The Underwear Effect The Power of Self Deception
[Applause]
have you ever heard of the cliche saying
imagine your audience is in their
underwear well because this
advice is supposed to help a person’s
confidence
in public speaking i’m in fact using
that method right now
so yeah i can see all of you in your
underwear oh sweet calvin klein’s there
man i love it
wow this self-illusion is making me more
confident
hi my name is ken and i’m here today to
tell you that
the root of your success comes from
tricking yourselves
in other words self-deception
self-deception what is it according to
stanford university
it’s the act of lying to yourself that
something is true
when it really isn’t it allows us to
hold the beliefs that we prefer
because we want to feel good about
ourselves
because of this the things we do every
day such as how we talk
how we learn how we dress
could be driven by this egotistic
villain
now it’s easy to assume that
signals gets registered by our brains as
fast as this
but when our finger touches an object
while it takes the signal just 20
milliseconds to reach the brain
the brain itself takes 500 milliseconds
to register it
500 milliseconds considering how
advanced our brains have become
that’s that’s a very long time and in
between this half a second
so many things can occur to the signal
deletions
revisions enhancements and these
occurrences
change the content of the signal before
it gets registered
and that is how self-deception works
this leads to the question are we aware
of self-deception
according to joseph butler a well-known
philosopher in the 18th century
he claims that no this act of
fooling ourselves is almost always
unintentional and in 1984 two russian
psychologists conducted an experiment
to prove butler’s theory in the study
one group of subjects held their hands
in ice cold water
second group did the same but the twist
was they were told that the longer they
could endure the pain
the more it meant that they had good
health
and so in the end the second group did
much better due to
due to their underlying desire for that
trait causing greater motivation
and greater endurance and in the end the
study showed us that
acts of self-motivation and
self-deception
usually happens without us actually
realizing it
but is it possible for conscious
self-deception
is it possible to trick ourselves
and is it possible to do that
deliberately
it’s actually more simple than you think
self-deception is often seen as
something bad especially when it comes
to body image
but there are tons and tons of other
ways that it can be easily used for good
for example according to researchers
from the university of pennsylvania
non-depressed people were found to look
at themselves through rose tinted
glasses
in other words they were optimistic
this optimism was a tool for them to see
every single situation
in the best possible light
if we’re able to use this tool under our
control
our potential is limitless
in fact this tool can be used every
single day
let’s look at something high schoolers
like a lot of a lot of us here can
relate to
in this day and age we’re working our
butts off to get to our dream college
and the journey to that goal is
difficult it’s draining
and we often want to make us give up
now this is where the superpower of
deception comes in
just a simple act of putting a poster or
banner of your
dream college in your workspace can
subconsciously motivate you
and this is actually proven by science
according to psychologist dr edward
higgins
just a simple act of glimpsing that
poster
every single day engraves your goal into
that mind
making you redouble your efforts to get
you to any
of your dreams now let’s say one of
those dream is being great at playing
soccer
you practice every day you know
dribbling shooting
passing but you just never get on the
school team and on the day of tryouts
all the returning members look so
skilled and they got nice handles
and so what do you do is all hope lost
no you start thinking differently
and no you don’t imagine you’re as good
as them you believe
that you’re better as good as ronaldo or
messi
and as researchers researchers from the
university of pennsylvania once said
when you think of yourself a certain way
you become that way
so by visualizing another image of you
you’re more confident
more focused and you become that very
image that you have created of yourself
so self-deception works and we should
start now
at times of struggles we should tinker
the way we look at the situation
start wearing your rose-covered glasses
start creating illusions for yourself
and start believing and in the end
you’ll find that you’ll zoom to your
finish line
in no time but please be aware
as i’m not saying you should be a
full-fledged liar and live in a world of
fantasy
there are times where you have to come
back to reality i can’t always imagine
everyone in their underwear after today
so you should lie to yourself only for a
specific moment
and for a specific goal so let me ask
you
when is your moment to be a liar thank
you