Destructive thoughts and constructive countermeasures
There is a thought that is incredibly destructive anything you may be trying to do, whether you are standing with a parachute on your back about to jump out of a plane, putting pencil to paper to take an important exam, or holding your newborn baby for the first time.
The thought is: “Maybe I just can’t do this.”
This thought holds us back from lots of things that we could be great at. It delays our progress for years or even decades in an activity or skill that might really benefit us. It destroys our confidence and prevents as for moving forward, resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This thought comes up for my students who struggle with math. They have been struggling, some of them, for five or six or seven years. Math has become so painful that they expect that it will always be painful. The pain of feeling stupid and feeling like they just can’t get it creates a situation in which they hesitate to try. After all, if they try and fail again, not only have they reinforced the failure that’s causing them so much pain, they’re also wasting more time. In that context, it’s totally reasonable for them to believe that because they have been trying for years without success, they are unlikely to succeed now and that further investment of time is counterproductive. Therefore, when they are encouraged to put in extra time, there’s a huge amount of resistance. Why would this time make a difference?
This phenomenon shows up in other ways. In a moment when we’re in the middle of an at-bat, a a stage performance, or carrying out a delicate procedure, questioning our own abilities is incredibly destructive. We have to learn to replace the thought “Maybe I can’t do it,” with a thought, “I will do this.”
It may seem that this kind of affirmation is just tantamount to wishful thinking and will have no impact on actual reality. However, I have seen, through working with countless students, that it does work. Changing our thoughts does indeed result in changing the outcome we get. When we believe that we’re capable of doing something, we do the learning and carry out the actions required to get the results were looking for. When we don’t believe that we can do the thing that we set out to do, we procrastinate, we don’t seek out the necessary help, and we don’t put in the time. It’s simply too painful to confront the possibility of inevitable failure, so we let ourselves fail by not doing the things we need to do to guarantee success.
As with most things that take place inside our heads, it’s possible to change quickly, but usually takes practice. When we repeatedly confront our inability to do something and reaffirm that, given the necessary effort, we will be able to do it, we set up a virtuous cycle in which we start to see the impact of our changing thoughts on our results, which, in turn, motivates us to push through and do what is necessary to achieve that which we set out to achieve.
From music to math to sports to relationships, we can change the results were getting with a combination of belief in our own ability and the consistent effort to back it up. You can’t have one without the other; you must have both. If you’re missing the belief, it can be developed. And if you’re missing the effort: What are you waiting for?