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Ignite Passion and Performance with User Friendly Brain Tools

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Bowl a Strike – The secrets to learning a new skill quickly and confidently

July 29, 2015 · by Bob Faw

He is a winner. Handsome young men throwing a bowling ball while three people cheering

A number of motivational psychologists have asked the same question: “Which gives better results: focusing on positives or negatives?” (Another questions they ask is “Why do people enjoy bowling?” – just kidding.)

Four researchers at the University of Wisconsin decided to find out (about focus that is). They used one of America’s most popular adult sports, bowling, to do the research. The experiment involved monitoring the scores of low-skilled bowlers in four leagues over a few months, and two leagues showed something startling. One league had been asked to track only what they did right and focus on doing those things more; another league had been asked to track only the mistakes and focus on avoiding those errors in the future. While both teams improved, the team tracking what they did right had 100 percent greater improvement than the team that was tracking its mistakes!

The researchers go on to say that when people are new at skills lots of positive feedback and ideas are the most helpful. Once someone has mastered a skill set a higher ratio of negative feedback is more helpful for improvement. In other words, keep newbies focused on how to do the skill. Distracting with too much negative takes them off course and can diminish important confidence-building.

The bottom-line is that focusing on both positives and negative are important. Both prime people. But prime well, so that they are clear about what how to do the skill well, and they motivated to keep improving. This calms the caveman and energizes the artist.

Whoop it up! Celebrate the positives. At first, only point out negatives that will make a big deal if not fixed. Then quickly get back to what is working, and what is best to do next.

Go bowl nonstop strikes!

Research Note: Kirschenbaum, D. S., A. M. Ordman, A. J. Tomarken, and R. Holtzbauer.

“Effects of Differential Self-monitoring and Level of Mastery on Sports Performance: Brain Power Bowling.” Cognitive Therapy and Research 6, no. 3 (1982): 335–42.

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Prepare for Success – Don’t get Expertitis

October 6, 2014 · by Bob Faw

Our brains do some weird things when we are successful. It can pay to prepare for it. Especially, because we can get what I call “expertitis.”

I have a confession to make. After getting some really rough feedback about ten years ago I realized that I had come down with a bad case of expertitis. I had become successful as a change agent, and at helping people transform. This success unfortunately went to my head (which swelled a few sizes). I began to lecture people who had no interest in my advice. I was showing the first two symptoms below. No surprise, my success rate (and popularity) began to decline.

Symptoms: Expertitis is that dreaded egotistical state that shows itself in one or more of the following behaviors:

  1. Knowledge bias: (pompous chest puffing-up) “I’m an expert in one area which of course means that I’m an expert in a bunch of areas.”
  2. Teacher bias: (unwanted professorial air) “Of course you want my advice! Let me tell you how to do it right“
  3. Specialist jargon: (speaking in terms no average person can understand – see the urban dictionary for more.)
  4. Narcissistic bias: (with nose up in the air) “I’m so smart that I deserve better treatment than others.”

My solutions to priming by brain to be more realistic and helpful were simple, if not easy.

  1. First, I posted above my desk the following quote.  “Focus on learning, not knowing”.
  2. Then, I made sure with every program that my goal was to “Add as much value as possible, rather than show my expertise.” 

I’d love to hear what you do to balance yourself and prevent expertitis.

Also, I love learning about other brain geeks that use research to help us all learn how to work and live better.

I’ve followed Dr. Srini Pillay for a while. Here are his great suggestions for counteracting expertitis in the Harvard Business Review blog. The Unexpected Consequences of Success

srini-pillay

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Creating Optimism – Make your life a work of art, with Jason Silva

October 3, 2014 · by Bob Faw

Jason Silva is one of the most profound thinkers of our day. To make it even better he is a master video producer (and host of Brain Games) so creates dynamic videos to explain his concepts.

I challenge you to create vital cycles of optimism. Design experiences for yourself that increase your passion, enhance your optimism, and as Silva says, “make your life a work of art”.

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Convince the Thinker – logic can save the day

February 13, 2014 · by Bob Faw

Convince the Thinker

In addition to calming the Caveman’s fears and energizing the Artist, positive change of any type also requires convincing the Thinker. This part of the brain wants to have a clear vision of how to get to your goals. If there’s too much detail, the Caveman gets bored and confused, but too little detail leaves the Thinker unconvinced. For example, when I had to change the vicious cycles of economic despair into the vital cycles of a great career, I created a few steps that I thought would lead me to my goals. I planned the first step, but I didn’t worry too much about the following steps until I was ready for them. Each person’s Thinker is different and requires a different blend of information. Experiment to find out how much planning is enough to make your Thinker confident, without planning so much that you lose motivation in the process. The Caveman part of our brain starts to rebel when plans get too complex.

Some people need lots of background information and analysis to help convince the Thinker. However, people who have stronger Artist tendencies are happier with a big picture and motivating reasons; and are impatient with too much data. When motivating others, choose your approach based on what they prefer.

There are some things that both the Caveman and the Thinker like. For example, both like it when you are clear about a specific amount to accomplish. This works whether your goal is money, job satisfaction, depth of relationship, or any other goal in life. Both of these parts of the brain also like things that are clearly beneficial to all aspects of your life. For example, when I started doing more public speaking, my Thinker enjoyed the mental stimulation and potential for bringing in more work, my Caveman enjoyed the fun I had working a crowd, and my Artist thrived on the passion I felt talking about positive change.

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When You Criticize Someone, You Make It Harder for that Person to Change

December 23, 2013 · by Bob Faw

Daniel Goleman’s post in Harvard Business Review blog network

80-dan-goleman

Wonderful article illustrating the problems with negative feedback and how it limits motivation and creativity. He also talks about some fantastic brain research showing the positive advantages of talking about positive future states.

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Video: Get Your ACT Together

December 19, 2013 · by Bob Faw

Motivating these three aspects of the brain (Artist, Caveman and Thinker) helps us get our ACT together.

For more on the ACT team from “Energize”.

The ACT Team from a teenager’s perspective.

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Get Creative with a Positive Focus

December 6, 2013 · by Bob Faw

(Bob’s goofy caveman comes out in the outtake)

Supporting research: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/a-positive-mood-allows-your-brain-to-think-more-creatively.html

Learn more at Influencing Your Inner Movie – The Thinker and the Caveman (10 minute video by the Matchbox Group)

 

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Brain Giggles: Romantic Spoof on our brain

November 27, 2013 · by Bob Faw

The Caveman and Thinker do better when they work together. This funny, brief animation gives a great example of the problems when one of the brain characters takes over. The blue character is similar to what I call the Thinker, and the red one has the passion and impulsiveness of the Caveman (or Cavewoman, if you prefer). This part of the passion of the Caveman is not one we talk about much in class  🙂

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Karyn saved the day … with the Positive Change Questions

June 5, 2013 · by Bob Faw

Pos Change Question

Karyn Myers, in a leadership training course of mine, used the “Positive Change Questions” and “Positive Reframing” to help solve a high-stakes family challenge. I think it’s a wonderful story.

Positive Change Questions

  1. Goals: 
  2. What works?
  3. What else?
Situation: My son’s wedding.  The wedding party was meeting for the rehearsal the day before the wedding at 6:00pm.  During the rehearsal we realized that there WERE NO FLOWERS at the spot where the couple were exchanging vows.  The bride thought in May that there would be flowers grown in where the arbor was but there was nothing.  Needless to say, chaos ensued.  Cavemen came charging in with Freeze (the bride), Fight (moms and others), Flight (Groom).
  1. Goals: Decorate the area or get flowers and make sure everyone was still speaking at the rehearsal dinner (which was in 45 minutes).
  2. What worked: Asking everyone what we could do in the time that we had to fix the situation.  Everyone kept coming back to why/how did this happen, why didn’t someone think of this, how could this happen, etc.

Meanwhile, the time is ticking by with nothing happening and everyone blaming.  I came back a number of times asking for ideas to make this special for Melissa and Andrew (the bride and groom).  Responses, at first, started with, “I can’t believe this is happening…”. I tried to refocus them by saying that this gives us a great opportunity to do something for the couple and have a part in creating their ceremony.  That seemed to be the comment that started to bring people around.  Then ideas started coming from people about what they had at home, who could run to the store, florists in the area to contact right then, who could pick up if we found a florist, who would be in charge of setup.  It really drove home the positive concept for me because as soon as people realized that they could contribute in a meaningful way and knew what the end goal was things started to come together.  It was beneficial for me because I would not have handled this situation this way if I had not participated in this course.  I also would not have seen the situation in quite the same way – I would have been too involved in the emotions and blame.

3.    What else?:  This really wasn’t a situation where this applied to the group, but I was able to see positive change in action and had a part in its direction and seeing it evolve.  It was interesting to see the different personalities (Caveman, Artist, Thinker) come into play.

Question from Bob: Where can you save the day using these questions?

 

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Get your A.C.T. together

April 27, 2013 · by Bob Faw

When you have the whole A.C.T. team (Artist, Caveman and Thinker) working together, you are at your best. You can tell you are in this space when you have the following characteristics:

  • You feel calm about whatever challenge you’re facing, but energized enough to make a difference. This means your Caveman is calm.
  • You can see more than one perspective on the challenge; it’s not just “my way or the highway”. Understanding multiple points of view shows your Thinker is engaged.
  • You use new approaches to the challenge and even want to try new things. This means your Artist is energized.

GetYourACTTogether copy When you have your “A.C.T.” together, you can make your best decisions. You will be flexible, “change-ready,” have less stress, and be a more positive influence on other people. You’ll also be increasingly likable the more you are in this mode. The faster you can get your A.C.T. team to work together, the more you’ll enjoy your circumstances. You’ll increase passion and performance for a fulfilling and successful life.

Read more excerpts or buy the book.

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