don't push people off the platform

I took the photo to the right in a playground over the weekend.  If you can’t enable images, the sign is a list of instructions for children, including:

• Don’t push people off the platform

• Don’t fight or hurt people on the rope

Chances are that as soon as you look at these instructions, you have a mental image of precisely the activities the playground authorities want to avoid.

Another sign in the same playground read:

• Don’t swear

• Don’t drink alcohol

• Don’t bully other children...

Kids were running badly amok all over the place in my imagination!

Language is so important, because of how our subconscious minds respond to what we hear or tell ourselves.  If someone says ‘don’t picture a pink elephant,’ the subconscious goes ahead and makes you picture it anyway.

So, when we express thoughts in terms of what we want to avoid, rather than what we want to do or achieve - we're causing the mind to run a ‘home movie’ that tends to depict us stumbling...

After a while, things seem hard.  Doors seem shut.  Life feels 'uphill'. 

I’ve posted about the influence of language before, and often discuss it in workshops, because choosing what you say is the first step towards changing your results.   

There is a big difference in how you will feel and act after thoughts like these:

• Don’t mess up this presentation

• Don’t eat the chocolate cake

• I always lose my keys

• Why is it so hard to get anything done

... all of which kick-start a negative ‘mind movie’, and saying the same thing expressed in the positive:

• Be calm and professional

• Eat something for vitality

• Keep my keys safe

• Start with the simplest task

You can try the ‘pink elephant’ technique on children, too.  Give them a mental image of what you WANT them to do:

• ‘Hold that drink carefully’ (instead of 'don't spill that drink')

• 'Come straight home after school' (instead of 'Don't waste time at the shops')

• 'Speak in your grown-up voice' (instead of 'Don't whinge')

Athletes in preparation for next year’s Olympics will also be focusing closely on what they want to achieve.  Coaches won't say things like, ‘Don’t twist the wrong way in your dismount' or 'Whatever you do, don’t fall over...’

We know this, yet we can allow thoughts like this to run riot in our own minds, sabotaging our actions at work and in our home and relationships.

Once you change your wording to help the brain focus on what you want, things start to get easier.

The human mind loves searching for what it’s interested in.  If you buy a red car, you'll see red cars everywhere.  When you hear a ‘new word’ for the first time, you’re likely to hear it several times over the next few weeks.  I'd never paid attention to Pandora bracelets until I decided to get one, and suddenly it seemed that every second woman had one strung on her wrist.

There is only so long that you can write off this kind of awareness as a coincidence.  I once took a 40-minute car journey with my friend’s six-year-old twins, who were playing a number plate game that involved spotting a plate with a certain number.  One of the twins said, ‘I’m looking for a number plate with 888’.  

Not wanting to see her disappointed, I said, ‘Triple eight is a very rare combination... we’re very unlikely to see that in such a short car trip...'

We saw three 888 number plates in the next twenty minutes.

The lesson in this is that other options, choices and attitudes are right in front of us, all along, if only we pay attention to them. To illustrate this, perhaps you could take this 'selective attention test' on YouTube if you haven't seen it before.

How can you use this to improve your work and life?

• Choose what you want to happen (your goal)

• ‘Language’ that goal in terms of what you WANT

• Work out what steps you could take to get there (note - the word ‘could’ is important here - it opens up far greater options for your mind than the word, ‘should’ - which implies one right way)

• Look for red cars, Pandora bracelets and 888 number plates.  In other words, focus on finding opportunities that will help you get ahead and ways over and around obstacles (rather than focusing on the obstacles themselves).

Imagine that you spend your time in a darkened warehouse.  That warehouse is full of opportunities and 'difficult bits' as well as a stack of gold. 

You're equipped with a miner's helmet with a headlight on the front.  Whatever you shine your headlight on is what you will see.  Everything else remains in darkness - outside your awareness - unless you look up, or to the right or to the left in your search. 

When you focus your light on the things that go wrong, you will see only those things.  If you turn your head and look for the things that go right instead, you'll find more of those.  Keep going like this and eventually you will find the gold.