Can I? versus I Can!

Having read many self-help books over the years I’ve constantly encountered the idea of using positive self-talk and affirmation statements to help improve your chances of achieving your goals. Many of these books tell you to write positive “affirmation” statements. Examples would be:

• I have plenty of creativity for this project.
• My work will be recognized in a positive way by my boss and colleagues.
• My co-workers and customers respect and value my opinion.
• I am successful.
• I complete tasks and projects on time.
• I expect to be successful in all of my endeavors. Success is my natural state.
• I am courageous and I stand up for myself.
• My thoughts are positive and my life is filled with prosperity.

When I read these books years ago and tried affirmations like this I believe they helped put me in a more positive frame of mind. However, as I wrote in my April 23, 2017 post “Moving Beyond Positive Thinking”, research has shown that if we vividly visualize our goals our mind doesn’t know the difference between the imagined outcome and the actual results! We can end up having less motivation not more. In this post I refer to work done by Gabriele Oettingen, professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg and covered in her book Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation.

Daniel Pink, author of books such as Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and To Sell Is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others, reports on research that says we can be more productive by asking if we can do something then answering with a “yes” rather than declaring “I can do it.” Pink relays research done on a method used by Bob the Builder, an “overall-clad, stop-motion animated construction executive – who debuted on CBBC in 1999 and whose television programme now reaches children in 240 territories and 45 languages – is a management radical. His approach to directing projects, people and himself runs counter to the prevailing wisdom about business performance.”

Most of us believe in positive self-talk. "I can achieve anything," we mouth to the mirror in the morning. "Nobody can stop me," we tell ourselves before walking into a big meeting. We believe we'll do better if we banish doubts about our ability or our strategy and instead muster an inner voice that affirms our awesomeness.

But not Bob. Instead of puffing up himself and his team, he first wonders whether they can actually achieve their goal. In asking his signature question – Can we fix it? – he introduces some doubt.

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In a nifty set of experiments, three social scientists explored the differences between what they call "declarative" self-talk (I will fix it!) and "interrogative" self-talk (Can I fix it?). They began by presenting a group of participants with some anagrams to solve (for example, rearranging the letters in "sauce" to spell "cause".) But before the participants tackled the problem, the researchers asked one half of them to take a minute to ask themselves whether they would complete the task – and the other half to tell themselves that they would complete the task.

The results?

The self-questioning group solved significantly more anagrams than the self-affirming group.

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By asking "Can we fix it?", Bob widens the possibilities. Only then – once he's explored the options and examined his assumptions – does he elicit a rousing "Yes, we can" from his team and everyone gets to work.

So the next time you're feeding your inner self a heady brew of confident declarations and bold affirmations, toss in a handful of interrogatives with a few sprinkles of humility and doubt.

The research that Pink reports relates somewhat to Oettingen’s WOOP process. WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, and Plan. You define what you wish [W] to accomplish, determine the outcome [O], identify the likely obstacles [O] then design a plan [P] to overcome those obstacles.

Am I saying not to use positive affirmations? No! I think they have a place. For an interesting perspective see Scott Adams’ How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life. Adams in hardly a raving advocate of positive mental attitude but he admits to have tried positive affirmations. I think the key take away is not to expect affirmations to have magical powers that will make things happen without work or without accounting for obstacles that could derail your efforts. We need to have a positive idea where we want to go while also asking ourselves what could go wrong and what can we do to deal with it.

NOTE: for a related post on the power words can have on behavior see this post from 2013.

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