Commit to Action

Geoff Roberts change, choice, language

Yoda“Are you really committed, or are you just going to try?”

I often hear others, and occasionally myself, say “OK, I will try to do ….”

Well here is a simple little exercise for you to do – go on, do it now, it will take you longer to read the instructions than do the exercise.

Put a chair in the middle of the room; stand behind the chair; now try to pick it up.

NO, I did not say ‘pick it up’. I asked you to try to pick it up. You can’t can you? You either pick it up or you do not pick it up!

The use of the word “try” carries with it an implicit possibiity of failure. Is that what you really want for your goals, or do you want to achieve them?

So go on, make that committment – decide that you will achieve that goal.

Remember, it was Yoda who said “There is no try, there is only do or not do”.

A quick thought on the importance of language

Geoff Roberts change, language

Question mark - WHY?
When someone else does something that puzzles me, I am often tempted to ask ‘Why?’ – and I always get an answer that justifies the original act.

Whenever you ask someone ‘why’ they did something, you are inviting them to justify their actions and, in their mind, this actually reinforces the behaviour. The question somehow invokes defensive routines in the respondent’s mind.

Rather than ask why someone did something there are more helpful questions you can pose. Ask them what they were trying to achieve, or how what they did helped them. These are quite different questions and far more useful because they activate a different part of the brain to ‘Why?’. You might get an answer that helps you understand how the original action was a good idea, or you might get a better understanding of the rationale for the action and so be able to formulate a different action that would get the result you both want.

On the other hand, it is good to ask why someone did something that turned out well, as this will reinforce the desired behaviour.

“Why do you read these blog articles?” 🙂