In five months I will be 61 years old. Each year I am alive I am more likely to hear
the phrase “That Was a Wake Up Call” from someone I know, either about
themselves or someone they hold dear.
I don’t know who will say it, or the exact reason, but the
person who says it will be the only one surprised about the heart attack,
stroke, or other near-death experience that lead to the comment.
In November of last year, I went to a business lunch at the
Yale Club in New York. The speaker was
the CEO of a billion-dollar chemical company.
His topic was how he led his company to grow nearly double in size
during the preceding five years, the worst recession in the last 80 years.
This genial, affable man spoke easily about encouraging the
previous management team to “seek new opportunities.” In a near quote of Mitt Romney, he said a
couple of those people thanked him when they found better work. He closed plants, moved production to
countries with “more attractive work environments” and did what managers do to
succeed in a global market.
When he talked about the key moves he made on the road to
success, important hires, deals closed, these events occurred during dinners at
expensive restaurants. “Get him to
dinner and I’ll close the deal,” he said with a smile about one important
acquisition. He looked the part. Five feet, nine inches tall, a tailored suit
draped over a mid-section created by many dinners and missed gym workouts.
While he spoke, I looked up his bio on the web. He is 66 years old. Toward the end of the
talk he said he planned to lead the company for two or three more years to
complete plans he had then retire.
Won’t that be fun.
Let me hazard a guess that the successful CEO currently
takes a dozen prescription medicines to stave off the effects of eating too
much and exercising too little—or simply of being too short for your
weight. By age 69 or 70, Mr. Success
will be on more medication. He will
suddenly lose the adrenaline rush of leading a successful company.
If he survives the heart attack, stroke, or other health
catastrophe he will tell his family and friends “That Was a Wake Up Call.”
Really??? A wake up
call? So for 40 years you overate
watched your toes disappear in the shower, moved to the next waist size in you
suit pants every three years, and the heart attack is a wake up call? Were you in a coma?
It turns out that most humans have a view known in
psychology as Optimism Bias. Even when
we understand risk, we think it will happen to everyone but us. In this case, the CEO, if he took a survey,
would rate the likelihood that a fit person his age would have a heart attack
at something less than 20%. He would
rate the likelihood for someone with his height, weight and exercise pattern as
70+ % likely to have a heart attack. But
he would rate HIS OWN likelihood of having a heart attack as roughly the same
as the healthy man his age.
We all do it. College
students who drink think those who drink to excess are more likely to be robbed,
assaulted, flunk courses etc. They think
non-drinking students have little danger.
If they themselves are binge drinkers, they rate their own danger as
similar to non-drinkers.
Mr. CEO will very likely have a near-death experience within
a year after he retires, if not before.
“That Was a Wake Up Call” will be what he says. He will say it because Optimism Bias has
lulled the otherwise hard-nosed man who can close a factory with no regret into
a sunshine and rainbows view of his own health.
Many of the soldiers I serve with are already on the path to
their own Wake Up Call. Some are in their 20s, flunking the fitness test, overweight and building up to a sad later life. And at 60 years
old, 60 pounds overweight and 60 beers a week, that heart attack will be a
shock.
I smoked a pack a day for more than 15 years. I stopped at 33 years old and haven’t smoked
since. One thing that helped me to stop
though not immediately was writing obituaries.
Back in the 80s when more than a third of adult males smoked, obituaries
of men came across my desk in two groups:
non-smokers died between 75 and 85 of various diseases, smokers died
between ages 57 and 63 of heart attacks and lung cancer. After a year of obituaries, I lost my
Optimism Bias.
