Lately I have taken a liking to playing a mental and language game. It is very simple and effective and is based on the influence that thinking has in daily life. “What we are is the result of what we have thought,” said Buddha, and although I am not a Buddhist this phrase has always made me think. If thinking negative, for example, increases the chances that the result of your efforts-or inertia-is just negative, why not think positive in the first place? Now I will not mention Jovanotti and his Think Positive. What came to my mind is different and has nothing to do with unwarranted optimism. It has to do with a different mental and linguistic attitude. Getting to the point. The exercise I have imposed on myself is this: never use negations in the reasoning I do. The simplest is “I will never make it” or “It is not possible (to make it, succeed, etc.). If I think in a positive key already from the construction of the argument and then in the way of expressing it, can something change? Yes, many things change.
Applied marketing
I once saw a movie called “The Negotiator” or something like that. I remember practically nothing of it except for one thing he taught me about negotiators: when talking to captors, they should never use negative forms. Any denial, denial, obstruction is banned. Every thought must be positive, possibilistic, realistic and achievable. A good marketing technique is based on this attitude: talk only about the positives of a product while minimizing or sidestepping the negatives. How could it be otherwise after all?
What does running have to do with it?
You’ve come this far and rightly wonder where I’m going with this and what running has to do with it. I’m getting there now. If you pay attention in both cases I mentioned earlier-the negotiator and the marketer-negativity is not cancelled but remains in the background. Everyone knows they are there but some magic relegates them to the shadows. Both the negotiator and the captor know that the thing, for one or the other, could end very badly; the marketing manager and the consumer know that every product has flaws, but magically this realization can be suspended. It remains in the shadows and no one, momentarily at least, pays attention to it. How could this reversal of perspective take place? Thanks to language: the use of different words created a different reality, or at least the perception of a different reality. The reality itself has not changed, but the attitude one has toward a certain situation has changed dramatically. With this in mind, I wondered whether avoiding using negations in thinking about reality could change anything. Since this operation takes place only at the mental level, it is only your perception of a certain situation that is changed. What happens in your head, however, is extraordinary: striving to think as positively as possible forces you to make a not inconsiderable mental effort. Why is one more inclined to be pessimistic and negative? Because it is easier and there is less effort, period. If, on the other hand, you make an effort to never think in negative terms and, above all, to find words to express your perspective on a certain reality only in positive terms, you will suddenly see it in a different light, capable of illuminating all the shadowy areas of a situation. In those areas are all the possibilities that you had not considered because you had focused only on the most problematic and negative ones.
Okay, but in practice?
To sum up: this technique does not deny that there are negative aspects to a situation but only decides to put them in the background. They continue to be there but not in the foreground. A typical case? “I will never be able to go below 5 min/km.” This is the typical consideration that already predisposes your brain to instruct your body that it is useless to try so hard, because you will never make it. In fact, you will not make it because you will leave unloaded or not even leave. If you relegate to the background the impossibility of getting below 5 min/km (which you continue to know is very realistic) and rephrase that by saying, “It is very motivating whatever time I can do that is lower than my current average time,” you open the way for yourself to improve and run faster, little by little. A similar technique is used by some coaches: instead of setting goals for the people they coach, they invite them to tell themselves, “I want to see if I can.” If I can run harder, if I can never stop, if I can run in the rain. It is clear that the construction of the thought itself is different from that of negative observation: the “I want to see” is active, or proactive, as some would say: it is an attitude that aims to lay the groundwork for a positive solution. Mentally, it allows you to shift the challenge from reality to yourself: the “I want to see” indicates curiosity and a sense of challenge to oneself. You are no longer trying to beat an abstract time but yourself: the one slower than yesterday. After all, Bruce Lee also said it, “He is since he thinks he is.” It’s not because he trained, because he won, because he beat someone else. He became someone because he first thought he was what he wanted to become. The power of thought does not change the reality of things but it does change your attitude toward them, and besides, you know: it is not what happens to you that matters but how you deal with it. Change the words you use and it will change your thinking. Change your thinking and you will change the way you deal with reality. If your thinking is positive you already know how it can change your perception of it. Good change to you. (Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy on Unsplash)