Your strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior and that of others. Control the payoffs to control your life.

Have you ever said to yourself, “Why do I do these things? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I change?” You do those things because at some level they work -- your unwanted behaviors serve a purpose. There must be a payoff.

The behavior you choose creates the results we get. If we repeat the behavior, then we must desire the results. If you can do different, you will have different results.

Knowing what to do and knowing how to do it are two very different things. What are the things that you do that you do not want to do?

Why do I do what I do?

Understanding how to eliminate illogical behavior is critical to improving your life. There are two ways you can achieve this:
- Start behaving in the positive ways necessary to have what you want
- Stop behaving in ways that interfere with your having what you want

You cannot eliminate your negative behavior without understanding why you do it to begin with. This is particularly true of pattern behaviors -- behaviors that have become automatic. You may think you are running on automatic pilot and the behavior is illogical, BUT THE TRUTH IS, YOU DON’T AND WON’T BEHAVE IN WAYS THAT REAP ONLY NEGATIVE, UNWANTED RESULTS.

You mindlessly do these things because at some level, you perceive that it works for you -- you get some kind of payoff. Even though you hate it, you are miserable, there must be a payoff or you wouldn’t do it. Whether you want to want it or not, you do -- no matter how illogical the payoff.

The hardest part is identifying what the actual payoffs are in your own life, so that you can begin to understand and control the cause-and-effect connections in your behavior. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you must “stop paying yourself off” for doing it. I you want to influence the behavior of others, you must first understand what they perceive to be the rewards for the behavior, and then, if you can, control those rewards.

Possible payoffs for overeating:

- Pleasurable sensation of the food (It just tastes good). The sensory gratification of eating the food outweighs the enjoyment of being at an ideal weight.
- Food serves as a number of other purposes: celebration, medication, relief from loneliness, social “lubrication,” or entertainment.

The payoff might not just be the ingestion of the food, but the secondary gain that comes from the event of eating the food.

Assignment #6: Write a list of five most frutstrating and persistent negative behavioral patterns or situations in your life, describing each pattern. Then explain why you find this each behavior negative. Then, make your best effort to analyze, identify, and write down the payoff that is feeding and maintaining this negative behavioral pattern.