Do You Wave Or Hit The Brakes When You See A Patrol Car?

Control Is A Funny Game Of Survival

What is your first reaction?  Do you wave at the cop parked on the side of the road or do you hit the brakes when you notice him there?  Be straight up, which one do you do?

I am not a fan of surprises.  I do not like to come around a freeway bend in the road and see a patrol car parked on the side of the road, especially one that is parked perpendicular, nose facing out.  That kind of park job looks like a cat ready to pounce.  I wave at them.  Actually, I give them a casual peace sign from one of my hands on the steering wheel when I go by them.  Very few respond.  I still wave at them.  They seem uninterested in making friends.  Rarely do I see them respond in the same fashion.

Most of the drivers who flew by my vehicle on the freeway hit the brakes when they spot a cop.  There might be three vehicles ahead of me, all three sets of brake lights will go on.  Every time.  It is a subconscious knee-jerk reaction.  People hit the brakes when they spot a cop.  Nobody wants a ticket.  Nobody wants to get caught.  It is an amazing scenario.

I think it is more than the money.  Nobody wants to pay a fine for driving too fast but I think the issue is bigger than the money.  I think the issue is a powerful process that works much like a serious game of control.  People dislike being told what to do.  When they see a posted speed sign, they dislike being told how fast they can't drive.  We want to do just a little bit more than what we are told we cannot do.  It is a control thing.  We do not want to get caught getting away with doing just a little bit more, but we feel in control if we can get away with it.  It becomes a subconscious game we play with ourselves.  We will actually risk losing hard earned money and give it to a senseless fine for speeding and think nothing of it.  Yet we will drive from store to store trying to save five dollars on three grocery items.  It has nothing to do with money.  It has all to do with control.  We tend to play a mental game of control in our minds.  That is exactly why we hit the brakes when we see a cop.  We do not want to get caught.  We want to win.    

Theft is a funny process.  It amazes me how little thieves get when they practice their game.  Outside of the drug driven desires, theft is usually a game of control.  There is never enough money taken to set the person free from the drudgery of life costs.  It is not an issue of money and its amount.  It is an issue of control.

Your brake lights come on when you see a cop.  I see it all of the time.  We hate rules and regulations.  We feel like we lose control when the rules govern how we should behave.  Rules are made to be broken becomes our belief.  We feel we need to get our control back by pushing the limit of how much we can inch beyond the line drawn to get away with breaking the rules.  We test those limits.  It becomes a game.

We do not want to get caught breaking the rules.  That means we lost.  It is not about how much we will have to pay for the loss, it is more about getting caught.  We know the speed limit sign said 65 miles per hour.  We do not want to follow that regulation.  We want to drive 75 if we can get away with it.  The moment we see a cop, we hit the brakes.  It is a knee jerk reaction.  We push the limits and play the game so we drive above the speed limit.  We do it enough that we do not consider it 'breaking the rules.'  We consider it a game we play instead of a law we are breaking.  We do not consider ourselves law breakers.  We do not consider ourselves as criminals.  We think it is a game.  We are not criminals.  Criminals break the laws, we are busy playing a game.  That is how we think.

You employ these very same people.  You may be one of them.  We see so many other drivers going faster than the speed limit that we tend to feel like we should be doing the same thing.  We do not want to be left out. We have a high need to be included.  We want to play the same game.  You employ these very same people.  Think about it.

Some of us do not carry enough personal strength to follow the posted regulation for the speed limits we see.  Since everyone is doing it, it is not against the rules...it is not breaking the law.  It is a game we can play.  In due time, we play it enough that it becomes our pattern of habit.  We eventually bend the rules in favor of our winning ways.  We do not consider it wrong.  You employ some of these people.  It is not just a driving affliction.  It is a life process that takes control of a lot of

Group Dynamics Play With Interesting Results 

Flash mob popularity has hit the media recently.  We have always practiced flash mob behavior to a good degree.  When a line of cars passes us on the freeway, breaking the speed limit faster than we are doing, we tend to speed up and join them.  The subconscious mind suggests that a cop cannot catch all of us at the same time.  We tend to join in on the game.  The cop might be able to catch the front two drivers of the speeding group but the rest of us can slow down in time to get left out of the ticket process.  The odds look good so we decide to play the game.  We flash mob to a higher speed.  Nobody sent out a memo, we just do it as a small group.  Nobody considers it to be law breaking.  Nobody thinks they are criminals, only the cop considers them as criminals.  We will flash mob a crime and think nothing of it.  You employ these people.  Group thinking can be converted into group mischief and the participants will actually believe they did nothing wrong.  You employ these people.  Think about it.  It can become a very serious game to them.  It can become a very serious issue of control to them.

We will justify our actions in this fashion more than we know.  We do it at work all day long and do not even notice it.  If everyone comes to work late on a regular basis, we tend to join in.  Nobody sends out a memo to practice coming in late.  It just happens.  We bend the rules, justify the action and join in with what everyone else is doing.  We flash mob ourselves through life in fashions that allow us to excuse us for breaking the rules.  It is completely justifiable.  It is a prevalent process in group behavior.  Eventually, it is no longer wrong to come to work late and get paid for it.  It becomes an issue of control.  It is not rare.  It is very common.

I had a business mentor who taught me how to think differently.  He tested me on this concept a long time ago.  I failed miserably.  He asked me to try and write down every single promise I made during the day and keep track of how many of them I made and kept.  First of all, I did not immediately recognize how many promises I made.  Some promises did not sound like promises to me, originally.  I would be talking to a friend or a customer and they might mention that they were having a small get-together next Friday night.  They would invite me and I would respond by saying that sounds like fun.  I would say something like I will check with my wife and see if we are doing anything, knowing full well that we had nothing planned.  I would indicate that I would let them know what we planned to do, yet never call or follow-up on the promise.  I did this kind of stuff all of the time.  So did everyone else.  Since it was common to practice this kind of breaking your word, it was not considered a violation.  I did not feel that I needed to keep my word in this case.  It was excusable.  It was as if I was not guilty because I did not use the word 'promise' in my inference to let them know.  It was just another way to have a good conversation with someone.  Justifiable.  Heck, we even make murder justifiable.  There is such a thing as justifiable homicide.  What is that all about?  It is just fine to break your word, it is just fine to break the laws and it is just fine to kill someone.  These are issues of control.  They have nothing to do with money.

My business mentor did not agree.  He taught me how to respect others much more than what I was practicing.  He forced me to learn how to be of my word.  Yesterday I was invited to attend a community dinner that started at 4 P.M.  They guy who asked me to come was a community leader.  I told him I was not planning to attend.  He continued to 'press me' to come.  I told him the dinner started at 4 P.M. and I was not leaving work until 5:30 P.M.  I would miss the lions share of the activities and therefore the main reasons for attending.  He 'pressed' some more.  I told him I was headed home after work.  He closed the request off by telling me what I would be missing.  He did not leave thinking I was coming.  I disappointed him honestly, not dishonestly.  We break our word like this often and do not consider it to be breaking our word.  We indicate to them that we will see them there, give them the idea that we will be coming so we can tickle their ear, then later we will find a good excuse to avoid going and do not go.  We justify breaking our word.  We lie, as my business mentor describes it.  We know full well we are not going.  We lack the courage to tell them so.  We break our word and think nothing of it.  It is the same as speeding.  We do not consider it a crime.  The truth...it is.  

Rules and regulations do not necessarily include us.  We find the ones we want to bend.  We bend them and think nothing of it.  We believe they are put there for someone else.  Yet when we ask someone to attend our cook-out and they do not call or show up, we get upset.  We get upset because they indicated that they were coming.  We do the same thing to others and consider it fine.  Rules and regulations are designed for someone else, not us.  That is exactly why we park in no parking zones.  That is why we roll through stop signs without coming to a complete stop.  We only get irritated at breaking this rule when someone else does it to us and goes away from a stop sign before it is their turn.  We get wicked off at them.  Don't they know the rules!?

It has all to do with control.  It has nothing to do with money.  The human mind works in interesting ways.  That same business mentor once told me that systems are king.  A great system will dominate good results.  It is when you add humans to the system that breaks the whole thing down.  He believed the best business success comes form those who lead with this kind of understanding.  Know how systems get their designs destroyed.  Pay attention to the things every human is not paying attention to and repair those areas of omission.  Fix what others do not recognize as broken.  Learn how to develop better systems that can make immediate adjustments for human error.  He also professed that every leader should work on teaching better leadership skills.  The one he felt most important to teach was for them to recognize how to keep their word.  If they say they will do something, do it.  Keep your word.  Press upon it until they get it.
  
We believe what we want to believe.  I did the same when my mentor said I was not a person of my word.  I denied it.  We tend to push our business beliefs too far.  We do it often enough that it becomes something we no longer consider is wrong to do.  Get conscious about how you operate.  Find a way to make your word count.  You employee humans.  They will justify anything.  Know this truth.  Work to understand the depth of this truth.  Get conscious about how these flaws can be improved.  Your business model needs them to become more improved.  Design your leadership to honor this truth and make modifications that help your business perform better with this truth.  Learn how to better manage how they need to satisfy their will to control.  You can direct better success if you learn how to work this truth.  They will speed.  They will not consider it criminal.

Until next time...