Ice Cream, Motivation and the Platinum Rule

Sam doesn’t care overmuch for ice cream.

Maybe once a year, he’ll slurp down half of a banana milkshake (🤮 – thank goodness we’ve already accepted that he doesn’t have good taste in everything). Not because he craves one, but because my family sometimes takes group excursions to Dairy Queen (ask me about being banned from Dairy Queen in early sobriety).

If ice cream disappeared from the face of the planet, Sam wouldn’t care. Take away pizza, however, and he’d rage.

I don’t suffer from the delusion that many of you care about what Sam likes to eat (though the joke’s on me, I suppose, since all evidence suggests that more people care about food than inner world musings), but I’m sharing this tidbit for the normal reason: to set up an analogy.

Imagine, for an instant, that you wanted to motivate Sam to do something.

Let’s take it a step further and imagine that it’s not something he’s intrinsically motivated to do.

Actually, let’s take it all the way and imagine it’s something Sam’s actively opposed to doing. Liking punching a sweet Granny in the face. 

Now let’s pretend that you’re sitting across from Sam, trying to convince him to take this action. And, for some reason, you try to tempt him with ice cream.

“If you do it,” you say, “I’ll buy you all the Phish Food you can eat. An unlimited supply.”

Sam would look at you with his highly expressive face, a unique Sam-blend of bewilderment and pity oozing out of every pore.

First, you will never convince Sam do something that he believes is wrong. You’d have better luck convincing the sun not to rise. 

Second, you’re not going to motivate him to do ANYTHING by trying to bribe him with ice cream.

Sam would, in this instance, consider you a fool. Then, because he’s Sam, he’d probably try to do something to help you, as opposed to me who would run from you. But that’s a topic for another day.

The topic for today is this: if Sam’s not intrinsically motivated to do something, ice cream isn’t the right extrinsic motivation to try.

It’s ineffective.

The topic of motivation is top of mind for me because I’ve realized that I’m on a team that needs to do a deep dive on motivation.

I don’t know what motivates my teammates. They don’t know what motivates me.

And, because we don’t know, I think we’re all guilty of following the Golden Rule. Out of kindness, out of compassion, out of trying to respect people we all care about, each of us has tried to treat others the way we want to be treated.

Unfortunately, it has backfired to a massive degree.

The things that motivate one teammate actively demotivate me.

Things that are intrinsically motivating for me require extrinsic motivation for another team member. And vice versa.

What we need to do is upgrade to the Platinum Rule. We need to treat others how THEY want to be treated.

Doing that requires communication.

To treat you how you want to be treated, I need to know how you want to be treated.

To treat me how I want to be treated, you need to know how I want to be treated.

I can’t read your mind. You can’t read mine.

Assuming that something that’s true for you is also true for me – that’s an outdated way of operating. The new world, the one that’s actively being born (and really upsetting some people as it emerges) – it’s about living in alignment. It’s about understanding what’s true for yourself, and accepting that it’s likely different than what’s true for your partner, or best friend, or mentor, or the stranger checking you out at the grocery store.

Then, it’s about honoring those differences. Not because it’s the PC thing to do or anything else that’s about living with more constraints.

But because this is part of the (current) path to liberation. Accepting what’s true about ourselves and accepting what’s true about others. 

Learning how to communicate those truths.

Honoring them.

Living in alignment.

Unless, of course, this is just an idea that my spiritual teachers have gotten massively wrong. That’s also possible. In that case, nothing I just wrote about is true and you should disregard every word. Strong opinions loosely held - that’s the key, I’ve heard.

Except for the part about Sam. He really doesn’t care for ice cream. If you want to try to tempt him, you should offer pizza instead. Or a home-cooked meal. Pretty much any home-cooked meal. Offer him one of those and you’ll win his loyalty for life.