CHAPTER 4

APPLYING THE REALITY MODEL

If you don’t change your beliefs, your life will be like this forever. Is that good news?

—ATTRIBUTED TO W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

Now that you have read how a group of teenagers reacted to the Reality Model, I would like to complete the process of understanding the remaining five natural laws that are critical to using the model effectively.

Understanding Behavioral Responsibility

Here are two powerful facts about the Reality Model:

1. It places responsibility for behavior smack on the human being, where it belongs. I give this as my opinion: There arrives a point in our lives when we must take total responsibility for our behavior. Do you buy that?

2. You can be very confrontational when attacking somebody’s Belief Window, because you’re not attacking the person, you’re attacking the Belief Window. You’re attacking something they can fix.

Growth Requires Changing Principles

Corporate America spends $70 billion a year training its workers. Why? Why do corporations send their people to seminars and training? To make them perform better and help them improve their behavior, right?

At a large investment firm where we trained a lot of people in time management, I shared the Reality Model with a senior training manager, and she got pretty excited about it.

“Hyrum, all the training we do here is designed to improve and enhance the behavior and productivity of our people, right?” she asked.

I said, “Right. That’s probably why you do the training.”

“That means that what we’re really doing is trying to get new and better principles on their Belief Windows so they can govern themselves.”

She was right. If you go to a class or seminar at a corporation or in public, the facilitator should say, “The principle we’d like you to have on your Belief Window as a result of this class today is—,” and then lay it out. That is really the message we want people to understand.

Unmet Needs Lead to Addiction

Why do young people do a lot of the dumb things they do? Why do they take drugs? Why do they act out in front of their friends? They’re trying to meet needs—powerful and compelling needs. Why do adults do a lot of the dumb stuff they do? Same reason. Remember, if we put principles on our Belief Windows that drive behavior that works in the short term and destroys in the long term, we will still do it unless we apply the principles of the Reality Model.

The Importance of Self-Worth

We get some very interesting things on our Belief Windows. I’m going to share a couple of principles with you now, and this time I want you to predict the behavior these principles will drive.

Here is a principle: “My self-worth is dependent on the size of my waist.” Do you know anyone who has that principle on his or her Belief Window? What’s the extreme behavior that principle could drive? Possibly eating disorders? My kids went to high school in a suburban community. Every morning at 5:30, fifty young women would show up at the school for a rehearsal of a nationally ranked women’s drill team. They weighed every young woman every morning; one pound overweight, and a woman was thrown off the team. They don’t do that anymore, but there were nine anorexic students on that team. Do you see where this comes from?

Here’s a principle a lot of men in our culture have: “My self-worth is dependent on my job, and it has to be a white-collar job.” The fact that I am magnificent with my hands doesn’t matter. Somewhere I’ve picked up that I’ve got to carry a briefcase like everybody else in my high school class.

Many years ago I was in Boston to lead a seminar. Sitting in the front row was an attorney. How did I know he was an attorney? He told me; he also told me why he was an attorney. He was the fifth generation of attorneys in his family in Boston. If you were a male baby in his home, you were destined to be an attorney.

He hated being an attorney.

Two weeks after he went through the Reality Model, he delicately approached his wife and said, “My needs are not being met by being an attorney.” He was forty-nine years old, with a six-figure income. “Do you know what I want to do? I want to teach music at Boston College.”

What do you think his wife said? “Have you lost your mind?”

“If I make this major career change at this point in my life, will you still love me?” he asked.

“Of course, I’ll love you . . . and I’ll miss you!”

This fellow made the change. He is now teaching music at Boston College. He cut his income by a factor of eight, and he is happier than he’s ever been before. Is that possible? We get some really weird things on our Belief Windows about money, don’t we?

By the way, his wife stayed with him.

Experiencing Inner Peace

The central theme of the seminar we used to teach at Franklin Quest was the acquisition and maintenance of inner peace. People were stunned to hear that in a corporate seminar. I’d be teaching a class, and about an hour into it somebody would raise his or her hand and say, “Aren’t you going to teach us how to make a list?”

“Would you like to know how to make a list?”

“Well, yeah!”

“I’ll teach you how to make a list, but that’s not why you’re here.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Why am I here?”

“You’re here to get inner peace.”

“Oh. Are you going to give me a planner?”

“Would you like a planner?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll give you a planner, but that’s not why you’re here.”

“It’s not?”

“No.”

“Why am I here?”

“You’re here to get inner peace.”

“Oh.”

By the time we finished, they got it.

Would you like to have an eight-hour time-management seminar in nine seconds?

That’s all we taught. This is a six-thousand-year-old idea. It’s really true, by the way. That’s how inner peace comes. By the way, you owe me $295 for that eight-hour seminar.

Harmonizing the Mind

Psychologists call the lack of harmony cognitive dissonance. We tend to resolve that by going to the principle that’s going to work. Let’s go back to the marriage example. We presented two principles: “Men are better than women,” and “Men and women are equal.” Which one will I likely pick? I’m going to pick the one that’s going to work. But suppose I choose not to change that principle on my Belief Window and I stick to “Men are better than women.” I show up at work tomorrow and my new boss is a woman. Do I have a problem? Has she got a problem? (If so, she can solve her problem with me pretty quickly.)

There’s not a person in the world who doesn’t have those four Human Needs. You’ve got them. You’ve got Belief Windows, and they are covered with principles. Some are driving results that will meet your needs over time and, frankly, some may not be. You’ve got rules all set up that are driving your behavior based on what you believe to be true. Where it breaks down is that we tend not to measure the results. So there’s pain, and we’re not sure why.

North Philadelphia is one of the most dangerous communities in America. There are killings almost every night. We at Franklin Quest adopted a high school in the middle of North Philadelphia, the Ben Franklin High School. Years ago the principal, an amazing man named Dr. Norman Spencer, invited me to come speak to the juniors and seniors at the school. They would not allow me to drive myself into the neighborhood; it was that dangerous. Taxicabs didn’t go into that neighborhood, so I was escorted in by two police squad cars. I watched them lock the doors on the inside of a four-story high school with chains at 8:30 in the morning.

I asked Dr. Spencer, “Why are you locking your doors with chains?”

“Well, that’s the only way we can keep the drug pushers out of the high school.”

“Oh.”

Then we went into the auditorium. There were nine hundred black kids. I was the only white person within about thirty-two square blocks. If you want a sobering experience, fly to Philadelphia, rent a car, and drive into North Philadelphia. You will think you’ve driven into Berlin two days after the Second World War ended. It’s that bleak.

I spent ninety minutes with those kids. I taught them the Reality Model. I had the Belief Window projected on a big screen. About an hour into it, I walked out into the auditorium and confronted a kid sitting on the aisle. As I walked up to him, he stood up to confront me. I got right up in his face and said, “Suppose you lived in a neighborhood where on the neighborhood Belief Window was the principle, “All blacks are stupid.”

It got really quiet. This kid stood there and said, “All blacks aren’t stupid.”

“I didn’t say they were. I said suppose you lived in a neighborhood where on the neighborhood Belief Window was the principle, “All blacks are stupid.”

“All blacks aren’t stupid!”

It took me four times. When he finally realized what I was doing, he looked at me and he said, “I live in a neighborhood like that.”

“How much fun is that?”

“It’s no fun.”

From this experience we see how an engrained and seemingly simple belief can have huge consequences for an individual, a family, a city, and a culture. The results of this belief are shown through what the individuals, families, and culture do. Sometimes the beliefs are helpful, and sometimes they are hurtful.

Prejudgments and Prejudices

All of our prejudgments or prejudices are principles on Belief Windows, are they not? All blacks are. . . . All Hispanics are. . . . All rich people are. . . . All poor people are. . . . And so on. Those principles can drive some very painful behavior, can they not? If that behavior is ever going to change, what has to change first? The principle on the Belief Window has to change first or the behavior will never change. Maybe all blacks aren’t, maybe all Hispanics aren’t, and so on.

I grew up in Honolulu, and I spent my first eighteen years in Hawaii. It never occurred to me to be prejudiced. I was one of five white kids in a class of sixty nonwhite kids. I had to come to Los Angeles to discover that prejudice is alive and well in the United States.

You have learned the Reality Model and the seven natural laws that make it work. In order to make changes in a Belief Window that is causing negative results, it is necessary to learn how to use the model.