Conversation

The Godfather knew this trick. If you can make an offer they can’t refuse you’ve found a constraint movement option. Often, but not always, money is involved. Makes sense because it is a very generic constraint-changer. But all sorts of things work.
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This might be my basic psychological axiom: assume people have correctly solved for the best life they can, and use the structure of their solution to uncover their constraints. Then look for options to alter the constraints in their *environment* rather than their thinking
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I think many people fail at this because they approach other people’s problems with an “if I were you” starting point. But that’s changing the whole essence of the problem: them being not-you. Might as well suggest “If you were a spherical cow...”
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Why would your first step in solving a problem be replacing the most important part that you understand the least with an irrelevant substitute that you happen to understand the best?
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This is the “yes, and...” improv approach to being changed. It’s also Miller’s law applied to accepting subjective postures at face value. Assume their life posture is valid and ask what circumstances it could be valid for. Then look for ways to change the circumstances.
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One sign you’re doing it right (or it’s being done right to you): the change is somewhat unpredictable. A whole life reorientation/reconfiguration. Not a simple stimulus-response or a cause effect goal-pursuit effect. This is not incentive shift in a fixed solution structure.
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It’s an equilibrium shift. They’re restating and resolving their “life” problem in a new way around shifted constraints. Neither you, nor they know where they’ll land. It won’t be a simple “they’ll do more X, less Y” or “X instead of Y”. They’ll reinvent who they are.
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True even for deceptively structured life changes like hiring someone away from another company. They aren’t just changing jobs for more money, to do the same thing for more. They’re usually reconfiguring their “life” solution.
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Replying to
idk if this is directly related, but it's kind of cosmically funny to me how many of my "best" behavior changes, in a "quantity has a quality of its own" sense, have been from me saying "what if we did that 1000 times"? my dumb ass wants it to be about "purpose" & "motivation",
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