SimonRaybould

There are good reasons, evolution-wise that we obsess about the negative, but it’s not all-together helpful, is it?!

I’ve heard it said that we’re four (or more) times more sensitive to negative things than the positives ones (sorry, I can’t find the reference). And there’s good reason for that – in terms of our evolution the negative stuff might kill you whereas the positive stuff just makes you feel good… 🙂

On a personal note, I found myself obsessing about a mediocre feedback form last week from a training day I ran. 19 people raved and one person said ‘very good’ (as opposed to ‘excellent’). Guess which feedback form I obsessed about that night, reading over and over and over…?

Without an ability to balance the good and the bad, it’s a useful tool to record the good stuff.  If we tend to remember the bad rather than the good, it makes sense to help ourselves out by boosting the good – and a way of recording it, to bring it to mind, is a great way of doing that.

Personally, I make point of telling my friends about the good stuff, so that when I’m next down, saying “It’s all rubbish”, they can counter that with “But last week…” 🙂

Other people I know use different tools and tricks.

A dear, dear friend of mine puts ticks (and the occasional cross) on the family calendar.  You know the one I mean – the one that’s on the fridge door to keep every member of the family in the right place at the right night of the week…

Other people I know use a diary. And yes, before you ask, there’s an app for that!  🙂  On iPhones you can use a the Gratitude Log (I’m sure there are Android equivalents but I use a Mac). Or you can use websites/blogs to record the good stuff.

To be honest though, it doesn’t matter how you do it – just do it! What system(s) do you use?

Here in Tyneside we have a ‘light rapid transit rail system’ called Metro.  We also – like pretty much everywhere else in the UK have the newspaper of the same name.  There’s an interesting article in the latter that I read on the former!  🙂

Metro - the train not the paper!

http://www.metro.co.uk/lifestyle/880187-stress-are-you-cracking-under-the-pressure

The main thrust of the article is that sometimes we confuse ‘stress’ with ‘life’ and that the latter can’t be avoided.

It’s a theme I’ve got a lot of sympathy for because I find it’s a common misconception – a confusion of stress with pressure.  Pressure, you can cope with; stress you can’t.  No matter how pressured you are, if you’re able to handle it, it’s not stress.  And often you’ll do yourself a dis-service if you label it as stress ‘cos then you’ll start to think of it as something that’s overwhelming you. It’s something of a self-fulfilling prophesy, I’m afraid.

Ask yourself instead (consciously, deliberately and objectively): can I cope? Better yet ask yourself “How can I cope?” to give yourself a more appropriate frame of mind. No matter how difficult and no matter how much extra work is involved… if that work can be done, if you can find some way of coping, it’s “just” pressure.

This won’t make the pressure go away but you’ll find it does help in terms of being able to cope.  It’s called ‘reframing’ but that’s just a flashy way of saying ‘looking at things a different way’.  And as Nietzsche once observed: That which does not kill us makes us stronger. In the end the pressure will be gone and you will remain. Stronger and better able to cope the next time it comes around…

But – there’s always a but, isn’t there – so much for the simple questions… because it’s pretty obvious to even a brief thought, that pressure can become stress over time.  The amount of pressure I can handle this afternoon is different from the amount of pressure I can handle if it’s every afternoon!

Over at Curved Vision, I’ve written a blog post (well, more of a rant, to be honest!)  while ago, about motivational speakers, where I’m suggesting that being such a speaker is not a proper job for a grow up.

I stand by that. But in the way of rants it kinda goes over the top, which leaves me to argue the case here for being inspirational.  Arguing with myself on two different blogs – that’s a new low! 🙂

So what are the upsides about motivational speakers? Well let’s start with the obvious – they’re inspirational. The right speaker, saying the right thing, to the right person, in the right way, at the right time can turn someone’s life around.

Of course, with all those provisos you can see that it’s probably a pretty inefficient process – if any of those things aren’t right the whole process of ‘being motivational’ falls flat on its face! 🙂 But lets face it, you only need to change one life and the world suddenly feels like a different place, so I’m going to stick my neck out here and say it’s probably worth it – and a good, inspirational motivational speaker will be able to tick lots of those boxes at once.

Secondly, of course, being a motivational speaker means that some people who are probably unemployable in conventional businesses find an outlet for their talents to keep them off the streets!  🙂

Thirdly comes the argument that motivation is a universal need – as such a motivational speaker should have more or less universal appeal. Speakers about marketing will appeal only to those of us who need to market things (which is most of us, I agree).  Speakers about tax only appeal to those of us who bother to do our own tax. Speakers about badgers only appeal to those who love (or hate?) badgers.

But we all need to do things, to perform, to get of our arses and dooo something. That means we can all benefit from being motivated – at least occasionally.

Way back when, when I was a kid, I was an avid reader of ‘Ladybird Books’. For some reason or another, a few of them have stuck with me over the years. One in particular has stayed with me – the story of Robert Bruce, as would-be king of Scotland, leading a revolution against the occupying English armies.

The story goes that once, while on the run after his army was routed, Robert Bruce hid in a cave from the English soldiers engaged in the mop-up operation. While there, he watched a spider spinning a web.

Over and over again the spider’s web broke while being spun and again and again the spider started from the beginning.  Finally, of course, the spider succeeded. Robert Bruce took some inspiration from this and, rather than give up his rebellion, tried again.  This time, the story goes, he succeeded.

It’s coming to something when future king are given lessons in resilience by stubborn arachnids – but all too often all it takes is just a bit more stubborn trying. As Thomas Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb, said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

On the other hand, we’ve all thrown metaphorical good money after bad – we’ve invested time, money and energy in what was, if we’d only thought about it objectively, a lost cause.

… and there is the key phrase “thought about it objectively”.

All jobs, tasks or projects – call them what you will – can be plotted with a input/output graph.  Put increasing input along the horizontal access and increasing output on the vertical axis and look at your job. Very few tasks (any tasks?) have a straight line on that graph.  Most have what’s called a Sigmoid Curve, meaning the curve is relatively flat at first, gets steeper and then flattens out again.

The area where it starts to flatten out is the area where we experience something called ‘diminishing marginal returns’. This is, essentially, were for every extra unit of energy we put in, we get smaller and smaller units of output in return.

Common sense dictates that we give up on a job – put in no more effort – once the curve has flattened out.

But consider this – if we’ve got more than one task on the go or in our to-do list (and if you haven’t, can I have your phone number?) it’s probably more sensible to stop right at the start of the flattening out zone.  Why?  Because the extra units of effort (input) that we thereby save ourselves can be put into the second task on our to-do list, where the input/output curve is still very steep.

The trick is, of course, to recognise where you are on the curve for any given task.

Hand on heart, though…. it’s not difficult, once you sit down and consciously do it.  I promise.  Try setting your alarm to give you hourly reminders to question where you are on the graph: or simply make a point of setting aside a fixed amount of time: or … well anything, to be honest.

What matters is not how your review where you are with each task so much as the fact that you do review it.

Really, it is. Honestly.

At it’s most basic resilience boils down to doing things to make the situation better no matter how crap you feel. Right?

It doesn’t feel easy, of course, because ‘stuff happens’ that makes us feel crap – and when you feel crap you don’t want to do anything. Most times, of course, not doing anything isn’t the right approach.  Most times, we’re better of doing something… anything… rather than nothing.

Sure, there’s a chance that we’ll do the wrong thing but my experience is that it’s less likely I’ll do the wrong thing than that doing nothing will be the right thing, so why not play the odds and do something… anything.

I know what I’m going to say next sounds like the most simplistic and naive idea of all time, but stay with me…  I recently gave a keynote presentation for a whole bunch of heads of HR local authorities about resilience (based upon AIR) and in it I gave a long list of resilience tools.  The one tool that many people found the best combination of useful and easy-to-use is this: ask yourself a simple question – “If it’s crap right now, what’s the one thing I can do right here, right now, to make it just a little bit less crap?”

It’s not rocket science I know, but the truth of the matter is that all too often we don’t ask ourselves that question (or having asked it, don’t follow through).

If you ask the question and decide that ‘nothing’ is the best option, then do ‘nothing’.  Alternatively, if you can think of just one thing to make it just a little bit better, what are you waiting for…? What’s the worst that can happen?