When I was growing up there used to be a view that it was either brains or brawn. You were either a jock or a geek. Now, new scientific evidence suggests what many of us have believed for years: It’s brain AND brawn. The latest research has demonstrated with children and older adults that some degree of physical activity (e.g., 40 minutes three times a week) increase cognitive performance. Other studies have gone further and demonstrated that exercise actually increases the neural projections (the number of nerve cell branches) in the memory center of the brain (hippocampus). However, don’t take this information to extremes. It turns out that too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Excessive exercise may reverse the positive effects we see with moderate exercise. The bottom line is this: For all those schools who are cutting out PE because it is too expensive, perhaps you should rethink. If PE is too expensive, consider the cost of ignorance?
Once again, it is the story of what got you to this level may be holding you back from getting to the next level. This time, we are talking about the subtle but important difference between observation and judgment. I work with a lot of high achievers who routinely judge themselves negatively after every little failure. A missed putt on the course or a misspoken word in the boardroom will be noticed and punished most severely by the high achiever that made the mistake. This type of self evaluation may have been exactly what was needed at one point to motivate the person to achieve, but now this self-deprecation is holding them back from the next level. Judgment, in this case, is when you take an event (like missing a putt) and evaluate yourself as a failure because of it. Saying things like “That sucks” or “I suck” is a judgment. It’s absolutely normal to judge yourself in these situations, and if you want to be absolutely normal you can stop reading now. However, if normal isn’t good enough the next section is for you.
When we judge an outcome it emotionally charges the observation by activating a specific area in the brain designed to respond to emotion (amygdale). This emotional charge signals the brain to automatically store the memory. The problem is that we charge negative judgments much more than positive ones. The reason for this is that the negative outcome is a surprise, and surprise focuses our attention and sharpens our memory. The other problem is that this emotional charge sets in motion a cascade of events that ultimately can create more negative behavior, especially with precision movements like golf. The cascade of events includes releasing stress hormones that increase muscle tension and decrease our ability to think rationally. On the other hand, observation is more cerebral. It is simply an objective evaluation of what happened. It helps us to stay calm, understand the cause and effect of the event, and get better because of it. With observation, that same missed putt becomes a source of information rather than a source of punishment. The bottom line is this: A single event can work for you or against you. The great ones make these events work for them by observing what happened and getting better because of it.
What’s more important; being right, or the long term health of the relationship? I asked my son Max this question a few days ago. Max is 10 and he was not happy about going to piano lessons. He was yelling his arguments about why he shouldn’t go and I asked him if he wanted to have a cooperative conversation or a competitive conversation. I think it was the oddness of the question that stopped him from yelling. “What are you talking about” he said. “Well you see Max, if you are interested in us having a good relationship in the long run, we need to cooperate and figure this situation out. If you don’t care about our relationship and just want to be right, we can have a competitive conversation where we each try to prove we are right. So, the question comes down to this: is the idea of you being right more important that the idea of us having a good relationship?”
Will I or I will: Which one is more powerful? Most of us would guess the definitive statement “I will” would move us in the direction of our goals much more than the question “Will I?” …and this is where we would be wrong. According to the latest psychological research in the area, the “Will I” question is powerful stuff. In a clever study conducted by Dr. Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana), people trying to stick to a fitness regiment who asked the question “Will I go to the gym?” were much more likely to exercise on a regular basis than those who declared “I will go to the gym.” What is just as interesting is that those people who asked the question said that they were motivated to take more responsibility for their fitness. Those who declared they would go to the gym said their motivation was they didn’t want to feel guilty about not going. Simply by changing the order of the two words ‘will’ and ‘I’ the motivation was entirely different. According to Dr. Senay, the bottom line is this: People who ignite motivation from within are much more likely to be successful in the long run than those who attempt to hold themselves to a rigid standard.
Today, right after you read this, give me 10 minutes. During these 10 minutes go on a gratitude walk. No music, no phone, take nothing with you that will distract you from your thoughts. For 10 minutes walk and think about all the things for which you are grateful. Then, let me know how you are doing.
One of the books that has greatly impacted the way I think about teaching is Peak, by Chip Conley. Having had a chance to talk with Chip about his book has assured me that he practices what he preaches…and it has convinced me he is up to something big! Yesterday I took a page out of Chip’s book and asked my students about their unrecognized needs. Unrecognized needs are at the top of Chip’s Customer Pyramid and he defines them as “…what a customer would love that they hadn’t even thought of. It’s beyond expectations or desires. It’s when, as a customer, you are shocked by the level of mind reading that the company can do to understand what you truly wanted, even if you didn’t consciously know you wanted it.”. My customers, if you will, are my students. So I asked my students, “What needs did you have fulfilled that before this class you didn’t even know you had? “ This is what they said…
I don’t really have an opinion about Marshal Mathers (aka. the rapper M&M) one way or the other, but the other day I heard an interview with him and he said something profound. Apparently he had a serious battle with drug addiction and rather than dealing with it he hid it from everyone around him. He said that he didn’t want to admit he had a drug problem because that was showing weakness. Then, after he nearly lost his life to drugs, he understood a different reality…and this is where the profound statement came in: “When you admit your weakness it takes away their power.” Try it. See if it works for you. It did for me.
I don’t really have an opinion about Marshal Mathers (aka. the rapper M&M) one way or the other, but the other day I heard an interview with him and he said something profound. Apparently he had a serious battle with drug addiction and rather than dealing with it he hid it from everyone around him. He said that he didn’t want to admit he had a drug problem because that was showing weakness. Then, after he nearly lost his life to drugs, he understood a different reality…and this is where the profound statement came in: “When you admit your weakness it takes away their power.” Try it. See if it works for you. It did for me.
“When the mind is denied the emotional sting of losing, it never figures out how to win.” This is one of my favorite quotes from Jonah Lehrer’s, How We Decide. This doesn’t mean we should go out to lose but it does mean that when we give it our best and it doesn’t work out we can still benefit from the situation. If you read How We Decide you will see our biology is set up to learn from losing. If we use it right, losing now will help us avoid losing when it really counts.
I was working with a golfer one time that had a very difficult tee shot. Trouble was on the right and left and he needed to carry the ball at least 260 to be safe. He piped it down the middle and ended up in the middle of the fairway but in a divot. He had a choice; he could look at the bad news of the divot and complain, or he could look at the good news of the drive and take the divot as a challenge. He can’t do both. He can’t commit to the situation in both directions. Try looking in two directions at once. You can’t do it. This is true literally and figuratively. If you are looking for things to go wrong you will see them go wrong. If you are looking for them to go right, you will see them go right. Take a stop light for example. Have you ever noticed how you always get red lights when you are in a hurry? It’s not really that you get red lights. It is that you notice the red lights. I’m not saying you can make all the lights green or keep your ball out of the divot. I am saying that on the golf course just like in everyday life you have a choice to look at your situation as a gift or a curse, and only one of those ways will help you.
