How to Coach Yourself and Others Happiness Is No Accident | Page 40

we ought to do more that of course we ought to do more. And I say this: thank goodness for those
fools who don't want to help! They keep me fighting. If I didn't have such good and proper
enemies, how would I know I was on the right track?"
She gets a good head of steam going as she talks. Clearly, this is a woman who sees her life as
filled with important work. She is a hero in her own eyes — she's got to be strong to help the
children in her area, and so she is strong. Cause and effect. Because she asks herself the
fundamental level-three questions every day — How are others living? What do they think of as
their greatest needs? — she's reaching ambitious goals, making an enormous contribution to the
lives of others, and filling her life with high purpose.
The Story of Ed and Fred: Tuning in to What Other People Care About Most
We all want to be our own heroes, and hear our own stories. If you grasp this truth, you can use it
to reach your own goals.
A famous story about the advertising business offers another glimpse of the way the three levels of
thinking work.
Two advertising managers are arguing about the size of the type in an ad they're planning to run in
a newspaper. One of them — call him Ed — wants to save money by using smaller size letters in
the ad. Smaller letters mean a smaller, less expensive ad overall. The other — call him Fred —
says, "You dope, you need big letters to catch people's attention. If we use smaller letters no one
will stop and read the ad." Ed says, "Nonsense. If your message is the right message and you say it
clearly, everyone will read the ad." Fred's not convinced. Ed proposes a wager: "I'll bet you a
thousand dollars I can run an ad in tomorrow's paper that you'll need a magnifying glass to read,
and no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to resist reading every last word." Fred smells
easy money and takes the bet. The next day, the paper comes out and there on the back page is a
block of tiny type. Fred laughs. "OK, pal," he says. "Pay up — I'm not reading it. I couldn't even if
I wanted to — the type's too small." "Well, OK, if you really think you won't. But you should
know what's in the ad. It's all about you. It's your life story." Try as he might, Fred could not resist,
and before the day was over he'd gone out and bought a magnifying glass and read all about
himself over and over again.
Fred was stuck at the first level of thinking — he was in love with his own story, as most of us are.
Ed understood that and used his insight to win the bet and to save money on advertising by writing
ads that used insight into the three levels of thinking to save on space. If you have no insight, your
voice has to be loud to be heard — and your ads need to be big. But if you have lots of insight,
your voice can be quieter and more civil, and your ads can be smaller and less expensive.
Ed was at the third level — he understood that other people didn't want to hear about the products
he had to sell, or about him as a salesperson, but were consumed by their own concerns about
themselves and their own personal struggles. He asked the right level-three questions — How do
other people look to themselves? What do they care about most? Ed understood that if he could
connect the sale of his products to those personal concerns, his ads would be more effective and
he'd sell more.

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