Have you ever found yourself doing exactly what you don’t want to do? You have even told yourself not to do it. “I’m not going to get upset this time when I talk to my boss.” “I don’t want to smoke when I visit Sally this time.” Even though you have repeatedly told yourself not to, it is exactly what you end up doing.
Let’s talk about smoking and Sally. She’s my childhood friend. We smoked together as teenagers. Moved into a flat together after we finished school and of course we smoked inside because it was our place and we can do whatever we want. Anyway, I’ve moved away from my childhood town, but for a long time when I went back for family events I would catch up with Sally and that would be the end of whatever attempt I was making at quitting smoking. I would say to myself over and over before I went home “I don’t want to smoke when I visit Sally” but what I’m picturing in my head is us sitting out the back of her place catching up, laughing, drinking wine and smoking. And you can guess what happened every time I visited her… exactly what I had pictured. So why did this happen? Even when I REALLY didn’t want to take up smoking again.
Well let’s have an example. I don’t want you to think of a pink elephant with purple spots. Please DO NOT think of a pink elephant with purple spots. You can’t not think of it. In fact, the harder you try not to think of the elephant the more you are. This is the law of reverse effect in action. The law of reverse effect basically says that when there is a conflict between what you are saying to yourself and what you are picturing in your head, what you are picturing in your head always wins.
Sometimes it helps not to have a “don’t” in what you are telling yourself. For our example about the elephant. When I said “I don’t want you to think about a pink elephant with purple spots” your mind has to think about it and picture it to then try to not think about it, which is a loop that just leaves you picturing the elephant every time. A solution to this is to think in more positive terms. For example, instead of “I’m not going to get upset when I talk to my boss” we might change it to “I’m going to go in there relaxed and take my time to communicate my message clearly.”
It is not just the words in our head that need to change. The most significant thing that needs to change is the picture in our head. Remember if there is a conflict between what we are saying to ourselves and what we are picturing in our head, what we are picturing always wins. Like when you haven’t been sleeping well at night and you think to yourself “I hope I get a good night’s sleep tonight” but you are picturing in your mind is lying in bed feeling frustrated and again still being awake at 1am.
So, if you want to program yourself for success. Think in positive terms about what want to happen and most importantly picture what you want to happen in your mind.
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