In this episode of the Merkol Podcast, we analyzed the Dr. Wayne Dyer Quote. It goes:
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change”
Dr. Wayne Dyer Quote
In this post you will find
Who is Dr Wayne Dyer?
Dr. Wayne Dyer grew up in the city of Detroit, Michigan. Despite spending much of his youth in orphanages and foster homes, he overcame many difficulties to achieve his goals and dedicated much of his life to teaching others how to accomplish the same. His fundamental message was that everyone has the ability to live a life of significance.
He was known as the “Father of Motivation” or the “Father of the Modern Self-Help Movement.” He took a lot of inspiration from his own life experiences. After graduating from Wayne State University with a D.Ed. in Counseling, he began his work as a guidance counselor.
He started a private therapeutic practice and published articles. His motivational talks attracted a huge number of pupils, who encouraged him to write down his ideas. His first book, ‘Your Erroneous Zones,’ was the result.
In the disciplines of self-development and spiritual growth, he is an internationally recognized author and speaker. He wrote more than 40 books throughout his four-decade career, including 21 New York Times bestsellers. He appeared on thousands of television and radio shows and made several audio and video projects.
What does the Dr Wayne Dyer Quote mean?
This quote is about perception. Many people view the problem from one angle and look for the solution from the same angle. You would probably get one pr two solutions which anybody can think of. But if you need a better or a creative solution then you would need to use something different. This could be pretty hard to grasp, an extremely difficult term, it is known as ‘thinking out of the box’. Lol!
This is a term that is thrown around a lot and not many people really know what this means or how to use this. There is no predefined method or way to master yourself in this. For some, it comes naturally and for many others, this is pretty hard to even understand let alone practice.
Some examples would help you understand the different angles to look at a problem to arrive at the most efficient solution.
Rory Sutherland – Eurostar Train example:
Rory Sutherland is vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK and is an expert on consumer behavior. Once he gave an example o how perception can help you solve big problems in a simple way.
Before a few decades, the Eurostar train was first opened for public transport in Europe. People loved this as more people could travel farther than they ever could by foot or car.
The problem with this was that the trains were pretty slow. Slow is actually an understatement. The trains were so slow that the people started complaining so much that the management team at Eurostar needed to come up with a solution.
The management team looked at the problem and decided that it is a problem related to speed. So they promised a plan to their passengers that within a few years they would build superfast trains and were ready to pledge nearly 6 billion dollars for this project which would inevitably satisfy the consumers.
But that is a solution which costs 6 billion dollars and will be a few years in the making, They could lose their entire business by that time and all those superfast trains would be of no use.
So they reached out to a psychologist.
He thought this through and looked it from a different angle. He suggested that the train provides cheap donuts and cakes on carts handled by good-looking, sophisticated supermodels.
Eurostar implemented this solution and found that the people did not mind the long travel duration and were instead eagerly waiting for the treat cart to come to them. People were happy even if the train took longer but they wanted their turn with the treat cart.
Instead of making the journey faster, they made the journey more pleasant. And that is sometimes the difference between a good solution and a decent one.
With this, they saved nearly 98% of the $6 billion budget.
The Uber example:
Another example is from the ride-sharing app, Uber.
Uber is the first of its kind in the world. A ride-sharing app where you get into the cars of strangers. I make it sound dangerous but it is pretty effective as it removes the question of whether they would get a ride at a certain and the ride would pick them up at the location where they are at instead of walking to another location.
But at the start, people were frustrated as they felt that the rides would come a lot late. They would request a ride and the app would say that the driver has accepted their request but there was no indicator as to when they would arrive. And sometimes it took long enough to test an average man’s patience.
This problem was there because they were not able to get many drivers signed up, so the drivers would come from pretty far places to complete this ride. Uber had to come up with a solution or risk losing customers.
Instead of uber trying to get superfast cars in their app, they just added a timer to the ride. Once you book the ride, it would be 6 min or 7 min depending on the driver’s location. So the user got a false sense of control that they knew the ride would come after 7 mins.
They were given a sense of control and this calmed the user and they were not annoyed even if the wait times were a lot as they precisely knew when the ride would come.
Instagram example:
When Instagram was first launched, the app took a lot of time to upload the picture to their database. So the users were left waiting for it to finish uploading and sometimes depending on the internet speed, it took longer than most are ok with.
So instead of focusing on the speed aspect, and coming up with an algorithm to load the image faster, they just added the captions, tagging, people tagging, etc on the same page. Normally people take a lot of time for the caption and the tagging. So in that time, the image is uploading in the background as they are typing out the captions. And by the time they are done, the image would also be loaded. So the users did not see any friction.
This small change helped Instagram to retain its initial users instead of losing them out to the speed of the image upload.
Closing:
There are multiple ways to solve a problem. Our brains are wired to look at a problem and think of only solving the issue that the problem concerns with. Looking from a different angle could do wonders for your business and your cognitive abilities.
Podcast:
I have recorded a podcast on this Dr Wayne Dyer Quote. But it is in Tamil. If you know the language, then please do listen to this. Do let me know if you like it. Here is the link:
