THE CROWDING-OUT EFFECT
In a post on MADAF goals, I mentioned that one of the hidden lessons in a college degree was the idea that you could set a goal (getting the degree) and make a plan (courses) and then execute step by step, lesson by lesson, exam by exam, and graduate (achieve the goal). If you can do that with college, or even high school or trade school, you can do that with any goal.
There’s another hidden lesson in college degrees that is often overlooked. I call it the crowding-out effect. This is not the economic concept, that I won’t bore you with. What I’m talking about here today is being SO solutions-oriented that negative thoughts get pushed to the outer fringes of our thinking and largely ignored. In college, when I was training to become an accountant, most of us were barraged with the idea that our degree would lead to a job. Our best teachers filled our minds with that idea, and it crowded out most of the doubts. We EXPECTED to get a job, so we did. That’s obviously not true for all degrees, but it is true that if you take the steps and do the work, you’ll get the certificate.
Imagine sailing from San Diego to Hawaii. You study maps, plan, prepare, and then hit the open ocean in your vessel. You assess the wind, trim the sails, reel them in when a storm is coming, and take care of all the problems that come up. You can’t even see Hawaii on the horizon for almost a month, but you have faith because you did the work and now you are overcoming obstacles because that’s the way you get from point A to point B. If you start to operate out of fear, keeping your sails in when they should be out, or leaving them out when they should be furled, or you turn around because you’re scared or it feels too hard to go on, you just don’t get to your goal. Some people quit just before seeing the goal on the horizon. Maybe a lot of people do that.
Inc. Magazine reports that based on a University of Scranton study, 92% of people don’t achieve their New Year’s goals. That statistic might not surprise you, and those New Year’s goals are probably not BIG (MADAF) goals. Mostly those are probably, “join a gym” or “buy a new car” or “quit smoking” or “quit drinking,” which might be hard goals, but they probably aren’t the kind of legacy goals that people want to be remembered for. The percentage of people who achieve big goals is probably closer to 1% than it is to 8%. I’d also be willing to bet that of the 1% of people who reach their big goals, almost all of them overcame what seemed like incredible odds, and that the vast majority of people who persisted despite the odds ended up in that 1%. The world is full of dreamers who hoped but gave up and never accomplished what they set out to do, and is also replete with accomplished people who never gave up. It’s actually hard to find someone who lived to a decent age (like 60 or 70) and was passionate enough about a goal to persist against all obstacles and STILL didn’t accomplish something great.
In Katie’s coaching business, she uses the visual of a big rubber band, stretched between your hands, with the right hand being your big goals and your left hand being current circumstances. It’s hard to hold that tension. Eventually, you have to either let go of your current situation and move toward your goals, or let go of your goals. She asks: How committed are you? Can you endure the pressure of holding onto your goals until reality catches up to them?
It’s okay to have a down moment or even a day. Just don’t let it be a down week or month, or even longer. You’ll have to train your mind to refocus—thus, the hated advice to learn to meditate. Expert meditators control their runaway thoughts (aka the monkey mind); they manage their thoughts rather than letting their thoughts manage them. The good news is that even if you hate the discipline of meditation, you can collect enough good thoughts and affirmations to crowd out negative thinking, even if you have to use just a few over and over.
We have an acquaintance who is extremely creative but has had to spend years to learn to separate the negative stories in her head from her reality, which, in fact, has never been terribly challenging (lots of support, loving family, middle-class upbringing, etc.) and especially not as tragic as her imagination led her to believe it was going to be.
We have another friend who is sure the world is out to get her (it probably isn’t) and that mindset manifests in all kinds of close calls and faux tragedies (she’s an upper-middle class homeowner with an abundance of resources). It’s almost as if her subconscious mind is out to affirm her negative worldview. Weird, right?
Don’t let your experiences fool you. You may have worried about something and then the Universe turned in your direction despite the possibility of catastrophe, so now you think that if you just worry enough you can solve your problems and if you don’t worry, they will get worse. You may be obsessed on the old saying, “If it’s gong to be, it’s up to me.” Okay. If that is working for you and makes you happy, then keep doing that. But I challenge you to at least entertain the possibility that those good things were headed your way despite your negative thinking, and that a more positive worldview would have made the waiting a lot more fun.
I heard this said the other day and I liked it: worrying is just praying for things you don’t want.
Steve Harvey used a simple, “Today is going to be a great day!” mantra for crowding out (please don’t take this as a pitch for network marketing).
Sometimes when my mind drifts toward negative thinking, especially around my creative work, I tell myself a version of something I remember from an interview of Taylor Swift where she said, “I’m imaginative. I’m smart. And I’m hard-working.”
If I run out of other affirmations, I simply recite a metta meditation that my acupuncturist wrote down for me. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s typical of all the metta meditations out there. Find one that resonates with you and adopt it. The one I use, every morning and most evenings, and whenever my mind refuses to behave and I can’t think of anything else, goes like this:
May I be free from all forms of danger.
May my mind be happy and at peace.
May my body be strong and resilient.
May I be able to care for myself with ease in this world.
May I be free from suffering.
I also have adopted one from Denise Duffield-Thomas that goes: “Money flows easily and naturally to me.” I used to have a troubled relationship with money, so I constantly remind myself that my creativity is a source of good in the world and that it supports me both spiritually and financially. That’s another story for another day.
My point is that affirmations work because they crowd out negative thoughts and get your subconscious working for your good instead of for your fears and toward your dreams instead of against them. You have to be diligent and aware and then do something in the form of affirmations and informed, aligned action. Also, positive thoughts keep you focused on opportunity instead of lack (See my post on Aversion and Opportunity).
As you go through your day, keep these seven assertions in mind:
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with
You can reframe negative thoughts into positive
If you can’t do that, you can crowd out the negative thoughts with positive ones like flooding a fire with water.
It takes a conscious effort, daily, to form the habit of seeing opportunity and finding solutions.
You can stop feeling like a victim and take a proactive approach to life. Yes, shit happens, and you have to deal with it. That’s called living.
Most of the time, if we stop and take a breath, we’ll find that in the current moment we are okay and we can find a way to move forward.
Your shit list and your gratitude list are often the same, simply reframed.
And finally, this one caveat that is purely personal opinion: booze, drugs, television, video games, and other diversions are not productive. Sometimes playing a video game or watching a movie is fine. And of course, reading a great book by a fabulous author (ahem) is fine. But using diversions to numb-out cost you everything. Monitor those activities VERY carefully and make sure everything you do is progressing you toward your vision of life. Try to look at your daily activities as if you were an objective outsider, like a personal coach. Ask yourself if you are progressing, resting or avoiding.
If you are avoiding, you might review the post on MADAF goals and try to find ways to get motivated.
Remember the Five Crucial Mindsets of Meaningful Personal Accomplishment:
Forward-Facing
Mission-Driven
Goal-Focused
Solutions-Oriented
Allow-Accept-Appreciate
SOURCES:
Science Says 92 Percent of People Don't Achieve Their Goals. Here's How the Other 8 Percent Do (https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/science-says-92-percent-of-people-dont-achieve-goals-heres-how-the-other-8-perce.html, accessed 7/24/2022)
Why do we tend toward negativity? See https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-bias-4589618
Even if you don’t believe in the science behind positive thinking (see https://lewishowes.com/podcast/the-science-of-positive-thinking-how-to-control-your-mind-with-dr-andrew-huberman/) or don’t care about the details, there aren’t many successful, happy people who profess that a negative attitude got them where they are today. Also, wouldn’t it be better to go through life with a generally positive outlook no matter what? Without being Pollyanna about it (just being so damn happy all the time), we can cultivate a solutions-oriented mindset that will make our lives better now and in the future.
RECOMMENDED READING:
The Path of Least Resistance: Learning to Become the Creative Force in Your Own Life
by Robert Fritz
A revolutionary program for creating anything, from a functional kitchen to a computer program, to a work of art, Robert Fritz demonstrates that any of us has the innate power to create. Discover the steps of creating; the importance of creating what you truly love, how to focus on the creative process to move from where you are to where you want to be, and much more.