Have you noticed that, over the last few years, when people are driving on a night out, they’ve started referring to themselves as Des?
As is Designated Driver.
I’m sure people didn’t do this only a handful of year ago.
In fact, before 1988, the term didn’t exist at all.
Jay Winsten, a public health professor at Harvard, discovered the concept in Scandinavian countries where is was already commonplace.
And he wanted to introduce it to America where drink driving was common place.
He went about it a particularly cunning way.
Instead of a big announcement where everyone was informed that there was a new term of ‘Designated Driver’ and that they wanted everyone to refer to themselves as ‘Des’ when they were doing it……….
He met with writers, producers and directors of the most popular TV shows of the day………
And got over 160 mainstream, prime time shows, to include a 5 second reference to the concept in their shows.
In L.A. Law, a lawyer asks the barman to call his designated driver.
A poster appears on the bar in Cheers and is briefly referred to.
And so on.
Within 3 years, over 90% of Americans were familiar with the term, over a third had been one and over half had been driven home by one.
And, most importantly, alcohol related traffic deaths had dropped by a quarter.
A new social norm had been created.
People saw other people they liked doing something.
They started doing it.
Then so did their friends.
And so on.
Purposefully changing the social norms you see is one of most powerful ways to help you change.
If you mainly hang round with people who don’t eat well and / or exercise, then you are considerably more likely to do the same.
Hang round with people who do eat well and exercise and you probably will too.
It’s one of the reasons our group programme gets way better results than the average 1:1 trainer does with their clients (every one of our guys who achived amazing, life changing transformations did so by clicking this link to start –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting).
People see what they’re doing as much more just the norm, as everyone else is doing it.
This doesn’t, of course, mean you have to stop associating with those not on the same journey as you.
The friends or family who aren’t doing the things you want to do to get the goal you’re after.
But you can choose to lower your exposure to those aspects of them.
And increase your exposure to those around you who are doing those things.
The more normal things are within the people you’re around, the more likely you are to do those things.
Much love,
Jon ‘Lynam’ Hall and Matt ‘O’Connor’ Nicholson
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RISE Macclesfield – myrise.co.uk
Serious transformations. Fun times!
Enter your details at myrise.co.uk for more information about what we do.
Or check out our monthly find-out-more meeting if you want to learn more about our free ’20lbs weight loss in 8 weeks’ and ‘Beach Body’ challenges –> myrise.co.uk/briefing-meeting
