Don’t say don’t
Don’t think about a pink elephant!
What happens when you are asked not to think about a pink elephant?
You immediately see a pink elephant in front of your mental eye.
Why is that?
How our brain learns
Our brain apparently does process negative instruction as if they were positive instructions! There is no option of a “negative pathway” in our brain. We only learn by actively increasing connections of neurons, we cannot actively prune unwanted connections back. We cannot actively remove unwanted connections, they only get pruned back when they are no longer used!
When you give yourself or someone else a “negative command” you have immediately drawn the attention to that specific area. By doing so, you actively encourage that mental pathway. In essence, you focus the brain to do, what you actually had planned not to do.
What are the implications?
Don’t say don’t
Think about the last time, you wanted someone else to stop with something.
You might have asked them directly to stop. But did it work? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Their “not stopping” might partially be because they wanted rather not stop, actually.
But there might also be another reason, they cannot just “stop”.
Imagine you are running intensely and then someone shouts at you “stop”. You will feel that your movements propel you forward further, and that stopping requires energy. It requires an active movement, really breaking instead of propelling. Your stopping requires effort.
When “don’t” doesn’t work, what does?
As I have mentioned before, frequently in healthcare we need change. We require something to start, something to stop, something to being monitored.
All these changes require a resetting of the course of our actions, leaving old paths behind and starting new pathways.
Now we are in a pickle. Don’t say don’t. But we just don’t want to go on in these old ways.
We require new mental directions! We require positive new goals. Likewise, we require something to focus on. And this is optimally set with a “SMART” goal!
A good goal inspires you, triggers your emotions and moves you forward, even in tough times.
Don’t say don’t: use SMART goals
What doe SMART stand for?
SMART is an acronym for: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
Let’s break that down further.
A specific goal
A goal is specific, when you can identify a limited setting/ circumstances/ situation, where you can imagine the change has already happened. The more concrete this goal is formulated, the easier are the further steps in this setting.
A measurable goal
Instead of saying “I want to lose weight”, it is way better to bring the goal back to a very concrete level, like “I would like to lose 5 kg”.
This way, you can see how far you are on achieving your target. You see when you need to push further in the wanted direction, or when you could relax more.
An achievable goal
When we aim for change, one of the most difficult obstacles can be, that we make the goal unreachable. An unreachable goal leaves us with preprogrammed frustration, exhaustion, and often high level of self-criticism. This will not lead to a positive outcome, and the tendency to revert to “old ways” will easily overpower us.
There is a tension here between healthy “stretching” our assumed limits and over demanding targets for our capabilities.
A relevant goal
We can set our focus on whatever we think might be demanded by society. But external requests will not carry us through, when the going gets tough, through the period of change. We will only stick to our goal if it is relevant for us. We will not learn any new skill, that is not relevant for us!
In this case, the question for us, and our patients, would be: what is relevant to you? What do you want to happen?
A time-bound goal
Time does matter! Time is the one resource we all have only very restricted resources of. In his book “4000 weeks” Oliver Burkeman confronts us with the fact, that we are mortal, and we will not be able to do all we might want to do.
The consequence is, that we better place a time restrain on our goals as well, as they could get pushed down at the back of the drawer too long, and then it might be too late.
Putting a deadline to your goal helps also with your focus and prioritization.
A bad example
“I just want to live a good life.”
You can immediately spot the flaws in this “life goal”.
There is nothing there.
What does “good” mean for the person?
How do they know, that they have achieved it?
What is the path?
How do you measure good?
What is the orientation?
What is the action?
When will they have arrived?
A good example
The classic example for an inspiring goal was presented by J.F. Kennedy in a speech on September 12, 1962:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.“
This goal was inspiring!
It had a clear, specific target: to the moon and back!
It was measurable: we will have achieved that
It was achievable, although it was obvious from the start, that this would require a strong, persistent, joined effort.
It was relevant for the time, America was just shocked by the “ping” of the Russian Sputnik satellite and they wanted to “win” the race for the stars.
It was time-bound: Within this decade! This deadline helped to focus the minds and to force the different groups to work together.
In a nutshell:
Don’t say don’t: use SMART goals
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