Avoid the Siren Song

Gravitating towards something you know is bad for you is common. We see it all the time in sports, with celebrities, in businesses, with our own actions. It seems that knowing doesn’t change our behavior with something luring us towards a bad decision.

This isn’t a modern-day problem or phenomenon. It is a human occurrence. While the story of major travesty is often promoted, the subtle draw is more common and equally devastating.

The other day I read about this in the NBA. The Mavericks traded for a great player, Kyrie Irving, who has a reputation for creating teams that underperform, even when he performs at a high level. Teams seem to know the risks to the team culture but become enamored with his talent. Other teams around the league are waiting for him to be available to try and bring him aboard, even with the knowledge of how it keeps turning out.

In ancient Greece, they called this the siren song. Homer’s Odyssey described beautiful women, called sirens, which contained the body of birds with the upper body of humans. They would call out to sailors and draw them in.

The sailors couldn’t resist the siren. Even when they know it isn’t good for them, they would jump off the ship and drown to swim towards the sound. Or they would navigate towards the song, only to crash into the shore.

But this doesn’t mean we are victims who have no culpability when it comes to allure of the metaphorical siren. There are things we can do.

But first we need to understand the Hot Cold Empathy Gap. This is the idea that resisting temptation is easy when we are not actually facing it.

We can convince ourselves that it will be easy to wake up at 4am to workout. Yet when the alarm goes off, all motivation vanishes, and we are left with a shocking displeasure at the thought of skipping sleep for something uncomfortable.

We commit to eating healthy foods. Then we find a day when we haven’t eaten. The hunger burns and literally hurts. As we drive down the road, the siren song from fast food place after fast food place draws us in. We shift our thinking from the benefits to the justifications. We cave.

I read a book that once talked about infidelity. They said that the hardest point to resist the temptations from a friend or coworker whom you are attracted to is when you end up in the moment when you can get away with it.

Yet they always tell themselves they can easily resist right before they go through with it. So, they flirt and put themselves in bad situations. Getting a drink with them on a business trip. Inviting them up to their hotel room for a night cap. They refuse to avoid those subtle moves, assuming when it matters they will be able to resist.

The author posits that the best thing to do is to avoid any of those slippery steps all together. If you are 100% committed, it becomes easy because you don’t even get to that difficult position. If you are 99% committed, you torture yourself at the most difficult moment and often crumble to the pressure.

The Hot Cold Empathy Gap highlights this gap between those cold moments far away, and being up-close to the decision.

Knowing this can help us avoid the siren song. Just as Homer in the Odyssey, we can pre-emptively set us up for success.

Homer has the crew put wax in their ears, so they don’t hear the sounds. He tied himself to the ship, so he would be forced to ignore the song.

We don’t need to tie us to a boat or walk around with sound protection all day. But we do need to see the full system and make it so that we can’t fall prey to our own weaknesses.

It often takes planning. We must see the future challenges and then put something in place to block us in the Hot moments. The Cold moments when we are thinking clearly are perfect for planning while those Hot moments are the points where the temptation is greatest, and our thinking is shallowest. Take action when it is easy, don’t wait for it to become hard.

Use the wisdom of Homer and create structure in your life that will help propel you towards the success and happiness you desire. Avoid those cravings and temptations when your logic alerts you to the devastation that follows giving in to instant gratification. Plan and find ways to metaphorically plug your ears or tie yourself to the boat.