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