How we change what others think, feel, believe and do

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ChangingMinds Blog! > Blog Archive > 15-Dec-13

Sunday 15-December-13

What is 'easy'?

Have you ever thought something quite easy, told someone else about it, then been baffled as they find difficulty in doing it or just argued that they could not do it.

The problem lies in the way we decide. While the most accurate way is to seek facts and understand chains of cause and effect, in practice much of our decision-making is based in emotion. In fact the final choice always has some emotional content.

A confounding factor here is that our need to appear reasonable means we like to explain our actions (to ourselves too). So when we make a decision based on emotion we have to back-fill our reasoning, which can lead to some pretty strange-sounding rationales.

We also need to feel capable and in control. No matter how easy someone else says a task is, if we hold even the slightest fear we may fail, then we convince ourselves that the task is not that easy, and should either be put off or ignored altogether.

So next time somebody is cautious when you have asked them to do something easy, don't just say 'it's easy!' Try to understand it as emotionally difficult and modify your persuasions accordingly