Amazon reports they have over 2,000,000 book titles that answer to a search on “business”. That is a lot of knowledge. Everyone should be business geniuses by this time. The economy the world over should be white hot. Poverty should be finally at an end with everyone living the high life. But somehow the statistics on business success don’t support that. What’s going on?

There’s a statistic I’ve seen over the years that says only 10% of people who buy instructional books actually finish them. So only one hundred people in a thousand actually finish the books they buy. Let’s extend that Pareto principle to people who finish books. I’ll bet that only 10% of those who finish books ever attempt to put them into practice. That would be ten in a thousand. How many would you guess actually end up mastering that new knowledge? I bet it follows the same math. That means that out of a thousand people who buy the same book, only one actually masters its contents.

What does this mean? The first thing that comes to mind is that there’s a huge false belief out there that all we need to do is get more knowledge and it will be “problem solved”. The second thought is that change may be a bit more complex than using Amazon Prime and One-Click payment. That actually makes sense as the machine we’re attempting to feed that new knowledge into is the human brain. With all of the amazing computing power and software developed by humans since the first computer in the 1950s we’ve yet to build one that rivals the human mind.

In fact, Wikipedia lists over 189 cognitive biases at work in the human mind at any given time. A cognitive bias is simply a mental shortcut tool. We all use these to quickly making sense of the information that continually assaults our minds from outside and inside. And sometimes these biases can get us into trouble. A favorite of mine is the Cheerleader Effect. In this bias our minds silently search out and collect all of the best features from each cheerleader on the team. Then we apply that aggregation to whichever cheerleader our eyes stop on. Now this cheerleader looks far more attractive in the group setting that if we met them alone. (This works for males and females so no need to write me on this.)

Let’s get back to the books and knowledge. Why is it that the odds are we’ll fall in with the 998 other people who buy a book but don’t master the contents? It has to do with a phenomenon I refer to as “People do what works.” What that means is that people don’t master new knowledge because not mastering it works for them. I can tell what you’re thinking from here. “What?!?”, you’re now saying and maybe out loud. But take a second and think about it. Why wouldn’t you want to master new material? I mean that’s the ambition you had in mind, even if just for a second, when you bought the book in the first place.

Ok. Maybe you’ll be kind to me and go along with this “People do what works” idea for a moment. The next question you’ll want to ask is “Why?” “Why would I want to do something that’s detrimental to my ambitions and to maybe my personal well-being and happiness?” The tough answer is that yours and my subconscious mental sabotage is built on a false belief. It’s a subconscious one but it’s a powerful one. In fact, it makes you routinely derail your own plans for lasting change. The false belief is personal only to you and it’s been operating in the background for years.

What do you have to do? It’s actually easy. Just simply say to yourself that your behavior is not your fault or of the world you live in but of your programming. The next task is to set about understanding as much as you can about your particular false belief. I find that a mind map works very well to document your thinking and let things flow out of your mind so you don’t have to remember them. This process might take minutes or it might take months.

What’s amazing and frankly very hard to believe is that the process of understanding creates the force for change. You and I don’t have to use force of will to master that new knowledge, we just have to see our false belief in all its detail and it will dissolve on its own. Then we will be set free to master that new knowledge without any delay or frustration. It’s a leap of faith to be sure. But what if it was actually true? Worth a shot maybe?