, when they drive, they don't care about other people, they don't give themselves a gap, they're inconveniencing people and actually creating a habit. Why? Because they didn't telegraph their intention.

Now, flip the script. You're standing with the person and you're having a good conversation at the checkout counter, and all of a sudden, you notice the person's foot's tapping. Their foot's tapping because they want to go. They're tired of the conversation. So, it's a good thing to say, "Hey, we'll catch up next time," and let the person go. Now, if it's not you, because their orientation is toward the cashier, Brian, they're waiting for that gosh-darn cashier to check the cash. You get what I'm saying? And they're getting frustrated. Again, earlier when we were talking about intent, the fist balled up, the human responses. Okay, so the harder you try to hide those, the more they stick out. But you telegraph what you're doing well before you know it. So, let's put yourself in a boardroom. You're conducting a negotiation. You get what I'm trying to say? You see the person saying something, and you're watching their mannerisms, and right away you think, "Oh, I got something on them." So, what do you do? You smile or not, or you give a tell like you're playing poker, or you do what my daughter, Dr. Andrea, does, and rolls her eyes because I'm so stupid, whatever comment. Those telegraph what's really going on behind the scenes. And basketball players have learned for a long time to do it, right? Yes, they look one way and pass the other way. Why? Because they understand the price of telegraphing your intent. You won't get a three-pointer, you won't get the two.

Well, that's a perfect analogy. You know, you go to the quarterback, he can't telegraph where he's throwing that. Give the defensive backs a split second to know exactly where that ball is going. And those are great examples because they happen at such a high rate of speed, and it's so fast. But even at that level, you know that defense can read that quarterback and go, "Oh, he's throwing to the left side, I better get over there!" And sure enough, that's where it is. So, that's understanding the telegraphing intent and how we do it unknowingly. And when you get to the sports analogy, you have to learn how to not do that, right? The little kids.

You're exactly right.

And when you're first learning, that quarterback's looking exactly at the receiver the whole entire time, right? It takes time over time, you know, if you get to that higher level to go, "All right, that's that we, we have to hide that, we have to mimic that." But that takes years and years and years and years of training to go back to unknowingly telegraphing your intent. You know, you brought up the feet. That's a perfect example. I know we've done a whole orientation, we've done a whole episode on body language. But your orientation, where you're facing, but especially your feet are, you know, the farthest thing from your brain, to the most honest part of your body. They're going to telegraph your intent, whether you want to walk away or you're about to run, or whatever that is. So, that's right. It's a great example. And then, you know, we do that unknowingly, that's all happening unconsciously.

And your turn signal example is, I don't think they have those on vehicles in California! Oh my gosh, I haven't seen anyone. So, this is my history of California: Everybody in California carries a frisbee and a golf club and a football with them because the 5 and the 1 (referring to freeways) are always so packed up that you can get out and just stand and play games for an hour and a half while the accident clears. The longer I live in California, the more every stereotype you've ever heard about California becomes true. That's ridiculous.

So, anyway. All right, next one after telegraphing intent, we have cognitive illusions. You say, "Cognitive illusions can be overcome with training." But first of all, explain what a cognitive illusion is.

Yeah, so cognitive dissonance, cognitive illusion is where your brain has enough information to choose, and it chooses prematurely. And the real thing that you're looking at is something completely different or slightly different. So, I'll give you an example. It's turbidity. It's turmoil in your brain because there's enough sense receptors that would tend to show a reasonable person something's happening. You're driving down where we're, for Mojave Viper, we're up in Stumps, 29 Palms. So, we're driving down the freeway—sorry, folks, I had to get there too. All right, driving down the freeway, and you're looking down the freeway, and it's 110 degrees wet bulb, and all of a sudden, you see a town and trees and buildings and everything. Well, it's not there, but what happens is the heat monkeys that are coming off are creating shapes. Your brain hates divided attention and certainly hates chaos, so it puts them in order and says, "We're coming up to a village that's got a beach and all these other things," when actually it's just the heat monkeys coming off of the ground.

Anytime. Yeah, a mirage. We call it a mirage.

So, you have the same thing. A good example of a cognitive illusion is a fundamental attribution error. You know, "That good Kurt Russell is such a great actor, I'm going to vote how he votes on this next proposal." Do you get what I'm trying to say there? So, there's the flipping computer, war, tennis shoes. So, we're going to follow him on a vote for whatever. No, just because a person is good at one thing, don't attribute further knowledge to that person. So, cognitive illusions are things that once we understand, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," then we'll never get fooled by him again. But it takes training. It takes, and I don't want to blow this for somebody. So, if you've got a little kid in a room, get them out of the room. And if you're loving magic, turn down the song for just a minute. If you're going to do a magic act, all of the magic acts have an answer. "Okay, you do this, and then you cut it in half. This knot is already cut." Well, Brian, those are cognitive illusions. They're close enough to our brain that our brain goes, "Oh, man," and it melds those things again.

And there are so, magic tricks are a great example, right? So, it's a type of illusion. Okay, so that illusion is it, you know, some of it, it's both a cognitive illusion and, you know, kind of like a physiological illusion, right, a physical illusion, right? But the idea is with those magic tricks, once you see how it's done, you'll never fall for it, right? Once you know, right, once you get the peek behind the curtain, "Oh, I see how they did it. There's a string here, or this is moved here, or they divided my attention, had me focus over here while they moved that." Well, that one doesn't work anymore. But the thing with cognitive illusions is like, a lot of times, even if, even if you know, right, it's, it's not there, like the mirage is a perfect example. Like, I'll look out ahead, I know it's a mirage, but no, I see water there. "Greg, we're in the desert. There's water out there!" It still fools my brain. But I had to learn, you know, someone had to show you, go, "No, hey, you know, there's no water there, that's the story."

So, Brian, I would say, folks, get out your yellow pad and write down Gestalt, G-E-S-T-A-L-T. Gestalt has got an incredible amount of examples of things: the three-legged chair, the down-back.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I'll tell you just the ones that fool Shelly all the time. She gets pissed. You know the line, "Which line is shorter?" because it's got the arrows going the wrong way. Okay, so if you understand that your brain and its ability to compute reality can be challenged, then you have to also understand how to overcome that. You know, another good example, Brian, have you ever bow hunted for carp? A big Detroit thing. You take a bow and arrow and you hunt for carp. Well, remember the refraction and reflection, and the way that you look at the surface of the water, it changes where the item is underneath the water, right? So, you have to aim in a different spot, understanding that your brain is feeling a cognitive illusion.

I've seen people fish with an RPG.

Yeah, exactly. But they used to be called CCI fishermen with the .44 Mag. But listen, I'll give you one more. Your brain and your senses are set up to create homeostasis in every environment. And that's why when you're drunk, you're actually fighting that, and that's why we walk funny, right?

Yeah.

So, there's a thing called the Rotor, R-O-T-O-R. And it was at Cedar Point back when I was a kid. I'm remembering 45 years ago, Brian. And everybody that got in the Rotor, the Rotor spun and then the floor dropped out. Yeah, and everybody power vomited like a Rain Bird sprinkler. Why? Because all of your body systems were overwhelmed by the environment, and the illusion was, "I can't control it anymore." And when you can't control it anymore, your body is going to tell you that. And how does it tell you that? You're going to vomit. "This is not fun. This is ceased to be cool. I need to go back to standing on level ground." Right? So, all of those things can be overcome with training. Listen, they actually take NASA pilots up in a C-130 and do the zero G all day long, right? Why? Because they want to make sure that they can handle that. That's a form of human performance training, overcoming a cognitive bias.

Okay, all right, so, so that's that kind of covers cognitive illusions. So, the next one you have on here is affiliations, and you say, "Humans betray their affiliations unknowingly." So, what, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by affiliations? What do you mean we betray them?

So, an affiliation is any known, intended, or unintentional relationship between other humans, sociologically within an environment or a baseline, let's call it. So, the idea is that people react to other people differently. If you're walking down the sidewalk and a person's coming towards you and your onboard system senses danger, you'll cross the street, you know, you'll walk faster, you'll do different things. Why? Because your system is alerted that that affiliation is, that's going to be a bad relationship. Whereas you could be in a bar and you see a group of people laughing and talking, and maybe you'll take your drink and go over and see what's going on there because you want to be associated, affiliated with them in some manner. So, it's to fill a sociological, psychological, or physiological need, what, breeding. You get what I'm trying to say? But ideas are that you can betray that affiliation without even knowing you're doing it. So, a quick one. School circle. We're all standing in school circle, we're standing at a bar.

And all of a sudden, you'll think it's like what I mean, just like school circles. Yeah, they're training people like, yeah, for qualified people standing around, talking like a normal cohort with their feet and their orientation pointed towards each other. So, they're all talking and they're all laughing. Now, the person that wants to talk next, watch their foot. Their foot will get jumpy, and they'll put their foot further into the circle, like, "Put your right foot in, and put your left foot up." And they'll start manipulating their hair and moving their hand. Why? They're so excited by all the axons of dendrites and the connections that are hot in their brain that they want to spit out the next thing that's going on. Well, what they're doing is they're saying, "Hey, I'm with this group, I'm affiliated with this group, and I want to talk now." So, I want to be somewhere in a hierarchy.

Well, what hierarchies mean, we came up a long time ago with the MADE acronym. Anybody else that tells it that they made it up, they're full of it, because I'm the first one to write it down. And MADE came from being a "made guy," your "made man," if you can figure this out. So, it's a double entendre of sorts. And it stood for, Brian: Mimicry, Adoration, Direction, and Entourage. And most of those have an above or below, right? So, Adoration can be a positive or a negative. And somebody goes, "Yeah, but negative adoration would be hate or death or fear." Yeah, but it doesn't fit the acronym, so back off for a minute! I get pissed when people talk about that because they're trying to invent stuff that's already been invented. So, mimicry. Do you act like the person that's with you? Do you wear it?

Right. Right. Clothing? Because we look at that as just, when you see people communicating that way, when they have similar mannerisms, maybe moving their hand or whatever, like, you'll see that mimicry, we know there's good communication, that's a normal part of how humans interact, right? We start to mimic, whether the way we speak or we'll start to do the upspeak if someone else is doing it.

You're exactly right, and we won't lose it for a while until we're away from that person. And Brian, that can even be catchphrases. A person has a little catchphrase that you, you know, that's "stinking ugly," you know, whatever. And then you start using "stinking" and, you know, and you're going, "Why did I use that?" Well, that's it, that also is a function of the mimicry and the adoration. Yes. And you adore somebody, thinking that you want to be like that person, you want to act as though that person. You do the face platter, you smile and laugh at their jokes. Now, it can be negative adoration as well. You spit on the ground or you rip your clothes when that person comes by or you absent yourself when Uncle Paul comes to the group meeting. And then direction, whether a person opens the door for you, or the person pulls out a chair for you, or the person responds before you even ask for something by handing you a cup of coffee that they know is your brand. That's got mimicry, adoration, and direction all in there. Okay, I don't physically have to point to you and go, "Yeah, hate you, you're doing it!" But if I do that, guess what? That's even more proof. Because if I can point to, like, I would never imagine ever pointing to Brian and go, "Hey, go get me a whatever." Okay, Brian would be like all up in my drill. It would be ugly. Okay, but you know that if another person nodded and was already on the way, okay, then you have direction. So, you have M-A-D (Mimicry, Adoration, and Direction). And guess what, Brian? Three out of four, positive signal. But guess what the fourth one is? The fourth one is we walk around all day long, and we don't have theme music and we don't have people following us, right? Okay, if you do, you're either a wanted criminal or a celebrity. Okay, that's called the E, the entourage. People that walk around and follow you. And why do they follow you, Brian? Because you get them money, you can get them laid, you can get them drugs, you can get them booze, you can get them laughing. Okay, there are a whole bunch of different things that they can get you. But watch how those people tend to follow you around. We don't have that. So, a person that's got the MADE, they're probably your top person. Okay, and you can actually categorize that hierarchy by watching and saying, "He has more of this, and she has more of that, so she's the CEO and this guy's probably her shot caller," right?

Yeah, and you're talking about kind of creating a hierarchy in a group, which happens naturally in every group. I don't care if it's all kids, if it's a team, whatever. Even though there might be a built-in structure, let's say military or police, like there's an already a set built-in structure. But then you can start to identify, "Well, that person outranks that other person, but they kind of have a lot more say in that group of what's going on." Right, you can see that, right? And you know, you talk about betraying those affiliations unknowingly, we're doing that sort of unconsciously, right? We will defer to the leader of the group when something comes up, or even like you said with the school circle thing, it's like you can, you can look down at where people are standing. If you get a group of people, the people in that group who know each other a little bit better, they're going to be a little bit closer to each other, right? They're going to be standing, literally their feet will be a little bit closer than someone else. So, that is all happening like we said, right?

Perfect example. You're spot on again. We were recently doing a course back East, and somebody showed up back East right in the middle of the course, and they were unexpected at the time. It wasn't during a break, it was right in the middle while we were both on transmit, and we're moving the crowd and having a good time. And the person came in, we both know, and we both looked, and it created a huge ripple in the room. So, everybody could see that immediately there was a change, right? Okay, so this person somehow is more important than all you heathens because we stopped what we were doing to greet that person, "Welcome." Now, immediately that person sat down, and we went on with the rest of the course. So, they weren't our boss, you know what I'm saying? They were important to us, but they weren't our contemporary. Why is that important? So, you know how to navigate the physiological and sociological in a meeting and get your goal accomplished.

Right, right, right. Okay, so yeah, these are the, the affiliation ones are huge. We do that in a number of different ways, like you said, and the way we talk, the way we act, the way we mimic each other, the clothes we're. You know, we always can walk into a place and we see a new group of people, and we can tell whether they're like a high-functioning team and they're getting together sometimes just by the way you'll see like they're all the same haircut, they're wearing basically the same clothes, they're all like in the same kind of shape, and we're like, "Okay, this group, oh, they spend a lot of time together and they work together well." Because there's no, there's no dissonance in there. There's not one person who looks and acts completely different. There's no, like, these are natural things sociologically that happen with a group. It's like when you see a family out and they all start to look the same. They're all wearing almost the same color shirt or pants or similar shoes, and you're like, "Jeez, you'd pick them out in a crowd." And they're not even realizing they're doing it.

Let's take an extra minute on that. On Zoom or emails. Remember, you don't have to actually physically see the person to create a behavior profile. So, Zoom meetings, when people are constantly switching. And this is just a thing that we get into because we sometimes have a CEO on that was a former general that's also a friend of somebody else. And so, when you, when you have too much of the, "Sir," and then you're slipping back and forth to the, "General," but the other guys call them Larry, and they're having a good laugh. Right, that's uncomfortable. Why is it uncomfortable? Because it's a low-functioning unit. Why? Because they have a low level of organization. What does that mean? That they're all on the call together, still figuring out. So, yeah. And guess what, Brian? That takes time, that takes money, that's inefficient. So, now we look at it even on email. And so, we sent an email, and the first four sentences are platitudes, "Hey, great to see you at the beach today, Senator, this," and then, "Yeah, that's all horseshit, that doesn't need to be there." Why do we do it, though? Because there's a hierarchy in every group. And groups that do it well, Brian, it's smooth and efficient. Groups that don't are constantly fighting. And guess what? It's a lot of extra words and a lot of extra time to make people feel welcome. That's not what the MADE acronym is about. MADE acronyms to figure out humans and their relationships to other humans, whether they know it or not. And that way, you can manipulate—let's not use that word—you can modify your behavior to gain an advantage. And what's the advantage that we want to gain? We want to be a better friend, we want to be a better parent, we want to anticipate danger or an opportunity. People get us wrong, thinking that, "Oh, you mean you're going to manipulate?" Yeah, to calm you down so I can get the information out of you and I need to find a missing kid. You know, the term "manipulate" is not a negative term.

No, certainly not scientifically.

Yeah, you know, so I manipulate the door in the refrigerator many times.

Exactly. Exactly. I manipulate that oven, you know, all the time to get my food in there. So, the next one is, is a big one we talk about a lot, and it's about memory. And you simply wrote, "Memory is fiction." I, I cannot stress this enough, it's something I always, always have to tell everyone: Your world and the way you think it is is not reality. It's certainly not the way the rest of the world is. Everyone sees it differently. There's objective reality in what you think, so, you know, what we think and experience and see and feel is so, so entirely subjective that we, that's why, but there's so much discourse sometimes, and people, you know, think the wrong thing. It's like, "You're not seeing the world for what it is." But none of us are, so you have to take that account. So, explain your version of what you mean when you say memory is fiction because what do you mean? I can remember a lot of stuff when I was a little kid.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that happened.

I remember, you know, my first concussion ever, I was six. You know, and I was at my farm, and, you know, I went barreling down this road with my cousins on bikes, and I fell, and I busted my head open. I had to go to the hospital. I remember all that stuff, right? You tell me I don't remember the color of my grandma's new rug that I threw up all over because I was so heavily concussed. Like, I remember that stuff. I remember every detail, right?

Every detail that you remember is a detail that gets better with age because you keep reinventing the memory, right? Every time that memory comes out of that file folder, you add the favorite. "I love asparagus," and, "I remember the first smell on that carpet when I vomited was asparagus." Listen, as a kid, you didn't even know what asparagus was, right? The idea is that you've accumulated all these additional memories, and those memories bleed over into them. And guess what? Even when you're on a stand and somebody says, "Take the oath," what you're doing is you're recreating what you think you saw, felt, and tasted at that time based on all of the emotions you have. So, if you have 90% of your emotions are based on this and 10% on that one concussion when you were a kid, that 90% is going to weigh heavily on that 10%, Brian. And it's going to create lapses in memory that your brain hates to have a hole in a memory, so it's going to fill. And what's it going to fill it with? It's a Wonderful Life? It's going to fill it with a New Zoo Review? It's going to fill it with, like, I'll tell you the one that everybody out there knows. Have you ever related a story about how much you love your significant other, and at the end of the story your significant other goes, "That was, that was your previous one!" Yeah, okay. Why? Because we associate good things, we want that dopamine. We want to feel good about the situation, and that can be harmful; it can create a bias to your memory. And so, and memory is just horribly awful like that.

And you know, we, we remember things the way we want to be remembered. And all humans are somewhat egocentric to a point. So, this is where you get into how the story changes over time. Like you just said the one, "Hey, babe, remember when we came here and we had that amazing meal, and remember it was a funny bartender, and we sat here laughing?" Like, "No, that was someone else you dated." So, I replaced my wife with someone else because I wanted, but not nefariously. And you didn't want to be mean. In fact, the, the opposite actually, I wanted, it was a compliment to, I'm now inserting her into a really great memory. No, they don't, they definitely do not. And there's a bunch of stuff with memory too. Like, you know, we technically, you can store, I don't even know, endless amounts of information, memory, but what becomes difficult is recall, right? That recall of what that is. And this is where it gets into, we might remember major muscle movements, but individual little things, they're going to get changed around. And this happens where, you know, sometimes what gets into, like, I would say, nothing ruins a good war story like another witness, you guys, because what happens is you're not recall, when you, when you're remembering something, you're not recalling back to that event, recalling back to the last time you recalled that event, the last time you remembered it. That story can change over time. Suddenly it was, there were three people there, and then a year later, like, "Yeah, I think there's like four or five guys." Well, the next time you tell that story, now it starts at four or five. So, then you might add another one. And it's like the fishing story, "You know, I once caught a fish this big!" You know what I mean? And then that fish grows and grows and grows and grows every time.

You don't know that you're doing it, and therefore it feels robust, it feels real, Brian. That's the, that's the key. And I'll tell you another thing. Listen, folks, I'm old now, so I yellow pad everything. I've got yellow pads all over the house, and if I get an idea, I stop and I write it down. And I'll tell you what I do, I write it down completely. Why? Because I've got all these notepads that I find when I'm going back through my notes, and it said, "Johnny has one," with an arrow to the right. And I look, and above it, I'm in a negotiation. Do you get what I'm saying? Then I drew the circles of the people at the table. Then I made an expert Johnny. Then I wrote to myself, "Johnny has one with the arrow." And then it's a completely different thing, but it was important enough to write it down, signify who Johnny was and put the arrow. And now I can't use that memory, Brian.

Right. I have no idea what the comment, what it was, what that memory was.

Right. So, don't fall for that. And your imagination, you've heard the term, "Your imagination runs away with you," for a good reason. You want to be the protagonist of your story, you want to be the center of your universe, you want to have things that are wonderful memories where you came and you weren't the one that spoiled the punch bowl, you're the one that found it and stopped everybody from drinking it and saved the world. So, if you know there's that much pressure on you, and you know there's a limit to what you can see, how much you can hear, but like auditory exclusion, "Well, how many shots were fired? Oh man, there must have been nine or 11 shots that were fired." Okay, do you routinely do that? Okay, well, we know the brain hates divided attention, so are you counting or were you running? So, I'm always suspicious when I'm talking to somebody.

Yeah, and we, we will fill in details that didn't happen. And again, like you said, it's not someone trying to lie, they have no nefarious intent. It's literally making order out of chaos. It's your brain goes, "I need a complete picture, however, we did not get one at the time of events, so I'm going to make one."

Yeah, and exactly. All the stuff from movies that you've seen before, other stories that people have told you before, other events that had nothing to do with it, they sort of get kind of mixed around in there. So, you might have some major muscle movements correct, you know, but yeah, but when it comes to your concussion, yeah, you fell off the bike. "Remember you were on the farm?" Do you hear what I'm saying? But when you get the finer granularity, unless there was a memory and emotion link that was so profound, it's unlikely that that's exactly true. Now, what things help us? Notes, photographs, videotape. Do you get what I'm trying to say? So, that's why just an Axon body camera alone doesn't fill in everything around, but it can help me get the sequence correct, right? Because what's one of the first things that fails in our memory? The sequence. "This happened, then this happened." No. A traffic accident. "Listen, man, I heard the screeching brakes, I looked over and saw the crash. Then I looked up to the light and it was green from north to south." Well, it probably wasn't green for north to south when it was happening. You see what I'm trying to say? So, that alone, that factor alone, Brian, if I testify to it, I would be wrong without knowing I'm wrong. So, memory is fiction. It's whatever is the best story at the time that you're recalling that specific memory.

Okay, and then that kind of leads right into the next one about habit because you have habit, it said, "Memory and emotion links make humans creatures of habit." So, we talked about, you know, predictability, and what we talk about is obviously, you can give your pattern recognition and, you know, we're creatures of habit. Pattern becomes pattern behavior is what becomes a habit, or we call that a habit, it's just a pattern of behavior, basically. But what, what do you, you mean by that? Because you brought up memory emotion links and memory, so let's explain what that is exactly.

So, a memory emotion link means that something occurs that's so new or so novel or so profound or so exciting or so scary or so dangerous that it gets a whole bunch of chemicals in your brain excited. And when those are excited, it's easier short-term to remember that incident and vividly remember it and recall what's going on. So, a habit is a sense that you liked something before, so you're likely to like it again. So, predictability is that I'll go to City Market to shop. I'll get the biggest cart they have. I'll do the cleaner on the rail. I'll make sure that I start at the right and end with the frozen foods. Why? Because I don't want them to thaw before I get to my car. That's predictability. And humans are remarkably predictable. But habit means, Brian, "I like to go to bed around this time because I know I get about this much sleep." Okay, and somebody said, "Yes, but that's predictable." Yeah, but it's a different part of your brain that's wanting it. You get what I'm trying to say? It's not the least calorie intervention to go to that place, and I just go more and more. It's that something about that memory was so profound that it's a thing that I do. Like people do this—(Greg crosses his arms)—and I always hear the kinesics, you know what I'm saying, the parlor trick ones. And they're going, "That person's not buying what you're selling." Well, this is a comfort signal. This means that the person is completely comfortable inside of them. "You're not coming in, I'm not coming out because I'm perfect." If I had a blanket, I'd probably be sleeping, right? Now, what's another thing it could mean? It could mean the temperature in the room has changed, so and I'm cold, right? So, don't force something where it doesn't fit. And habit is a perfect one. What do we do around Christmas in our house? Do we have eggnog? Do we have roast beast? Do we sing "Fah Who For-aze" from The Grinch? Those are things that become habit. And after a while, those habit—now that's not, somebody would say, "Yes, but I can predict you're likely to do it." Yeah, you're predicting it, I get it. That's putting it on a calendar and saying what events are going to happen in what sequence. But the habit's the exact chemistry inside the human that drives it, and that's based on your previous encounters with that information.

Okay, yeah, and that's, that's like you said, we're creatures of habit. This goes back to like you said, our, it's, it, most decisions are made at some sort of survival level, right? Of why we, why we create the patterns of behavior that we do, right? And what you keep referring to is the memory emotion links, which is, you know, something occurred, right? And it, it triggered a whole bunch of electrochemical neurotransmitters during that event, it became very powerful. So, that memory emotion link, meaning that myelination happened, I created some synapse that said, "Hey, when this occurs, I'm going to do this," because that's what we've done over and over again, and it worked, and we really liked it, we got rewarded out of it. That becomes a habit, right?

Yep.

And that, that, that's, and that memory emotion, that could be something tragic, it could be something funny, it could just be through repetition over and over again, right, of whatever. Like, it's the, the going to bed example is a perfect one. "Man, I started going to bed earlier, I started getting better sleep. I started being happier. I got more rested. I was able to do more." Okay, well, once I start doing that, it's really hard. You know, I always do, people do the same thing. Like, to get up early, I like to get up early, you get up early. It's worked for me in so many different contexts and so many different places to be up before that sun comes up, start my day off right. I can't not do that. So, when I try to sleep in, I, I can't. It's miserable, because I have that habit now. It's so ingrained. It would take me very, very long to then break that habit. But to just try and lay in bed, you know, for weeks or months to get my body just to not wake up early.

Another limited objective experiment. If I'm in a group of smokers, all I have to do, and it's predictable to get the response that I want, is touch my pocket where my cigarettes are. I don't smoke, haven't for years, but where I used to keep cigarettes and a lighter, I would touch that pocket and fumble around for a second, and everybody in the room would want to take a break and go smoke. Right? If you don't believe that, do a limited objective experiment. What you're doing is, during a meeting, just glance down at your phone for a second, and then in the next couple of seconds, everybody will do that. So, those are predictable, those aren't habit. Habits form over time, right? But if you say, "I want everybody before this meeting to put your phone in a box, and we're going to keep the box outside," and go do your meeting. Okay, predictably, the habit is so strong, they'll be searching for their phone and feel completely uncomfortable.

Predictability. Shelly loved her Grandma Nelli and Grandpa Bruno immensely. There was no way that you wouldn't understand how much she talks about him all the time, all this other stuff. So, predictability, I know that somewhere in the house Shelly's going to have a Grandpa Bruno and Grandma Nelli shrine. You get what I'm saying? So, I'm, I'm conducting predictive analysis. But the habit is that every time Shelly comes in, she kisses her finger and touches the thing over the mantel and says, "Love you, Gramps," or whatever. You see the difference?

Okay, so right. You predict a behavior. You get what I'm saying? It's likely, but a habit is something that you don't even know you're doing. And it's like being that gopher on that wheel. Then I'm going to go for what kind of animal would that be? A hamster? I don't know.

Absolutely, there we go. Okay, I guess you could probably put a gopher on there, it'd be a bigger wheel. Yeah.

No, and that's, no, good point because you brought up, you know, a habit isn't, habit isn't necessarily good or bad, it could be anything, right? There's good habits, there's bad habits. It's just that pattern behavior, the memory emotion link. So, you try to create habits of thought, habits of action, to a lot better patients.

Yeah, that are good, that are congruent, and that are good, and that that allow you to do whatever it is you're trying to do, whether that's to, you know, work out more, eat healthier. And that's the thing, what you just hit is not predictable. So, it's predictable if I eat a lot of calories and I'm sedentary, I'm going to get fat, right? Okay, but a habit is I get up every single morning and head down to the home gym because I've got to. And if I don't, I'll be, you know, Orson Wellesian in proportions and explode like the Zeppelin, right, the Hindenburg. So, the idea is...

Oh, the humanity.

Prediction. Exactly. That's what Shelly yells every time. And Brian wanted to have it, so there's a clear definition, a definition with the distinction, even though that distinction's fine and it's good stuff to remember, because you can predict or feed a habit or destroy a habit based on your, you know, your continued human performance.

Okay, so the last one you have is training, and what our motto is: "Training changes behavior." (Trademark, don't try to steal it!) But training changes behavior, right? So, first of all, like define training, and then what you mean training changes behavior? Because everyone thinks training is like, "Okay, I'm either at the gym training for an event or a thing," or, "I'm at the shooting range training," meaning it doesn't always have to be something like that. So, like, your phone is teaching you, it's training. Yeah, so I would start there with maybe a definition.

I'll give you an example. Education imparts a viewpoint. Education imparts—we use it all the time—a platitude, an ideal. You know what I'm trying to say?

I can learn concepts, right? Exactly.

And I can sit back in my chair and think about what I just read and go, "That makes perfect sense. It's completely logical. Yeah, I like it. I don't like it." And we live sometimes through those literary characters, don't we? Okay, but the idea is training imparts a skill. Okay, so I can read how to ride a bike. I can read how to swim. Okay, but without actually going out and getting into those arenas, getting on a bike on a sidewalk or getting in a pool or an ocean, okay, you haven't learned the skill. You can't take that skill and say, "I've now had this newly minted skill." So, theory is great, and educational theory and understanding how to solve the problems is brilliant, but until you've solved the problem, until you've taken away that negotiation, until you've talked that de-escalation, you get what I'm trying to say? It's a different theory. So, training, for example, they say, "Training is tap, rack, bang." Training is, "Not going to your gun when you're going for your taser," all that other stuff. No, unless you've done it an equal amount of times and your brain is fluent with it. But then even then, it's only muscle memory. So, training means, training means the entire experience, Brian. So, I'll give you an example. There's a place in Madison Heights, God, I haven't been there in 35, 40 years, called Bruno's. It's a bar that's right off the freeway. When you first come into Bruno's, you have that hint of sage in the background. And you hear the person playing a piano, "Fly Me to the Moon." But ding, ding, ding, ding, Bruno himself comes up, and if he knows your name, he'll say it. If not, he says, "Welcome, friends. I'm Bruno, this is my restaurant. Come on!" And he introduces you to a place that you're going to sit and the guy that's going to seat it. And here's the thing, and it's no pressure. "Take your time. When you want us, give us an indication, we'll cook whatever it is." Brian, from the very beginning, what he does is he's training you. He's teaching you how to behave in his place. He's saying, "This is a full open sense of who I am, and this is a." Okay, what that is, is that's not education, that is training. He's training you, "I will seat you here, you will do these things." And when you walk in the next time, guess what you're going to do? You're going to repeat that behavior. It changes how you see that environment. It changed, I was a cop for almost 30 years, rather. And you look at 27 to 30, I'm doing the math. And still, Brian, when I see a car at the side of the road, there could be a police car. I go to 10 and two, right? I check my speedometer. I go down. Why is that education? No, it's training because I know that that car is going to cause all of these different things, and I'm going to get pulled over, and it's going to come out of my wallet or whatever. So, the difference is that you're no longer doing it in the theoretical or the metaphorical, you're actually doing it, doing the skill in the moment.

No, and I, I love the example of Bruno's restaurant example because that's, that's, I don't want to get off the tangent on what's going on in the restaurant industry right now, but I think it's a perfect industry that should listen to that example because what you're doing is he's, he's teaching you what's important to him, how he wants to be treated, what's important at the restaurant, and he's teaching you, you know, what you can and cannot do. Now, it, it's not in a list saying, "Hey, look, listen up. This is, these are the rules here." This, no, you don't have nothing. I don't know that way. You were drawn in, you had to see what was going to happen next. That was the amazing thing about the story of Bruno's. You know, it was an experience, Brian.

No, and that's the whole part is the training, we always talk about creating a training experience, right? And what that actually means. So, he's teaching you all that stuff. Well, one of the things we always talk about too that we use is people teach you how they want to be treated. And that's an exact perfect example of what it is. So, how you act and the way you address people and the way you talk to them, the pitch, tone, and inflection of your voice, the clothes you wear, all that builds into where you stand, where your posture is. You know, all your mannerisms go into what people think of you. I mean, whether you realize it or not. And this would get, which goes into all the unconscious stuff that we've already talked about. But the training part is, is how do you, how do you change that, or how do you get that point across? It's the same thing I do with the, the little insurgent, right? I don't know, there's no, "Hey, you will do this at this time, and here's a list of things." It's, it's, we just build, build some habits into the day. And I train her, I show her like, "Hey, look, this is how you, this is where everything goes in your room, and, you know, you have to do that before you go out and play." I let her do that. If that's when she gets out of bed first thing in the morning, she decides to all be all over it, or she's sitting there going slow and grabbing some breakfast and wanting to do her own thing. That's fine. She knows what needs to be done because I've trained her accordingly. But just by showing it and demonstrating that stuff is a training program. Anything could be a training.

Yeah, you can do it. You can build those repetitions in no matter what it is. You know, as simple as is, you know, with phone calls or something with people. Like if I don't wait more than a couple minutes on a Zoom call and then I'm done. If they get back and say, "Hey, sorry, I was five minutes late, and you weren't on there anymore," okay, I'm training them. Yeah, I'm not. That's unacceptable to me. That's an unacceptable standard that you're going to waste my time. So, either they learn and they correct it, or they don't, and then it's over. But that's the idea is I'm teaching them, I'm training them what's important to me.

You're spot on.

So, "Rake the leaves and you'll get a quarter." That was our allowance back in the day, was a quarter for the week. "Rake the leaves." So, my dad, former Marine, God rest his soul—and I showed you all the family members there over the weekend, Brian. But my dad set out a baseball bat, a coal shovel, and a rake, and he set it in the backyard, and he had Jeff and I come out. Brian was off, you know, doing whatever Brian did, he was the golden son. And Dad says, "Okay, boys," that was our name, Jeff and I. "Which one of these tools is going to be most efficient at raking?" And Jeff would always go, "The bat!" And Dad would, you know, give him some knuckle. And I would say, "Wow, Dad, it seems as though the rake would be the best." And Dad would go, "Yeah, now, how you pick it up?" Dad would pick it up by the tines and he would poke us in the chest with the handle. And Dad went through this series of things to make it viscerally real what raking meant. "Where do you start? Where do they end up? If you don't put the plastic underneath them, then what are you going to do with those?" "Yes, some can be mulched into the garden." It was this entire learning experience. And you're going to go, "Yeah, it was interspersed with education." It certainly was. But the training was the modules. "This is the tool, this is the day, this is the environment." And then he repeated it. And guess what he would do? He'd come out and check our work. "This is good. Nice, what you did over here. That one on Hattie's yard. So, you can't do that because then the neighbor's going to be pissed." There was a lesson in everything, Brian. And you could have read it, you know, but doing it, that was the difference. Doing it. Now, I walked away with that sense of accomplishment. And guess what? When I was faced with a similar circumstance, I figured that new circumstance out the same way. That's a benefit of training.

No, and that's that's another, another great example of what we mean by it. It doesn't have to be as formal as people think it is. I don't think your dad wrote out his lesson plan and then, and then submitted it and then to someone and then created... No, it's just, but he went through each, each process, each step. Even Bruno had his way of doing things. He probably didn't have to write that down unless he was showing the next guy that he wanted as the manager, the next woman that he wanted as manager. "Okay, this is what you're going to do. Let me show you how you're going to greet people." And that's that's exactly what we're talking about, those training moments like that. And like you always say, you know, anything is a teachable moment.

Anything. Oh my gosh, how many times during the day do you and I throw that out and we just nod now that, "Hey, there's a perfect moment. We can stop right here and stop everything that we're doing. Look, this is why this occurs and this is what it is." So, and I keep that, you know, everything in life is like that. You know, I do that with the little one as well. "All right, hey, did you see why the dog did this instead of what she normally does?" You know, that hip pocket. Brian, I'm so behind you on this one. Listen, if you're in the moment, you see something, stop. Stop, take a knee, go look at that tire tread. "That's not from that car. How long has this car been here?" "Well, it was before the snow." And, you know, those are wonderful. Same thing when I, the first time ever had explosives training was learning how to use det cord. It was with 550 cord, green paracord. There you go. And I learned how to tie every type of different small charges to blow small stuff up. Did it a bunch of times. So, guess what? When we finally went to the demo range...

Already done. Here we go.

Yep. "Let there be, here is a pigtail splice." Yeah, you know. So, it's wonderful. Yeah. So, we, we've kind of, we've gone through all of these, right? We've gone through these 10. What would be your, your guidance sort of if I've been listening to this and taking notes and going through and saying, "All right, well, you know, so what? Or how do I use this? Or what am I supposed to do with it?" Kind of like, "What can I get out of this?" Because we can realistically, we could take each one and do an entire podcast episode on it. But I thought it was better just to kind of get all of them out there like this. So, if I've got my yellow pad out, what, what, what's, what are some of my takeaways here and how to use this?

I would take the next 10 minutes after you hang up or quit or whatever, I don't know, it ends the show, yeah, somehow. And I would take and I would put each one of these on an individual page of my diary. And every single time I encounter something, I would add it. And don't be afraid because sometimes it could be, it's going to be in predictability and habit. But then you're going to go, "Wait a minute, this one's predictability, habit, and memory." That's good. Rewrite it. Because when you say it, see it, write it, read it, and repeat it, you're going to remember it even better. You know, recall it when you need to. And what I'm saying, Brian, is I'm saying, thinking them, think of them as bins. They're big open bins that you can throw the rolled up yellow pad into like a basketball hoop, right? And then go back occasionally and take a look at it and say, "Am I being predictable in this moment? Have I established an affiliation at my church? Am I subject to a cognitive illusion?" Do you get what I'm saying? Mastery comes from using the language, not just understanding where the Spanish to English dictionary is in your bedroom.

No, that's exactly what I would have said too, is, right, so let's take each one of these that we went over on 10 different pieces of paper, and I've got, "Attention: Humans won't pay attention unless they have to." Boom. That's my first one. Like you said, I took those different, I would say, externally and internally, what have I seen from other people? How do I fall into this bin? And you just start writing those examples. And like you said, some are going to fall into multiple buckets, and that's fine, that's how it's supposed to be, right? And they, they interweave together. And then now, after, over time, after months, you're going to sit there and go, "Holy crap, I'm a master at all 10 of these things!" Right. But there's always room to get better.

Oh, it's always another yellow pad. Right? So, I'll give you a quick example in telegraphing intent. Put stuff that you don't normally like. Like Brian and I don't watch a lot of television. Brian's got a streaming thing that he does when there's something good on. I love documentaries. I absolutely love learning about stuff. But waiting for the documentary to come on, there was some ridiculous movie with Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller's kid, Ben Stiller. And if you know who Ben Stiller is, folks, I don't know the movie, but there's one where he's trying to get in to see a girl that's in a high-rise business, and he comes through the revolving doors, which is hilarious, and he encounters the same security guard over and over again. And it's Refrigerator Perry—I mean, it's not, but it's a huge guy that's just gigantic. And so, Stiller tries to get around the guy, and so Stiller tries to fake to the left, spin around, do all those other things. Well, what he's doing, folks, is he's telegraphing his intent. I can write down that scene from that movie and just jot down a couple of notes. So, when I come back to telegraphing intent, I grin, I go, "Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that." And that opens the door, Brian, to those files. So, every time that you see one, it's not going to be an Oscar-winning movie scene. Sometimes it's going to be a dog doing his business in the yard. Sometimes it's going to be you, me telling you this morning, "Remember about the Christmas tree?" "Oh, is that a habit?" No, it's because I couldn't bend over, right? Those type of things that happen to us have to be written down, they have to be collated and referred to. That's how, how do you become a subject matter expert? From all that scar tissue, right? Guess what? When the scar tissue, when you account for all of that, the person says, "Where's your certificate? Where's your book? Where's your, you know, learning and all that stuff?" And that's why you and I hate those gosh-darn certificates. Everything's a certificate and a membership now. I would rather say, "Show me your notes," and have you pull out a book that has all kind of little things written in the margins and everything. That's what makes you a subject matter expert.

Exactly. No, that's, and that's a, that's a, that's a great point to kind of, kind of end on. You have to personalize the information anyway. Same thing with anything you're learning. If you don't make it something that you use and you do that pertains to your specific life, good luck learning it. I mean, it's why, why do people have such a hard time learning a foreign language? Well, not until they get to that country. Then all of a sudden, "Wow, we're picking up pretty quick!" Why? Because you have to out of survival. So, it's, it's that, you know, it's, it's another example. But, so that's, that's kind of these, these 10. I know we wanted to do one on this. If you're listening, there's a whole bunch more on our Patreon site, and it's only a few bucks a month, and we put a lot of stuff on there. And so, there's plenty more on there, you can sign up. And then we also have if you're on there, those members who are Patreon members, we always answer any questions that you have. So, you can write in, we answer questions, and we record it and we put it on on that site. So, you guys, and girls, and everyone else listening, can choose to hop on there and check that stuff out. It gets, you know, if you have questions, likely someone else has. So, please check out that site. And as we grow, we can start doing more. So, meaning, if you have other ideas or stuff that we want to do just on that side only, more than happy to do webinars and presentation stuff. So, please check out that site. And also, reach out to us anytime, thehumanbehaviorpodcast@gmail.com. Please, we love getting feedback from folks as we all know kind of how it comes across on on your end. And so, we do appreciate everyone who has reached out on there and continues to. And, you know, if you do enjoy what we do, please share it with a friend. You know, shoot the podcast episode over, text it to someone you know. And that's how we can grow this without having to get some sponsors and having a 10-minute intro of talking about products or something like that. So, any, any final, final words on this one, Greg, before we end?

No, I, I can't wait for the new year. It's yet another chance for us to go out and influence our environment.

Yeah, hopefully we, yeah. We appreciate everyone's support throughout the year and hope to grow this even more next year. And stay tuned, a lot of great training coming up. So, you can get involved and come to some of our training if you're interested, always reach out and ask about it. But thanks so much for listening, and don't forget that training changes behavior.