This happened in 2019. A fascinating study was conducted at Stanford University. The purpose of the research was to find out in what manner food should be presented before people so that they feel more attracted toward it. Is it enough merely to tell them that this food is healthy, or do people get more attracted toward its taste and aroma?

For this purpose, the researchers placed three types of food in the university dining halls and put a label in front of each. The first type of food was labeled “healthy,” the second “tasty and spicy,” while the third was labeled “ordinary.”

This experiment was carried out in a real environment—students came daily and selected one of the three types of food. The experiment continued for many days; during this time, the experts noted about one hundred and forty thousand decisions made while selecting different foods. The results obtained from this research were astonishing.

Generally, students do not like to eat vegetables, but in this experiment, when vegetables were presented with different tasty names, the students preferred vegetables more than healthy foods, and the selection rate of “tasty” foods was 29 percent higher than that of “healthy” foods. Similarly, as compared to “ordinary” foods, “tasty” foods were preferred 14 percent more.

This research proved that in human decisions, the element of emotion is greater than intellect, and taste, smell, and attraction are such stimuli that move a person and make him decide. But the question is: can we make important life decisions based only on emotions, and will they always prove right? The answer is—no.

The famous self-help book “Switch” by Chip Heath and Dan Heath states that every person has two kinds of brains—one emotional and the other rational. The emotional brain always works on the principle of pain and pleasure, while the rational brain works on the principles of thinking, analyzing, and planning. The authors compare the emotional brain to an elephant and the rational brain to a mahout (rider).

The elephant is a strong animal full of power. If it steps on soft ground, a pit forms. But the problem is that the elephant has no direction—it goes anywhere it wants. The mahout sitting on it has understanding and walks with complete planning, protecting the elephant from useless things.

However, the problem arises when both are not in harmony. The elephant wants to go its own way, while the mahout tries to turn it toward a specific direction. Sometimes, the situation becomes so difficult that the mahout sweats but cannot control the elephant, and the elephant gets out of his control.

The elephant inside a human being (the emotional brain) always wants to stay in comfort and pleasure. It feels peace in eating rich food, laughter, and chatting with friends, while the mahout (rational brain) tries to spend time in productive activities and to improve life.

This tension between emotion and intellect always remains, and because of it, it becomes more difficult for a person to make decisions in hard times. If your life is also facing such a situation and you want to change difficult things, then reading this book will be beneficial for you; however, this writing can also benefit you.

Below we describe the key points of this book.

• Give Direction to the Mahout (Intellect)

When a person has no goal and things are unclear, change cannot come into his life. In such a case, the mahout becomes conflicting instead of helpful, and the situation becomes even more difficult.

So, what should we do then? The authors say that in this case you should look at the progress happening in your life. For example, if you want to learn English, look at the daily improvement

rather than the upcoming difficulties, because whenever you see your progress, your courage will grow, and you will work with more dedication, whereas fear of the future breaks a person’s spirit and stops his progress.

Second thing: write down important tasks. Whenever you write the things you want to achieve, attaining them becomes easier.

Third thing: determine the destination. Where do you want to go, why do you want to go, and by when do you want to reach there—clarifying all this is very necessary. For example, if you want to lose weight, decide within what time you have to reach that target.

• Motivate the Elephant (Emotional Brain)

Whatever goal you want to achieve in life cannot be achieved without emotions. But it is also true that you cannot motivate your elephant through logical reasoning; for that, you must do three things:

First: Whatever goal you want to achieve, imagine that you have already achieved it and feel its happiness. By doing this, your elephant will happily start working.

Second: Divide your desired goal into smaller parts. For example, if you have to lose weight in two months, divide it into weeks and then into days. Thus, daily performance will give you courage, and you will move toward your goal with more interest.

Third: Appreciate yourself and stay engaged. Always adopt a Growth Mindset. Such a person listens to criticism with an open heart and makes it a means of his progress. He takes risks, experiments with new things because he wants to grow. He considers people’s feedback necessary for himself and remains thankful to them. On the contrary, a Fixed Mindset person does not take risks. He takes criticism as a personal insult, gets angry, and thus cannot progress in life.

• Refine Your Method

Suppose a mule is loaded with a lot of luggage and climbing up a mountain—it will take a long time to reach the top. But if that mule is descending from height to the low ground, it will reach down very quickly. This is the same example for us. When we try to reach a goal without planning, we must spend immense energy, whereas moving forward with planning is as easy as going downhill from a height. Make the best planning to reach the destination; otherwise, you will soon get tired.

The authors mention three things in this regard:

1. Change the environment. To change life, change the situation, not the attitude. If the situation is positive, the attitude will also be positive.

Consider the example of losing weight. If a person changes his kitchen environment, hides fatty foods so they are not visible when passing by, he will avoid eating unhealthy foods and lose weight quickly.

On the contrary, if someone wants to lose weight but has fattening items placed before him that make his mouth water, no matter how much he controls himself, as long as he keeps seeing those things, they will keep tempting him to eat. One day his patience will end, and the weight-loss goal will not be achieved.

1. Change your habits. When a person introduces a new thing into his life, he thinks about it and then decides. But if he turns that thing into a habit, it will automatically continue on its own (auto mode).

A good way to strengthen a habit is to associate with people who already have that habit. In this way, that habit will also develop within you.

The last message of the book is that we should always keep changing and growing ourselves, because stopping at any turn means that our life has also stopped. Then neither our habits will improve nor our circumstances.