The Free Donut Idea
Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the power of ideas. What got me started was an article that I read about the benefits of visualization. For all of you who are not acquainted with modern psychoanalysis or various New Age practices, visualization is something of a meditation exercise where a person sits quietly while imagining himself or herself to be in a particular situation. Different people practice this activity for different reasons. Perhaps they have an unhealthy phobia and imagine themselves successfully defeating that fear in a situation that really could present itself in the near future. Perhaps they simply lead a stressful life and imagine themselves to be in some peaceful, exotic location where the stress cannot touch them. Another common example is that athletes may imagine themselves playing their specific sport better than anyone else or winning the championship they desire. Yeah, I know. It’s mental thing. It’s a trick. It’s a game that you play with yourself. Imagining certain situations does not necessarily make those situations true. However, one truth that I keep coming back to in my life is that the way I see a thing somehow does change the way I respond to it.

Reportedly, people have overcome irrational phobias by learning to defeat them in their mind first through visualization. People have learned to deal with stress better (and have even recorded physical changes) by practicing "away time" in their minds. Supposedly, visualization has even assisted athletes in delivering top-notch individual performances—regardless if they have won the championship or not. Ideas are powerful.

I remember a day in college where a similar concept played out with me and some friends, though its effects were quite inconsequential in view of the examples I’ve already cited. One evening, my roommate, Chase, and I were walking into the dorm when we noticed a sign hanging in the lobby: "Free Donuts in the Lobby Tomorrow 6:00 a.m." Of course, the first thought for both of went something like, "Alright! Free donuts!" But later on in the room, the idea could not really take root in my mind. I had things to do the next day, it was late, and I was going to bed...and I was not going to wake up at 6:00 a.m. to get one lousy donut. Chase, on the other hand, continued to nurture the idea. Even though he normally slept later than I did, I watched him set his alarm clock—God help me, his foghorn-wake-me-up-screaming-and-pee-your-pants alarm clock—for 6:00 a.m. "So, uh, you’re gonna get up for a donut?" I asked. "Yeah, it’s a free donut," he explained. "Besides, I’ll probably just go back to sleep afterwards."

Sure enough, several hours later, the cock crowed, the alarm screamed, and Chase stumbled incoherently out of bed to muffle its sound. After just a brief moment of determining why he was awake at 6:00 a.m., Chase brightened up and said, "Dooooh-Nuts!" He then scampered out the door into the hallway with his bed clothes still on and his hair still shaped like a cone. (Chase and I always thought it was funny that two of us who suffer from morning cone-head syndrome ended up rooming together for three years.)

Several minutes later, he reappeared at the door, having eaten a donut, and filled me in on the rest of the story. He had walked down the hall, into the stairwell, down the stairs, and across the lobby to where the donut table was located. The resident director was there and was very surprised to see a few faces that had never appeared in the lobby before midday. As Chase stood eating a donut, the stairwell door opened again and in walked two of our other friends, Brian McCollister and Brad Freeny—both wearing their pajamas and stumbling across the lobby. While none of us were "morning people," Brian probably stands as the epitome of a late sleeper. (Two years previous to this incident, he had slept nearly until noon on move-out day, disregarding the plethora of boxes and large furniture that was being hoisted all around him, until the dorm’s resident director yelled at him to get up at a volume that startled even those of us who were already awake...and two doors down.) Yet, somehow the promise of a free Krispy Kreme donut was enough to inspire the same actions that had formerly only been prompted under the bellowing of a red-faced residence supervisor who later went on to become a Washington railroad lobbyist.

In retrospect, I still can’t understand why a donut was worth this trouble. In fact, Chase and I recently reminisced on that morning, and he admitted that the prospect of the donut probably shouldn’t have merited a special sunrise journey to the lobby. It was just the idea of that donut...it was free! It’s the same reason we buy Route 44 drinks at Sonic at happy hour.