Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Changing perception, changing minds

I'm amazed that things always seem to happen in clusters.  I tend to go with the whole "bad things happen in threes" idea, especially when it involves me injuring myself, but it also happens with new learning experiences. 

I am always on the hunt for new information, new ideas and new ways of doing or seeing things.  And inevitably, these learning experiences come in clusters.  Yesterday, I watched Rory Sutherland's talk at TED Oxford conference and was completely taken with his views on changing perception.  The 2 points that he made that stuck with me were  the question "how many problems can be solved by changing perception?" and the quote "making the new familiar and the familiar new".  

This morning, while I was checking out the viral video chart, the #1 video on the chart was "Interactive Swedish Piano Stairs" which turns out to be part of Thefuntheory.com website an initiative of Volkswagon.  The site along with the 2 other videos is "dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people's behaviour for the better."  It's all about changing perception.

All three ideas from Thefuntheory.com are simple, straight forward and generally speaking probably quite inexpensive.  But they all got people to change their behavior, their perception of - taking the stairs, recycling bottles and littering. Is it a permanent change?  I don't know. I mean stairs that play music are fun but every day?  A bottle recycling bin turned into a game, fun for a little while.  Or the garbage bin, that sounds like the garbage is falling into a giant deep hole, amusing but after a few pieces I don't know.  But that's not the point, at least I don't think it is. 

Change isn't easy.  Everyone one who has ever tried to quit smoking or start exercising knows it's really hard.  Hard because usually changing one thing impacts a whole bunch of other things.  How we view or perceive the change is a huge part of actually making the change.  But if that first step is fun, maybe, just maybe it won't seem so hard to take it and we'll stick with it.

Just thinking.