Can or Can’t.

As a marathoner and business man I’m always struck by how quick people are to say they can’t do something.  I noticed another chorus of “I could never do that’s” when I released my how to qualify for the Boston Marathon book a couple weeks ago. 

I’m sure you get it too, at every level.  You tell people you’re planning to do something and they rejoin with an eye roll and “I could never do that”. 

Which of course is a bunch of crap.  They could do it if they tried.  Part of it is that it is outside their frame of reference.  They believe they can’t do it because they’ve convinced themselves that they can’t.  They just don’t know any better.

Another part of it is that as humans we have a built in negativity bias.  “What does that mean Chris?” you may ask.  Well, let me ‘splain it to you.

As we humans evolved over millions of years our brains developed the tendency to assume the negative and look for the possibility of negative outcomes.  Let’s say you’re one of our furry human ancestors walking through the scrub of primordial Africa and a slight movement catches your eye in the tall grass.

There’s two ways your brain can look at this information.  You could assume it’s a friendly furry rabbit cavorting in the bush.   Or, and this is more probable, you could assume it’s dangerous and run away.  The furry humans who ran away lived to pass their genes on.  The furry humans who waited to look at the bunny got eaten by lions and the legacy of their positive outlook ended in the great feline’s maw with their short lives.

This is all subconscious.  The moment of fight, flight or freeze is not something we think about.  There’s no rational thought it’s a split second reaction in the oldest part of our brain.  It’s an autonomous response.

The result is that it’s not your fault.  You are hard wired to assume the negative.  That’s why the news is always negative.  They know ‘if it bleeds it leads’ because that negative story instantly triggers the negativity bias in your dinosaur brain.  This has been tested with brain scans and it’s a consistent result.  It’s just the way we’re wired.

In addition to our bias towards the negative, we’re also sticky for the negative.  The negative things we see or hear or experience are sticky.  They stay with us.  These are the things we remember.  It’s been said that negative memories are 5 times more powerful than positive.  Think about it.  Do you remember any of the good things that happened to you or that you heard about today?  Or is what stands out moments of negative?

This gets reinforced throughout our lives by people telling us all the things we can’t do.  Then we end up drawing a small circle of what is possible around us that we can’t break out of.  This is our risk free comfort zone.  Within our small circle there are no lions.  But, within our small circle there is also very little life.

The challenge for us as evolved humans is that we know longer really need this negativity bias.  Sure, you can make the wrong decision and run into unsavory consequences but you’re probably not going to be eaten by a lion.  The risk is not that high, but we are programmed to act like it is.  As I’m fond of telling people at work when things get tense “We’re not cracking open any chests here, no one is going to die today.”

How do we counter this?  Well like anything else you need to consciously overbalance this unconscious tendency to lean in the negative direction.  Just by realizing this is how your system works you can take it out of the shadows and it loses some of the power. 

The other thing you have directly under your control are the inputs to your system.  Once you realize how powerful negative inputs are you can minimize them.  Stop watching the news about all the awful things that happen to nice people in this world.  Remember that most major media outlets know your bias and they will feed you primarily negative input.  That negative input reinforces your natural negativity bias.

Instead try to input positive stuff into your system.  That’s where people come up with affirmations, lists of things that went well, lists of things they are proud of and all those positive devices.  This is a conscious way of creating input that counters your negativity bias. 

Simply put your output is dependent on your input.  Limit your negative input and increase your positive input.  It will push you to be more positive in the way you see, deal with and react to the world.

In this way you can program yourself away from the negativity bias, but how do you break out of your little risk free circle that you’ve drawn about yourself to avoid lions?

You can do it.  We hear about it all the time when people do something like run a marathon or qualify for Boston and it blows up their frame of reference.  Now all these other things that they didn’t think they could do are possible.  

Now instead of “You can’t”, “You can”.  You can do more, and now you’re in the potentially scary, new position of having to decide what ‘more’ is.

It’s a two stage process.  First you have to realize that there is a line you have drawn and it is a false line.  Once you step over that line you realize there is opportunity, things you can do, in every direction. 

That’s the second step where you have broken out but now have to figure out which way to run.

That’s where you need to be careful again.

You can.  You can do more.  But you have to decide what more is.  Once you break that frame and redraw that line you realize there is an infinite land of things beyond your comfort zone circle.  Now your new problem is the tyranny of choice.

To choose, make sure you’re doing things that are aligned with who you are and who you want to be. Whatever next big thing you do has to align with what is important to you, your personal drivers and personality type.  Don’t adopt other peoples’ goals, or do the things because you think you should.  Take some time.  Do some introspection and figure out what drives you and what you’re passionate about. 

I like adventures more than achievement and I’m not too concerned about accomplishment.  I like big goals that force me to learn something new.  The goal for me is a milestone that defines the end point of the adventure not the end-all-be-all of existence.

Can you fail?  Of course you can and you should, because that’s how you learn. But don’t intend to fail or try to fail.  The current culture tends to fetishize failure more than is appropriate.  It’s ok to fail but you should learn from that and because you learned from that it was a valuable exercise.  Truth be told, it’s super fun to be successful as well!

Taking it back to the beginning, the next time you here yourself start to say “I could never” or “I can’t” change that to I can.  Of course you can do it.  You may not choose to do it, but once you do it’s just a matter of mechanics.

The number one thing that still holds people back, including myself is that head set.  Like your Dad probably told you, there’s two types of people in the world; those who think they can and those who think they can’t, and they’re both right.

Understand the way you are wired.  Adjust your input to compensate.  Break out of your “can’t” comfort zone and go forth to meet your lions.