The Coach Approach

Why Positive Thinking Doesn't Work for Smart People and What to Do About It

With the mega success of the hit movie, "The Secret," I assume just about everybody has been exposed to the wildly popular idea of positive thinking.  Not a new concept in the field of personal development and success psychology but the movie put a spin on it referring to it as the Law of Attraction (LOA) - claiming some ancient roots and basically that what you think about you will attract like a magnet, either good or bad.

Hordes of followers were energized by the movie and who wouldn't be?  All I have to do is think about something - like a little red bicycle - and I will get it.  LOA gurus and coaches sprung up everywhere to help the masses work the program.  Think about something with all your might and it will be created.

Still others pointed out the caveat - you have to BELIEVE that you already "be, do, or have" the object of your desires.  And here is where it all falls apart for smart people.  They can't convince themselves of something that is not empirically true in their perception.  They refuse to fool themselves when they take some pride their intellect, rational thinking and perhaps education.

The fact is people who think positively do have greater success, better health and more satisfying relationships.  (If you need to be convinced, see the work of Dr. Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D.)  How then is a smart, thinking person supposed to convince herself of something other than the thoughts served up by her marvelous brain?

Well here is what we know from the available science.

1)  You can't create a "believable" positive thought by turning a negative thought upside down.  For instance, if you feel like you are suffering under a pile of debt from a real estate deal gone bad, you are going to have a heck of time trying to sell the affirmation, "I feel ease and abundance in my ever increasing wealth" to your head.  Your affirmation will be met with resistance, judgment, and a challenge to the truthfulness.  The little voice inside your head will likely reply, "Who you trying to kid?  Done any math lately?  Negative net worth is a far cry from wealth.  You know that.  You have an MBA for God's sakes.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  You're in trouble and no amount of magical thinking is going to get you out of it Bozo."

2)  Instead, identify a new empowering belief that would address the same issue, create a similar desired outcome that doesn't rely on the old language.  In this example, you would avoid the words money, debt, wealth etc.  You might try, "I am more than capable of finding solutions and opportunities in the current circumstances."  This will allow you to create more positive and resourceful thoughts without triggering your prudent self to set you straight on subjective reality and the facts.

3)  Look for real world evidence to support your positive thought.  This is particularly useful when you have constructed an exaggerated negative perception of an event.  I once coached a client through a series of job transitions during the boom and bust of the dot com era.  Every time his employment came to an end, he was convinced his career was over and that he would never be gainfully employed again.  Now this smart guy was not terminated from a series of positions, in fact one position ended because he sold his company for a very nice profit.  Yet he was convinced that somehow he was a fraud and wouldn't work again.  When we looked at the evidence, I pointed out that EVERY single time he transitioned, he got every thing he wanted in a new position and MORE.  He had good evidence to believe that his next position would be even more fulfilling than the last.  He just needed to see the evidence.

4)  And what if the evidence just isn't there.  No matter how hard you look, you can't find the facts to support a positive angle.  What then?  The trick here is to de-escalate the meaning and implications you are attaching to the event.  You lost your job.  Does that mean that you will NEVER work again?  No.  It doesn't.  You did a bad real estate deal and are saddled with a mountain of debt.  Does that mean that you are a complete failure?  No.  It doesn't.  Does it mean that you will never be successful again?  No.  It doesn't.  Strip away as much as you can of the catastrophic thinking by getting clear on how likely it is that you are looking at the worst case scenario.  Again, look for evidence here.

5)  Finally, if you work through the steps above and land squarely back on the negative belief.  Worse yet, you've gone through the process and found even more evidence to support it.  What then?  The question to ask yourself is - "This may be true now but can it be changed?"  If so, how?  Where it can be changed, this will lead you to constructive action and the opportunity to create new evidence for a more positive and resourceful belief.

Photo Courtesy of critical thinking asylum.

How to Simplify Making Decisions

Making decisions about things that are really important in our lives can sometimes be overwhelming.  We try to think through all of the possibilities and what ifs and uncertainties to make the uncertain - certain.  But, we just can't know everything there is to know about the future or the implications of every decision.  When faced with big decisions, we might find ourselves cycling through the options over and over in our head as if we could "think" harder about it and the "right" path would be suddenly clear.

AND, if the right path does suddenly appear - terrific. But when it doesn't, here is a really simple process to chunk down those big decisions.  At the heart of the process is figuring out what is most important to you and then organizing your desires into needs, wants, and wishes.  

Get Clear and Get Personal

To make the "right" decision, you need to identify what EXACTLY is important to you.

First make a list of all of the things that are important to you.  For instance, if you were considering job choices, you might list salary, a good boss, security, and interesting work.  Write down all the important things you can think of.

Now, you need to get your list in order of priority.  Do this by comparing the items one at a time.  Ask yourself, if you could have x and not y, which one would you take.  For example, if your career criteria list looked like this:

• salary
• security
• good boss
• interesting work

Begin by asking, if you could have good salary but not security, which would you take?  If you said security, then you would put security above salary.  Next you would compare security to having a good boss.  If you could only have one, which would you take.  If you said security again, then security would stay at the top of your list.  Once you have found the number one item, you would start to compare your second item to the third and the fourth until you have an ordered list.

What's Necessary and What's Nice?

This is a way of sorting what is most important.  Once the list is sorted, decide which things you NEED.  Which ones do you absolutely have to have to meet your needs?  They will be the items at the top of the list.  Next, identify which ones you would LIKE to have but don't necessarily need.  Finally, identify the ones you WISH you could have; they would just be nice not necessary.

Once you have your most important criteria, evaluate your choices according to the most important values that you have identified.  What are the items that are not important and not negotiable?

Do a Gut Check

Finally, check in with your intuition.  What is your gut feel about your choices and opportunities?  If you took no action, what would it be like one, two or five years from now? If you took option A and not B, what would you miss or regret?   What other possibilities might become available?

Trust that your intuition will provide you with the best guidance.  Your subconscious mind is able to process much more than your rational mind.  When you are recycling, over and over in your rational mind, you are probably ignoring some very important feelings and intuitions about your choices OR you haven't identified what is most important to YOU.

*Photo byLaTur

8 Criteria for Creating Even More Happiness in Your Life

 
Photo by outdoorsie
The last of one’s freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance.

~Victor Frankl

I am hard pressed right now to find anyone who is optimistic about the upcoming year except a few Internet marketers who are bombarding my inbox with messages claiming that they are not participating in any recession. 

Fear, dread, and anxiety won't change the economy, the stock market, or energy prices.  They just make you feel crummy no matter what is going on.  Worse yet, they jam your creative mechanisms and point your line of focus straight at problems rather than opportunities.

This is a time to be resourceful and to be resourceful, we need to clear our head of all the things we can't do anything about.  We need to really get that while we don't control our environment or the economy or our teenage son, we DO control our responses to these things.  Attitude and feeling good are a choice.  So why not choose to feel good and fully engage with your life this year, no matter what the circumstances?

 

Yes! You Can

Yes, you can feel better, make yourself happier.  In the best selling book, "Flow. The Psychology of Optimal Experience," psychology professor and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi outlines the eight principles that are necessary to create happiness.  This is not another pseudo psychology self-help book but rather it is based on a decade's worth of research by the author and his team out of the University of Chicago. 

For you to enjoy yourself and feel happiness, engage in activities or tasks in such a way that at least one if not more of the following criteria are present.

1.  You feel you at least have a chance of completing it.  Notice you don't have to be supremely confident, just feel a possibility of completing it.  Don't choose something that is so easy it doesn't require you to stretch.  Too hard and you'll feel more struggle than satisfaction.

2.  You have the opportunity to concentrate.

3. The task has clear goals.

4.  You receive immediate feedback on your progress so you know whether or not you are on target to reach your goals.

5.  Deeply engage with the activity so that your mind pushes aside day to day worries and frustrations.  This is one reason why physical activities and sports are so effective at producing positive states.

6.  Exercise a sense of control over your actions.

7.  During the activity, your sense of self disappears.  Think back to the last time you saw a terrific movie and became completely engrossed in the story on the screen.

8.  Engage in an activity where your sense of time is altered. 

 

Organize the Chaos

The normal state of our mind is chaos.  Without something to occupy our time and our thoughts, most of us will default to worry or trying to solve a problem.  By engaging in activities that involve challenge, have clear goals and a way of obtaining feedback, we channel the normally chaotic workings of the mind in a constructive direction.  By using concentration and self directed skills, we push aside our worries to become fully engaged and lose all sense of time.  We create in essence a sense of flow, an allowing of a greater experience of happiness.

The really good news is the opportunities for flow are endless. Sports, dance, sex, reading, writing, painting, playing music, eating, building a Lego tower with a child.  Just about any activity can be transformed into a happiness producing experience by consciously employing some or more of these criteria.

 

Friday's Coaching Inquiry: Something to Think About

I've been thinking on this one alot lately myself.

What would you do if you knew, absolutely, that you would not fail?

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Photo by Diana Bella

My six-year-old daughter asked me:

Who made God?

How come they call a tree a "tree?"

What is the point of you?  The point of a towel is that it dries you off.

Friday's inquiry:  What is the point of you?

My apologies to email subscribers who received an unedited copy of this post yesterday.  I hit the wrong button while composing and was unable to retrieve from cyberspace.

 

Related Posts:

• Inquiring Mind Friday, October 31

• Inquiring Mind Friday, October 24

Personal Development Books - The Answer by John Assaraf

 

I was a true book-a-holic last month, plowing through four new books, repeat reading six old books and perusing three of the many books written by my office mate over the last ten years.  I cherish books and the learning at my fingertips. 

Not too long ago, when I longed for the time to finish even one new release - often settling for book summaries or spot reading on Amazon or in the book store.  If you are in that camp, or if you missed it recently, here is a summary of John Assaraf's, "The Answer."  Assaraf is one of the key contributors to the hit DVD, "The Secret."  He has built four multi-million dollar companies and is currently at work on his dream of building the largest franchising company of the world at OneCoach.

The book brings together neuroscience, coaching, positive psychology, self-motivation, and goal-setting with a dose of the spiritual if you will.  Below is a summary of the psychological and strategic concepts.  I've skipped the tactical business coaching that starts on page 173.  Even so, this post is fairly long.

"Discover what it is you are uniquely gifted to be and to do, then build your business and your life in ways that take maximum advantage of those aspects of yourself.  That is when life flows."

We know from the field of quantum physics that everything is energy - even things that look like solid matter, like a chair - are, the tiniest level, packets of energy.  Your thoughts are energy that create your physical world basically by broadcasting to the universe - kind of like a radio - what it is you are thinking about and desiring.  Some mysterious force makes sense of what you are broadcasting and brings it into your awareness or reality.  This is what some call the "Law of Attraction."

While it can't be scientifically proven, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support it.  Everything you desire is out in the ether waiting for your thoughts to resonate at the proper level to bring these good things into your life.  But how?  Harness the power of both your conscious and nonconscicous minds.

Your conscious brain has five levels of functioning.  They are will, memory, perception, reasoning, intuition, and imagination.  The most powerful of these is imagination which is where dreams and ideas are born.  However, to tap the power of the quantum universe, you have to train your subconscious mind and need both aspects to work together.  To do that, you use the following six step process.

1. Create a vision of what you want to achieve complete with sensory and emotional details.

2. Write down affirmations that fit the vision in your mind.

3. Feel the emotions of succeeding in this way by accessing memories of other times you have succeeded.  The author refers to this a "neural linking" and spends good deal of time explaining exactly how to do it.

4. Make a vision board of your dream.

5. Design and implement a daily routine to imprint the new beliefs on your subconscious mind three times per day, morning, noon and before bed.

6. Feed positive messages to your subconscious throughout the day via audio, video, affirmations or mediation.

The above technique is referred to as Neural Reconditioning and it is a rock solid method for self-motivation.  Chapter 8 provides a complete list of FAQ's for more information on the technique.

The balance of the book covers creating a vision for your business based on your passion, defining your ideal customer,innovating, and differentiating your business from your competitors.  All practical , specific and useful information!

I love the science although I don't know enough to be skeptical about it and I am fine with that.  The information on how to use your mind is useful with or without the science although the authors go to great lengths to provide the background and the science.  he book is an excellent balance of theory, explanation, and practical application.  After completing the exercises, you will have written a fairly comprehensive business and/or life plan based on your deepest passions. 

This is an excellent coaching book for people who need to understand a little more about the science behind visualization, a positive mental attitude and the relationship between thoughts, energy, and success.

Related Posts:

• A Recipe for Happiness

• Getting Started on Your Goals

• What Areas of Your Life Need Fresh Goals?

• Three Simple Tips to Help You Achieve Your Goals

• Improve Your Opportunities for Success with Laser-Like Focus

• Save Time and Energy by Visualizing Your Goals

• Stretch Your Dreaming Muscle

Life Coaching Tool: Friday's Inquiring Mind

 
Photo by crouchingcathiddendog

Something to contemplate over the weekend, or the week ahead.  Journal on it.  Discuss with a friend or just mentally chew on it a bit.

There are 61 days left in 2008.

Where is the best place to invest your energy for the rest of this year?

 

 

Related Posts

• Inquiring Mind Friday, Oct. 24, 2008

 

20 Habits You Need to Break to Get to the Next Level

"You can get there.  But you have to understand that what got you here won't get you there."  Marshall Goldsmith

Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith's book "What Got You Here Won't Get You There" identifies 20 behaviors that successful people need to change to get ahead at work.  The book elaborates on each of these negative habits and provides useful remedies and strategies for modifying the offending behaviors.

Worth a a read and what I notice is you can apply them at work, at home, in relationships and other places in your life as well.  They don't need much explanation.

1. Winning too much.

2. Adding too much value.

3. Passing judgment.

4. Making destructive comments.

5. Starting with "No," "But," or "However."

6. Telling the world how smart you are.

7. Speaking when angry.

8. Negativity, or "Let me explain why that won't work."

9. Withholding information.

10. Failing to give proper recognition.

11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve.

12. Making excuses.

13. Clinging to the past.

14. Playing favorites.

15. Refusing to express regret.

16. Not listening.

17. Failing to express gratitude.

18. Punishing the messenger.

19. Passing the buck.

20. An excessive need to be "me."

The only one I didn't really get on first read was the last one.  An 'excessive need to be me" is justifying a behavior with "That's just the way I am." 

Which of these behaviors might be coming between you and your next level of success?

Life Coaching Tool: The Inquiring Mind

Photo by Michael Mahlum
All of the wisdom and resources you need to solve problems, identify opportunities, grow yourself and move forward toward greater fulfillment and success are within you.  They simply need to become available to your conscious mind from your subconscious mind or some other mysterious holding place.

Train your mind to access this guidance by sending it on a quest for information.  Pose a query to your self and then reflect on it over a period of time and see what surfaces.  There is no right answer to a query of this kind.  There is only your answer, your wisdom.

Each Friday, I'll post a query here for you to contemplate over the weekend if you like.  Write about it in a journal.  Talk about it with a friend.  Twirl it around in your mind while you're driving.  See where it takes you. Let it be effortless and entertaining.

The question for this week is:

Where am I in relationship to my biggest dreams?

Related Posts

• A Recipe for Happiness

• Stretch Your Dreaming Muscle

16 Ways to Jumpstart Your Day

Photo by Mizz Amontillado
I love mornings.  I appreciate my mornings so much because not too long ago, I didn't have mornings to enjoy.   Well, the mornings were there.  They were just insane.

Working east coast hours from the west coast, I used to fly into the bathroom at 4:00 a.m., flip on the micro-coffee pot - that's right. the coffee pot was in my bathroom - and then jump into a fast and furious shower.  I could wash my hair and shave both legs in less than 7 minutes on a good day.  By 4:20 a.m. I was speeding down Columbus Ave. to the 12th floor of the Transamerica Pyramid building for the start of a 4:30 a.m. meeting.

The meeting was broadcast over a loud speaker so I could read the newspaper, scan multiple news services, review overnight emails and research, and choke down an apple while listening to CNN and MSNBC on the jumbo screen tv's - all at the same time. 

If this sounds even a little bit like your morning, know that you don't need that frantic morning pace in order to succeed or get everything done that you want to get done in the day.  The reality is, starting out at that level of adrenaline and cortisol so early in the morning leads to ineffective decision making and burn out.  Its kind of like trying to run a marathon at the pace of a sprint.  You use all your juice right off the start line and then limp through the rest of the race at a lackluster crawl.