Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Launch a search party for the opportunity
— From Do Over: Rescue Monday, Reinvent Your Work, and Never Get Stuck by Jon Acuff
Change is hard. Change is uncomfortable. Change brings an unknown factor into the equation. Most of us don’t like or accept change easily. Jon Acuff, in his book Do Over, rightly says that “upon being confronted with change, our first reaction is to brainstorm reasons it won’t work: I’m too old. I don’t have enough money. It’s too risky. I’m not qualified enough. Someone has already done that exact same thing. There are worse jobs than the one I currently have…” and the litany of excuses goes on and on.
“For minutes or maybe even lifetimes, we do our best to rally the troops around why we shouldn’t do something. And this tends to be the approach we take for ourselves and even other people.” For example, say that you ask a friend to do something that he really doesn’t want to do. Your request is met with resistance, so what’s the next thing you do? Very likely you’ll find yourself asking, “Why don’t you want to do that?”
As common as that question is, Acuff says it’s the wrong one to ask. He cites the book Instant Influence, by Michael V. Pantalon, PhD, where Pantalon says, “when you ask someone a question like this, you unknowingly invite them to brainstorm new reasons they don’t want to do something. That question is an invitation to sit in the no and work yourself up even more than you were before.” By asking a negative question we use our imagination in a negative way.
This applies to any scenario, personal or professional, from asking your boss why you can’t work from home one day a week, to asking a service provider why they can’t give you a discount to… Ha! Remember when you asked your parents why you couldn’t go to that party or why you couldn’t hang out with that particular group of friends? Now we know why and how they came up with all those reasons at lightning speed!
What should we do about this?
Acuff says the solution is to ask the opposite. “Instead of launching a search party for opposition to an idea, you launch a search party for the opportunity.” In the example above where you encounter resistance from your boss to work from home, ask instead: ‘‘what’s one reason you could see me working from home as possibly a benefit to the company?”
You don’t need lots of reasons. Once you have a good one, you’ve succeeded at establishing a positive foothold in your or the other person’s mind, and you can start to build from there.
ACTION
TODAY: Identify one area or one task where you’ve been asking negative questions. Where have you been building up a reservoir of negative reasons as to why you don’t want to do something? Or where have you given someone the opportunity to nurture reasons why not to do something? Flip that around and launch a search party for the opportunity. What question will you ask yourself or someone else that will shed some positive light in favor of doing something?
FUTURE: Keep this tool handy and make a habit of asking a positive question versus a negative one. Your life and that of the people who surround you will be all the better for it, as there will be less friction and less stress when facing any kind of change.
Do you know someone who is finding a myriad reasons why not to do something? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter!