Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE

Fred: It wants me to succeed; it criticizes me when I stick my neck out.

OK, I assume that you agree with its intention. You want to succeed, too, right? Fred: Yes. Sure.

Ask that voice if it believes it has good information that would be useful for you to have and understand. . . . Fred: It says, "Of course."

Since it has good information, ask that voice if it would be willing to try changing the way it talks to you, if that would make it easier for you to listen and understand, so that you could succeed better. . . .

Fred: It's skeptical, but it's willing to try.

Good. Now, Fred, I want to ask you to think of ways that voice could be different, so that you would listen to it better. For instance, if it used a different voice tone that was soft and friendly, would you be more apt to pay close attention to it? Would it help if that voice gave you specific helpful instructions about what to do next, rather than criticize what you've already done?

Fred: I've thought of a couple of things it could do differently.

Good. Ask the voice if it would be willing to try those out, to find out if you actually do listen better if it talks to you differently. . . .

Fred: It's willing.

Tell it to go ahead and try it out. . . .

Fred: That's amazing. It's doing it, and it's not a "critical parent" any more. It's more like a friendly helper now. It's a pleasure to listen to it.

Sure. Who wants to listen to a voice that yells and criticizes? Real parents should try this technique too, when they want their kids to listen to them. If you use a nice tonality, children will listen to you. They may not agree with what you say, but at least they'll hear it. This procedure is something we've been calling "Refraining," and it's the basis for a set of negotiation skills that are useful in family therapy and business, as well as inside your own brain. If you want to learn more about it, read the book Reframing. The point I want to make here is that Fred's voice had forgotten its outcome until I reminded it. It wanted to motivate him to succeed, but all it was actually accomplishing was to make him feel bad.

While the women's liberation movement has had much positive impact, in some ways it has done the same thing. The original goal was to motivate people to change the way they think about and treat women. Women got educated about what kinds of behaviors are sexist. Now when someone else makes a sexist remark, you have to feel bad! It doesn't strike me as progress that now the "liberated" people have to feel bad when someone else uses a sexist word! What kind of liberation is that? That's just like being a kid, and when someone called you "stupid" or "ugly," it was time to feel bad and cry. People used to use sexist words and nobody noticed; now when they use those words, it's time to groan. Some liberation! Now you have a new set of reasons to feel bad. I used to go around to night clubs and pick out women who would react that way. "There's a good one. Watch this. I can make her feel terrible." "Hi chick." "Arragon!"

If you don't want people to use sexist language, it makes better sense to make them feel bad when they do it. That's a lot more fun, and a lot more effective, . . . and a lot more liberated, too.

One thing I like to do is go after women when they make sexist remarks.

A woman will say, "Well, the girls in the office — "

"How old are they?"

"Huh? They're in their 30V

"You call them girls! They're women, you sexist pig! Do you call your husband a boy?"

If you do something to make people feel bad when they make sexist remarks, that at least puts the motivation to change where it belongs—in the person whose behavior you want to change. However, criticizing and attacking people really isn't the best way to get them to change. The best way is to discover how they already motivate themselves, and use that.

If you ask a lot of weird questions, and if you're persistent, you can find out how anyone does anything, including motivation. Many people are troubled by "lack of motivation," and one example of that is not being able to get up in the morning. If we study those people, we can find out how not to wake up, which could be of use to insomniacs. Everything that people can do is useful to someone, somewhere, sometime. But let's find out how someone wakes up easily and quickly, without drugs. Who in here regularly wakes up easily in the morning?

Betty: I get up easily.

OK. How do you get yourself up?

Betty: I just wake myself up.

I need a little more detail than that. How do you know when you are awake? What is the first thing that you are aware of when you are awake? Does the alarm wake you up, or do you just wake up, typically?

Betty: I don't have an alarm. I just realize that I'm not sleeping.

How do you realize that you are not sleeping? Do you begin to talk to yourself? Do you start to see something? Betty: I tell myself. What do you tell yourself? Betty: "I'm awake. I'm waking up."