The (Negative) Power of the Negative
AND What To Do About It
Key Highlights:
Focusing solely on what you don’t want doesn’t let you focus on what you do want.
While initially being able to decipher what you don’t want is a good start, the next step must be to define what it is you indeed want.
What your mind focuses on is what it will produce, so stop thinking of the negatives.
“I just don’t want to be like my old boss”
How many of us operate with a thought like this in the back of our mind?
Recently, I had a coaching session with a client, the CEO of a small start-up.
He had asked that we focus the session on how he was managing his staff.
For the majority of the session, we nudged around the issue, coming up with ideas and discussing specific situations, but we both knew we were nowhere near the usual breakthroughs we have in our sessions.
Finally, I said to my client,
“I feel like we are circling around something unsaid...something you don’t want to say. I think it’s limiting how far we can get with this issue.”
My client became silent, took a deep breath and then finally said the unsaid,
“I just don’t want to be a jerk like my old boss.”
We both knew it was an important point because he immediately started laughing, and his entire demeanor changed.
He laughed even harder when I responded with
“There’s that negative again.”
We frequently define what we want by stating what we don’t want and that is a perfectly reasonable place to start.
However, it is a far cry from actually getting what we want.
There are at least two reasons for this.
First, defining what you don’t want doesn’t get you any closer to what you want. You have to define what you actually want to get it. If I say I don’t want to go on vacation in the mountains, that is an acceptable starting point. However, it isn’t super helpful in identifying where I do want to go on vacation. Until I define where I want to go on vacation I can’t secure transportation, book a place to stay, or figure out what to pack.
Until I define what I want, I can’t identify what I need to do to ensure I get what I want.
The second reason that defining something by the negative doesn’t get you what you want is because it leaves your brain focused on exactly that...what you don’t want.
When someone tells you “don’t think about elephants”, what is the first thing you think about?
If I say “I don’t want to be like my old boss”, guess what my brain is thinking about? My old boss.
As I said before, defining what you don’t want is a perfectly reasonable place to start when figuring out what you do want, but it’s a starting point.
In order to get what you want, you need to create an image of what you do want in order for your brain to focus on that outcome.
For whatever reason, my client didn’t want to admit to me or himself that the reason he was struggling with managing his staff was because he was concerned about being a jerk like his old boss.
As long as that was lurking in the back of his brain, his brain couldn’t fully focus on becoming the boss he wanted to be.
And while we had spent the bulk of the session edging around talk about the kind of boss he wanted to be, once he acknowledged the real concern bothering him, the answer to the kind of boss he was going to become surfaced succinctly and with crystal clarity.
After we were both done laughing one word came to him that summed up the attribute that had been missing from our conversation, “Assertive.”
His entire demeanor, tone of voice, and attitude shifted in a minute.
His brain had something new to focus on that excited him and rang true for him.
Now, we had a new goal to focus on.
Are you defining what you want by defining what you don’t want?
Remember, that is a perfectly acceptable starting point, but it’s not going to get you to where you want to be.
Where do you want to be?
That’s the next question to ask yourself.
Here are a few more ways to ask it when your brain is a bit too focused on the negative.
DIRECTIONS: Just fill in the blank with your own negative thought
If you don’t want ____________________, what do you want to have in your life?
If you could wave a magic wand and ensure you will not have ____________________, what would you like to have instead?
Imagine you could slowly decrease any chance of having ____________________ in your life, as it decreased what would you want to fill that space with?
If you could look forward into the future where you are not ____________________, who would you be?
If you don’t want ____________________, what would you prefer to have?
If you could remove any possibility of ____________________, what would you want to replace it with?
And if these questions aren’t working, feel free to book a FREE introductory coaching session with me by clicking on the link below.