Dr. Phil’s Life Laws Series: Law # 3 — People Do What Works


Life Law # 3—People Do What Works. Your strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior and that of others.

Even the most destructive behaviors have a payoff. If you did not perceive the behavior in question to generate some value to you, you will not do it. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you’ve got to stop “paying yourself off” for doing it.

Find and control the payoffs, because you can’t stop a behavior until you recognize what you are gaining from it. Payoffs can be as simple as money gained by going to work to psychological payoffs or acceptance, approval, praise, love, or companionship. It is possible that you are feeding off unhealthy addictive and imprisoning payoffs, such as self-punishment or distorted self-importance.
Be alert to the possibility that your behavior is controlled by fear of rejection. It’s easier not to change. Try something new or put yourself on the line. Also consider if your need for immediate gratification creates an appetite for a small payoff now than a large payoff later.

You already know that behavior creates results. What you may not know is that those results, which affect you and the choices you make, occur at different levels of awareness and that the results can take many different forms, some subtle and powerful.

This is particularly relevant to pattern behavior. When behavior becomes almost automatic, you stop paying attention to or evaluating the cause-and-effect relationships in the conduct. You probably recognize situations in your life when you seem to go on automatic pilot, not really thinking through a given situation as you reactively go through it. The truth is, the behavior only seems illogical. 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. By “works for you,” I mean you get some kind of payoff for performing the seemingly undesired acts. And you will see the formula holds true even if at some other, perhaps more conscious or apparent level, you recognize that the behavior in question is not working for you.