The comfort zone of the future or dehabituation | Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck | TEDxRheinMain

In his talk, Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck tries to explain the psychology of change. Is it possible that a lot of people were drilled in a way that prevents them from changing? All these fears are an outflow of too strict habit-forming in child education. Prof. Dr. Gunter Dueck makes the case for a good level of "Ungewöhnung" (De-Habituation) so that neither fears nor rage form the character.

Yeah, I read the theme,
"Subject to Change".

They always capitalize "Change" now.
If you work in a big company,

they say, "Everything has to change,

not a stone must be left standing.

We will reorganize everything
from the bottom up.

But don't worry, your work
won't be affected."

(Laughter)

And they're right.

You just have to work a little bit faster.
Your salary goes down just a bit, but ...

"Minor changes."

And certain types of people want
to maintain the situation somehow

while other types, usually from
the top down, rant and rave and say,

"You guys are too stubborn.
You must change your approach."

Everyone says that.
Well ... it's not that easy.

Managers want us to
change our approach,

as do the teachers, our parents,
Mrs Merkel, everybody.

And every time a politician says people
should change their approach,

you realize he has already given up
any hope that he'll make it.

Because our approach
won't change like that,

and in a way, that is
due to ourselves.

I would just like to comment
on the theory behind this.

It's simply the "theory of change."

I've just looked this up in a
normal psychology book,

which contains horrible terms

that you can see on the first slide.

I will simply tell you the bare facts.

But I can also do it in a softer way
so you don't end up scared.

So there is this tug of war going on
between different forces inside humans.

There is a famous book "Grundformen
der Angst" (The Basic Forms of Fears)

from the 70s which
you must have read.

Psychologists don’t like it
as it is a literary masterpiece

and describes everything very well,
it just doesn’t prove anything.

But it makes for good conversations.

The message of the whole thing is
that there are two tugs of war

of which I will only discuss one

as the talk should only have 18 minutes.

From left to right: There is
a kind of obsessive type

and a kind of hysterical
type of person.

The obsessive ones want to
keep everything the same way

and the hysterical ones want
everything to change all the time.

There are these two sorts of people.

And they argue.

Both are more or less unchanging

and stay that way,

and this is the standard argument.

At the moment, the hysterical
ones are in the majority,

or let’s say, "in a higher priority."

They are in higher
salary classes,

all those "change managers"
and consultants

who attack us and say

that we had to change radically.

Basically, they celebrate
the hysterical principle.

I simply took out the characteristics

of hysteria and obsession
for a company once

and said that the entire current management
theory consists of dissing the obsessive type.

That's it, basically.

It doesn't have any
intellectual content. (Laughter)

There’s another tug of war from
top to bottom, I'll leave that bit out.

It's about the depressed ones who
always want to do everything in company.

It happens.

And the schizoid ones
with high self-confidence,

but with a very
sensitive self-consciousness,

type "geek" or "nerd." Right?

Super isolated, excellent solitary workers,
especially at the computer,

and from time to time they have to
make a proud contribution to Google+.

(Laughter)

But that’s another talk.

Today, I am to talk about "change."

The depressed ones
are mostly on Facebook.

(Laughter)

But that’s true.

(Applause) (Laughter)

Because they have friends there.

(Laughter)

On Google+ you have opponents.

Like a kind of royalty that
meets up there to duel.

This is also an extra talk.
I will leave that out.

Once, I posted the same thing
on Facebook and on Google+.

The depressed ones on Facebook
said, "You must have read my thoughts."

"We love you all", stuff like that.

And on Google+,
"You didn’t read the link anyway!"

"Look it up, that’s not new!"

Right? On Google+ you get
completely different answers.

These are the different …

That explains the contempt of these Google+
people for Facebook people and vice versa,

but as I said earlier, that’s
another talk, let's drop it.

In "Subject to change", only those
who defy change fight each other.

I looked that up in a psychology book

in order to make such
difficult terms a bit softer.

That is the short version for now.

[Slide, "obsessive"]:
Tradition, rules, order, unity,

and the others say, progress
and panta rhei. That’s not fair.

[Slide, "hysterical": Progress,
Flow, Accessibilty, Diversity]

The hysterical ones arm
themselves with Greek … stuff,

"But you are using foreign words
that I didn’t even know."

(Laughter)

But you understand, right?
I don’t have to explain it any further.

I want you to really understand it.
This is official psychology. It's not my fault.

Here are the characteristics: meticulous, ambitious,
enduring, persistent, clean, rational, and so on.

As opposed to: no risk, no fun, impulsive,
adventurous, loves the show,
the center of attention – or the stage.

(Laughter)

Did you read it all?

"Shallow, sometimes restless and so on."

You can literally taste
that argument, can't you?

These guys say, "You stupid duty monkey, why do
you always do the same things?" – from right to left.

"You blockhead always go home on time
to your garden plot, and keep your appointments.

Why can't you come in on the weekend
for once and work, so we can finish it?"

"No, I work at VW. I’m not
available on weekends."

And from left to right, they
always talk about shallowness.

"And you just talk
and don’t do anything."

"You only want the adventure,
but I have to make it happen."

"And additionally, I should
give you the money, too."

Because the others are thrifty and usually
don't have money left by the end of the month.

They get loans, right? You also see it
now in the behavior of the companies.

So they argue with each other.

What should I do with my
other 11 minutes of the talk?

The official German
notion of a human is –

left, obsessive, right?

And I just want to comment on that.

Virtually everyone tries really hard to

officially teach us these characteristics,

not those over there.

I mean, if everyone works hard on
raising their kids to be obsessive,

then how should they change?

And where to?

And I just want to comment on that.

I coined a term for this,
"Ungewöhnung" (De-Habituation).

meaning they shouldn’t work
so hard on teaching the children

how to limit themselves every day,
because then it’s easier to change.

But I'm not saying you should bring up
your children in the hysterical way.

That would be a bit too much.

Maybe we should take the middle way.

But in the current system
we are getting the people used to

all these characteristics over here.

Approximately up to the master’s degree.

Then, they join a company and
they tell them, "Do something!"

"Like what?"

"Change!"

"Yeah, but where to? Can I
have a look at the roadmap?

Can you tell me what the milestones are
and what I should do tomorrow?

Bit-sized?

And they're told, "Don’t just stand there
and ask what to do: Change!"

And again, "Where to?" And then,
we are standing there.

Do you understand?

That doesn't give us a good outlook
into the "comfort zone of the future."

We only notice the change
after it has happened.

But the obsessive ones already notice
the change when their fear sets in.

There is something in the air that
something is about to happen

and they recognize change very well,

because it's when they get scared.

And the hysterical ones really
feel like doing something.

That is fundamentally different. Right?

I have written down some opposites.

Like I said, this is what a
normal boss would say at work.

So here on the left side:
"Avoid mistakes!", "Unity!",

"The slides have to have the real logo, and
all slides have to match our corporate identity."

"The A-level exams must be the
same across the country", and so on.

Unity, unity, unity.

Everything in the same bland color.

So that’s what they force
onto us in daily life.

And in the management meetings,
or "strategy meetings"

where you can let your
thoughts and ideas roam,

think about a sustainable
future and so on;

or at those psychological seminars where
you talk about emotional intelligence

and what you have to
do in normal life

they always say that stuff
here on the right,

"Now act." or "You must be
allowed to make mistakes."

Right? Or "Set yourself some goals." "Do things
differently." "Don’t always ask for permission."

Sadly, we still don’t have
a science for this,

business administration
is strictly on the left.

For the right side, we only have appeals.
It's hard to actually teach it to someone.

The problem is that the people on the left feel
more like adults, and the people on the right

kind of represent
our inner child.

The child is still spoiled and
always wants something new,

it wants to go on adventures.
That’s a bit dangerous

and that’s why it’s really
difficult to stay a child.

At my home, they sometimes
tell me that I’m still a child.

(Laughter) But that's okay.

It means I’m not too far
on the left side yet.

Okay.

So I googled something.
I took out my old report card,

had a look and found this.

I looked at what I was good at in school.
"Ordnung" (organization) and "Fleiß" (diligence).

That's what it says up here. These are
my actual report cards from school.

It says "Ordnung", "Fleiß", "Betragen"
(conduct) and "Mitarbeit" (collaboration).

We got grades for that.

Are they still doing this?

Very similar.

If I googled correctly, they have now
substituted it with more sophisticated

vocabulary like "social behavior" and
"purposeful professional success whatever."

That’s what I’ve written there.

Can you see how the school is
teaching us to become obsessive?

That's the implicit message.

That it's easier to see,
I proposed new grades.

I simply made them up.

You can check them out
and see if you like them.

I just took some other ones.

"Creativity, innovativeness, sense of humor."

[Slide: Constructive will. Proactivity &
community spirit. Balanced self-confidence.]

Have you ever seen a job description
requiring "a sense of humor?"

(Laughter)

Not even in marketing. (Laughter)

They should be able to make
dumb jokes, be funny on demand;

that's marketing for you. (Laughter)

Funny on demand –
that’s left again, right?

By now you’ve read everything.

A "winning appearance."

Imagine I went public with this,
not just at TEDx,

but imagine I told that
to the teacher union,

they'd crucify me.
Isn't that strange?

But that is the stuff
that's actually needed in a job.

You don't find that in job descriptions
or general conduct grades. Right?

Of course, like every year,
I’ve written a book about it,

and this time it is about
professional intelligence.

Here I randomly wrote down
some types of intelligence.

I just made them up. Those
are the ones we should have.

People have intelligence anyway;
you know it because you do.

Emotional intelligence,
you probably don’t have it yet.

It's only 30 years old and not
enough research has been done yet.

When they run projects
and they go wrong,

they always sit together

and start whining and ask,
"What went wrong?"

That is called "Lesson learned."

(Laughter)

And then it turns out
that we had conflicts

and communication problems.
We didn’t really talk to each other.

Blah blah blah blah.
"You don’t have an EQ", they say.

Somehow, creativity
is not allowed anymore.

There are TEDx videos about paper clips.

"Can you tell me 100 things …",
and then they have this brass thing.

"Can you tell me 100 things
you could do with a paper clip?"

If you are on the executive level,
a manager like I was, then you say,

"Sticking traveling expenses together."

Can you name 100?
You can't.

The moment I ask you, "Can you tell me
100 ways?", your brain goes, "Oh, shit."

Do you understand?

The part of your brain that could do that
has been switched off for a long time.

(Laughter)

I found statistics – you can look them up
under this test – saying that

98 % of all children, around the age of five,
are able to tell you 100 ways right away.

Try it one day.

Small children. Boys, girls.

Spotlight on! See their eyes shine.

The boy says,
"I can poke the girls,

pick my ears, pick my nose,
pick everything;

and behind…"

The girl says, "Jewelry here,
jewelry there, piercings everywhere…"

They reach 100 just like that!

And then you see their eyes shine

as they are counting the ways,
and you, on the other hand ...

(Laughter)

And the statistics are saying that 98 % of the
people sitting here aren’t able to list 100 ways.

As five-year-olds you
could do it; 98 % could do it

and now it’s exactly reversed
so the statistics say …

So the truth comes out and there is this …
I believe it was Kurt Tucholsky who said,

"Look at the children, how cute they are! What
a pity that they become adults later in life."

(Laughter)

Look, that’s what you are. In the
context of CQ, you are nothing.

"Talent for attraction", average Germans hate that.
You are not allowed to do that, you know, stand out.

There are some rare exceptions
like Paris Hilton and all the consultants.

Nobody has any vitality left. They have to announce
nearly everyone a manager who still has a will.

And this here is "meaning",
that’s why we’re here.

This is still the responsibility
of the bloggers. (Laughter)

Well, what I want to is
to get humans

to test these six types of
intelligence on themselves.

We already have IQ and EQ.
A big German newspaper

lets you test this online.
Just enter "SZ IQ" or

"SZ EQ" in the internet.
We should do this for the others, too.

Then we will realize
that we are not at all

prepared for change
or for a new world.

Because the obsessive ones only use
their intelligence and nothing else.

Now I want to tell you some rules
that they drilled into you as a child …

Or at least into me.
[Slide: "Habit-forming"]

You heard stuff like
"Love is something you earn",

"Pocket money must stay the same."

And, "We have to solve this
consistently in the village,

so nobody is treated unfairly."
"Let's all have coffee and cakes and discuss

how much it should be,
how long they can watch TV", etc.

I want to use the last minutes to
give you a short demonstration

on brainwaves …

To show that this is
something in our brains.

[Slide: "Blocking of alpha-activity"]

This slide shows a normal EEG test.

You lie on the couch and
think about holidays in Egypt.

That’s nice.

Close your eyes: Egypt.

Then, the doctor comes in
and asks the usual question,

"Now, think of the number 1,000.

Keep subtracting 31 until you reach 0.

Really fast."

Well, 1,000, 969, nine hundred… Do you see
what's happening? Your brain says,
"Sorry, cannot do."

(Laughter) That is what I
had in mind with this talk.

You laughed a few times.

I got you into the alpha wave mode

and you don't want beta waves now.

Beta waves are your
average management meeting.

(Laughter)

Take a woman, a beautiful
one. Any woman here.

Take a picture of her when
she's thinking about Egypt.

That’s gonna be a great picture.

And then you say, "Watch out,
I take a picture now."

Then she’s gonna look
ugly on the picture.

These are beta waves.
Like in a meeting.

(Laughter)

And that’s it what
it actually looks like.

Now, this is just a chart.
If you take a real picture,

it looks like that…
But you can see it, right?

The three phases…

There are different waves,
long, short, and so on.

You already know that?

You only get delta waves
in a near-death experience

or an Indian Guru might
have one for a second.

Theta waves occur during meditation.

Alpha waves are that Think-about-Egypt-thing

and beta waves are the meeting.

You can’t read it that well, what a pity.

On top: a newborn.
You have delta waves up to 18 months.

Right?

A toddler, from around 18 months
to 5.5 years, has theta waves,

which adults will never
get back in their life…

They have those up to 18 months,
then three years of theta waves,

then from age six alpha waves,

then unfortunately
they become an adult,

approximately between
15 and 20 years of age.

Then, in my age, you get
alpha waves again.

Great, right?

(Laughter)

Well, beta waves are,
"Don’t do that!" "Stop it!"

"Hold the spoon properly!"

The usual upbringing.

When grandchildren take a walk
with grandpa, who has alpha waves,

he just looks at them.

Then the child says eventually,
"It's nicer with grandpa."

And the parents say, "You weren't
supposed to give them chips!"

And grandpa says,
"I didn’t do anything."

Look, these are simply different waves.

An old man like me and a child
have the same waves, alpha,

and the evil adults are in between.

There's one thing I'm worried about.

They try to get a child, with delta waves,
a kind of apocalypse in the brain…

they try to teach them cleanliness
and to maintain a sleeping pattern.

Do you see the problem?

The question is: Is the child
even able to do that?

That’s a serious question.

Is it able to do that at all?

What are you doing with the child?

Why are you trying to get
a child with theta waves

from 18 months to 6 years of age
to learn English in kindergarten?

It is able to do that at all?

Does it even have a harddrive yet?

You want to scream
"We want child-adequate welfare"

when someone… Do you understand?
Are not nearly all the obsessive things

like organization, behavior,
conduct, collaboration, diligence,

all the obsessions

are they not drilled into a child
for eighteen months

during its theta state,
it was really vulnerable

and couldn’t say anything against it?

Basically you messed with the BIOS of the child

so Windows 7 cannot fix
anymore the BIOS which

has already been broken?

That's called "a mark".

"It left a mark on him."

German.

And then you want
a "comfort zone of the future"

and turn him into a hysterical type?

I would be careful.

Take the slides with you
and ask yourselves

if we’re not destroying people.

My clock shows zero.

I have to stop.

I have a lot more stuff.

I am not that old, but 60.

Approximately.

As I said before, I would like to see,

first of all, child education in
accordance with the brain waves.

So that people don’t drill
all the values into the children,

in EEG times that
we cannot undo later.

And then we could start talking
about differentiated education.

Bringing up every child individually,

depending on how it goes.

I have already talked about
this a lot, also last year,

and I will keep on claiming the same,

I will repeat this at the end
of each of my talks,

until something is done about it.

and until this uniformity finally stops.

The general uniformity in education

and work environments
has to stop. It's obsessive,

and it has to change.

Thank you.

(Applause)