m. j. ryan- adaptability (unplugged)

8/7/2019 M. J. Ryan- AdaptAbility (Unplugged)

1/18

AdaptAbility (UnpluggeA conversation between M. J. Ryan & Moe Abd

www.33voices.com


2/18

AdaptAbility (Unplugged) M. J. Ryan with Moe Abdou!

33voices.com 1

A b o u t M. J. Ryan & M o e A b d o u M. J. RyanInspirational author and life coach, M. J. Ryan, is one of the creators ofthe New York Times bestselling Random Acts of Kindness series. Hermany best-selling books include: The Happiness Makeover(nominated forthe 2005 Books for Better Living award in the Motivational category),Attitudes of Gratitude, The Power of Patience, Trusting Yourself, TheGiving Heart, and 365 Health and Happiness Boosters.

Moe Abdou

Moe Abdou is the creator of 33voices a global conversation about things

that matter in business and in life. [email protected]

www.33voices.com


3/18


33voices.com 2

Okay, M.J. the stage is yours. This is always a privilege for me to have theopportunity to: 1. Listen to your wisdom, and 2. to have a conversationwith you around some of the key things that you are promoting.

Thanks, Im happy to be with you. So here we are at the beginning of the New

Year and we have all made these things we call New Years resolutions. Itsweird to just really talk about. Why is it so hard to change? How many peoplewho are listening has kept their resolutions that they already have made andits already the 18th of the month. I have not done it perfectly yet. Have you?

No, I havent. I wonder why we call it resolutions.

The trick is there is nothing wrong with you. Its really about your brain. Partsof our brains are involved when we say we want to change something. Itdoesnt matter what we say if we want to lose 20 lbs or we want to get more

organized or we want to speak up more and we want to be nicer to ourselves.Whatever it is we say we wanted to do in our lives. We have to understand howour brain is structured in order to create success.

There are really two things you need to learn. One is that we have this part ofour brain that is called the neo-cortex. Its what makes us a human being. Itsfrom this place that we have decided to change. We go, I am going to get upat 5 oclock every morning and jog.

That part of our brain is already perfectly wired to do what its already doing.

So the brain cells that fire together wire together. What that means is that, wealready have deep superhighways in our brains doing exactly what we havealready always done.

If you are a person for instance that has a hard time speaking up in front of theboss Im thinking of a client of mine youre already perfectly structurednot to speak up in a meeting in front of the boss because your brain has alreadygot this superhighway to doing it that way.

When we want to change something, we have to create a new pathway in ourbrain. The trick and the challenge is that that isnt easy once youre not a kidanymore because our brains have actually shed the potential they had when wewere young to form pathways really easily. Thats why its so easy for kids tolearn anything and so hard for adults to learn stuff.

Its not impossible because a guy won a Nobel Prize a few years ago provingthat we can create new pathways and new brain cells our whole life but ittakes a lot, emphasis on the word lot, of work.

www.33voices.com


4/18


33voices.com 3

Lots of motivational speakers will say 7 days to a new habit or 21 days to anew habit. All they are saying is that in that amount of time, you arebeginning to grow a pathway to that new behavior. But the old pathwaydoesnt disappear. What that means is of course that its still there. Itsstronger. Its faster. Its like a superhighway where the other is a rickety road.

That in a certain way, in a nutshell, is why we still would want to do somethingbut we find ourselves doing the old behavior instead. We got a really big habitover there.

I read a study once that talked about peoples ability to change even inlife and death situations. The research indicated that less than 5% even inthose types of situations will do what it takes to change.

Its around 5% to 8%. It was in a study called Change or Die. It assessed heart

patients. Its very dramatic and proves to us how challenging this is. Imaginethat youve already had a heart attack, you go into the doctors office and theysay to you, youve got to change or youre going to die. Youre going to haveanother heart attack. What percentage of people can make the lasting changes?Its fewer than 10%.

So even with a death sentence its hard to do. Its not just about practiceunfortunately. Its really about this other part of our brain. That especially hasto do with behaviors that heart patients need to learn like eating andexercising right. Lets talk about that other part. That is that our limbic system,

our mammalian brain. Its tracking two things only. Is this going to be fun andpleasurable for me or is it going to be painful? Potentially, is this going to besafe or dangerous? It wants pleasure and safety. Thats what it wants. It wantsto avoid anything that it could imagine that its dangerous or uncomfortable.

All and every information goes there before the neo-cortex because its lowerdown literally in your head. So everything thats coming into it comes therebefore it goes to that prefrontal cortex. This is the part that when the alarmgoes off, its 5 in the morning, when you said you were going to get up and gojogging, what happens?

Its cold outside because its winter.

And you hit the snooze button because that is not going to be pleasurable.

Amen.

www.33voices.com


5/18


33voices.com 4

This is why you eat the donut when you say youre not going to. Why you sayyoure going to get up and workout and you dont. Its because that part of ourbrain is going, This is not going to be fun. I want fun. I want pleasure. I wantsafety. I want to avoid anything that could possibly be painful which includesgetting on that darn stair stepper.

Thats my torture machine.

Exactly. Were not doomed though. Human beings can grow and change untilthey draw their last breath. So we can change. We can learn. We need just tounderstand how to put in place measures that overcome these two things. One,that give us enough practice so that we create the new pathways and two, thatdont trigger that I dont want to do this because its not fun part ofourselves.

MJ, let me ask you a quick question about the less than 10% who willchange. Whats their make up? What gives them that ability to be able todo that? Is it what youre getting into right now?

Yes, part of what Im going to talk about are the tricks that you can use toovercome these structures. When you look at the people who naturally dothese things, they have a couple of things that are different from other people.

One is they typically are extremely high achievers. They are the ones who go,Im going to climb that mountain. Okay, I got to climb that mountainIm just

going to climb the mountain. Im not going to think So they have a verystrong control of their prefrontal cortex over this mammalian brain. Thatsnumber 1.

Number 2, they dont turn screwing up into give up. They know that if theyforget to do it yesterday they can still do it today. The rest of us say things like,I eat one cookie so I might as well eat the whole box. That shows I have nowillpower so I forget it. Im not even going to try it at all. They just say,Alright. That doesnt say anything about me right now. I messed up but Imgoing to achieve this and Im going to keep on practicing until I get it.

They have what I call DIP. They have Desire - I want to do this thing. They haveIntention - I am going to do this thing no matter what. And they havePersistence - Im going to repeat however many times it takes until Ive got it.Those are the three qualities it takes to actually change.

It goes back to a lot of the work that youve done on gratitude, on yourability to forgive yourself

www.33voices.com


6/18


33voices.com 5

Yes, exactly. If you dont then you are going to mess up because remember youdont have a pathway there and youre going to then say, Oh well, Im justgoing to give up.

One of the things whenever people work with me one-on-one that I always

teach them is learning when youre first starting to learn something, any newbehavior it happens, you recognize that you wanted to do it after the factwhen youve already blown it. I was going to go to the gym. I wasnt going toyell at my child. I wasnt going to go and spend this money and put it on mycredit card.

When people come to me and start saying things like that, I say congratulations,youre learning; because beforehand you had no awareness that youre blowingit. Now, your brain is starting to go, Oh yeah, I intended this other thing and Ididnt do it. But youre recognizing that you had an intention. Thats called

post talk; learning is first, post talk after the fact. When we have blown it wego, Hey, I was going to do it a different way and I forgot.

The more that we can be kind to ourselves this is what youre talking about gentle with ourselves, forgiving of ourselves, and go, Okay, you know, Imgoing to try again. Then its more that learning then becomes whats called adhoc, in the moment, when youre blowing it, you are aware that you wanted todo it differently.

So Im yelling at my husband and Im going, I wasnt going to yell and here I am

doing it. Again, congratulations that means that youre moving from the firststage of learning to the second and youre actually almost there.

The kinder you can be to yourself the more you can say, what can I learn abouthow to do this more easily? How can I remember? We call it pre hoc which isbeforehand, you go, What was I going to do? And do it before you even blowit.

So the patience that it takes with our self is big. You have to go, alright I haveto first notice it after the fact then Im noticing it during and then finally Idont even have to notice it at all.

I always ask people what do you want to change? If people give me a laundrylist I want to do this. I want more balance. I want to be more organized. Iwant to lose 25 lbs. I want to advance in my career. I say, good luck. Your braincant pay attention to all that. Remember, its going to take a lot of practice.You got to get that mammalian bunny brain on your side and so focus. Pick onething to work on.

www.33voices.com


7/18


33voices.com 6

This is true for work too you know. I often say to people, pick the top fourthings that you must accomplish today in order to meet those big goals. Andthen if you get to anything else, hey, its a great day but at least youre drivingthe things that you want because youre focusing on the things that matterrather than just putting out the fires. Focus is one of the really important tools

we have as human beings in order to change. Pick one thing.

Next, create what in business thats called the SMART goal. Many of us havebeen trained in business to use SMART goals but we typically dont think aboutusing them for ourselves.

What a SMART goal is that its just an acronym and it stands for somethingthats specific, meaning you know what action youre going to take. Getting fitor being organized is not specific.

I once was on the radio at New Years January time, I often do a lot of radioprograms on New Years resolutions. It was kind of the end of January. I was onwith this woman and I was yammering on about the SMART goal business. I said,its got to be specific and she said, I have a really great specific one Imworking on. I said, Wonderful, what is it? She said, Im going to celebratemy successes this year. I said, How? There was dead silence on the radio.She was a month into it and she had no idea what action she was going toactually take. So there has to be an action attached, a specific action, as towhat youre going to do.

Number 2, the M stands for Measurable. You have to be able to measure yoursuccess because otherwise, you dont know if you are achieving it or not. Areyou calmer? Are you getting out of debt? Are you losing the weight?

Now, when its things like dollars and pounds thats pretty easy. You used to be$10,000 in debt and now youre $8000 in debt. Thats a measure thats easy.But in fact, we can measure anything. We can say, I worked with this guy, thisexecutive, who wanted to work on his stress level.

I said, On a scale of 1 to 10, whats your stress level with 10 being like off thechart, your blood is boiling and 1 being, you are as calm as the Dalai Lama. Hesaid, Its 9. I said, Okay, what do you want? He said, Id like to get to like4. I said, Great So thats a measure. Hes working towards, whats mynumber today? My number is 7. Good its going down. Now my number is 8,whats not working?

When you have a measure which can be either an external one like dollars oran internal one which is how you feel or it could be simply something like ,

www.33voices.com


8/18


33voices.com 7

lets say you want keep your patience with your colleagues. You can just do alittle every time you blow it.

Lets say you lose your temper seven times in the week, so you then want tobring that number down to one lets say. So you just start to track that. If you

dont track it, your brain cannot understand whether youre doing it and youyourself will have no idea whether youre actually improving or not. I think Imbetter. Well, how do you know?

Yeah - for sure.

Next, the A stands for Achievable which is you have to make a goal of it ifpossible. It doesnt matter how many womens magazines at the supermarketcounter that say that you can lose 40 lbs in six weeks. I actually saw one thatrecently said this. Its a lie. It cant happen. You cant say you want to do a

marathon if you got a broken leg. Youve got to pick something that is doablebecause otherwise youll just be frustrated with yourself.

However, this is something thats really important here that I would love to getyour input up for yourself. People fall into two categories, those who areachievement oriented and those who are not. This has to do with talents ofthinking.

If you are achievement oriented you need a high goal. Small goals are not sointeresting or significant to people who are achievement oriented. For you

folks, you should pick a really high hard goal. Im going to run the New YorkMarathon this year and Im just starting training now as an example. But thoseof us who are not achievement oriented, that will only de-motivate us and weneed to pick something really, really small.

This piece is to know who you are and know whether youre motivated by ahigh hard goal or youre motivated by less to a teensy- winsy itsy-bitsy thingand see success. Have you ever noticed the difference among people?

No question about it. As a leader that used to kind of frustrate me a littlebit until I really learned that some people are motivated by much bigger

goals and others get their motivation from smaller goals.

I used think if you didnt have the opportunity to think bigger that youwerent going to achieve that success. I really got a wakeup call tounderstand that somebody who has the ability to achieve smaller goalscould achieve just as bigger results.

www.33voices.com


9/18


33voices.com 8

Exactly. It actually has to do with how their brains are hardwired.

I worked with this woman when she lost a hundred pounds. She started by justcutting out mayonnaise. Because it felt so overwhelming to lose a hundredpounds that she just couldnt even think about that. She had to just think, I

think I wont eat mayonnaise and see how that does. And then it did really wellso then she said, I think I wont eat fried food and see how I would like that.She knocked it off with these tiny, tiny changes. That works for some. Otherpeople will go, I cant do it that slowly. Thats ridiculous. Know whats rightfor you on that one.

The R stands for Relevant. This goes back to the mammalian brain. Were goingto talk in a bit about what else we can do about this. This change has to matterto you. A lot times we have all these intentions. Im going to write a book. Iwant to start a website etc.

I remember this woman telling me that her goal was to clear out the 1000emails she had in her inbox. I said, How long have they been there? She saidsomething like two years. I said, Do you want to do this? Do you care aboutdoing this? Does it matter to you in any way, shape or form? She said, No, notreally. I just kind of think Im supposed to.

If it doesnt matter to you youre not going to do it. So dont pretend youregoing to do it. You have to care because its going to be work. In order to getmotivated to do that work, you have to really want it.

The last thing is, the T stands for Time-bound. Even if this is a change youthink you want to make for the rest of your life this change comes from A(Advice) they do it a day at a time. Do it a week. Say, Im going to work onthis new business on the side for a week and then see how Im doing. Im goingto do it for a month and see how Im doing.

When you make a time limit to check in you actually help then reinforce how isit going, what am I learning, how have I progressed, how far have I gotten.Whereas, if its unbounded and timed, you dont necessarily take those check-in moments. If its a big deal something thats a hard change its really hard tokeep it going. But if you say, Im not going to eat cookies this week, its mucheasier to do than to say, Im never going to eat a cookie again.

Well said, yeah.

So time bind it. Thats the other thing.

www.33voices.com


10/18


33voices.com 9

The next part is you got to remember the mammalian brain. What I call thebunny brain because we literally share it with all mammals. You have to getthe bunny on your side. You have to get it to believe that this change is goingto be fun and easy and good for you.

For the fun and easy part, you can work on a daily thats why people say goexercise with a friend, find the kind of exercise you like to do. Thats all tryingto get the fun part going. When its something thats a different kind of change,even if its not fun in the moment, you need to create a positive feeling reason.This is the number thing that I found that helps bring that percent from lessthan 10% to much greater success rate.

You got to have a feeling reason that you want to make this change. You needto get that feeling reason front and center because the bunny brain is notsmart. Thats why youre driving down the street and all of a sudden you find

yourself inside the donut shop because you saw it, the bunny goes yum-yumand youre in there before you can even think.

If however, you have this feeling reason of why do you want to not go in there.Let me give you an example. I worked with a guy who wanted to stop smoking.I said, Okay, tell me other reasons. Tell me why you want to do this? He gaveme all the health reason. I said, Yeah, fine. Thats your prefrontal cortex butwhy does the bunny want to do it? "Because my father died in his 50s and Iwant to live long enough to retire to a beach in Hawaii", he said. I said, Bingo!Beach in Hawaii.

I said, Thats a feeling reason, a positive feeling reason. Thats great. I wantyou go online and find all these pictures of beaches in Hawaii that when youlook at them you get that yummy feeling. I want you put them in your house,your car, your office, and every single place where you could ever even thinkabout a cigarette. Every single time you think about a cigarette, I want you tolook at that Hawaii beach and say to yourself, I want you more. He has nowbeen smoke free for three years.

Incredible.

Its very, very simple, if you dont have that reminder front and center, day byday, the bunny cant remember it. Its only as smart as the bunny.

So this guy and the other people that you work with obviously have you toguide them. For others who are going to be listening to this, how do theystart to dig deeper to find that place and happy feeling?

www.33voices.com


11/18


33voices.com 10

So you want to know whats the feeling reason for this change. Its got to havean emotional content to it; to live long enough to see my daughter graduatefrom high school, to win that award in my company, to make a difference inthe world. Whatever it is that when you think it, it makes you happy.

I got it.

So you have a happy feeling when you think about that thing, not a thought buta feeling and then ask yourself, the second step is, whats the symbol of thatfor me? Whats the symbol? It can be anything because if you dont have areminder, youre going to forget. Remember, you dont have a pathway todoing the thing you want.

The more that you can put this symbol somewhere whether its a picture or asound or a song that you sing that reminds you of how you want to be, anything

like that would really help you. This to me is the key thing that really, really iseffective. Youve got to have this part in place.

It reminds me of Lance Armstrongs - LiveStrong band.

Yes, its a perfect example of that. Its a symbol. For him, it was, Imdedicating myself to this cause because I want to help people not go throughthe same thing I did. And then it spreads and everyone who has it is thenconnected emotionally to him as well as to their own wants in this area.Absolutely, its a great example.

The other thing that that does is that or you may need a different one is, youhave to have a reminder system of what you want to do. You will forgetbecause you dont have a pathway. The reminder system can be like a bandthat reminds you that this is what you want.

I dont know one person who is trying to learn how to exercise for instance whodoesnt do better if you schedule it on your calendar. Thats the remindersystem. Its 4 oclock Im getting on the treadmill because it was written in myappointment book.

The guy that I was working with who wanted to learn. He was very articulate.He had no problem on meetings except when higher ups where there. Then hegot nervous and he wouldnt speak. I said to him, For a reminder, what do youbring anytime you go to a meeting, something that goes with you? He said, Mycoffee mug. Im always taking it with me. I said, Great. I want you to lookat it and think to yourself, when I see this Im going to remember my intention

www.33voices.com


12/18


33voices.com 11

that Im going to speak up at least twice in a meeting and it worked like acharm.

Nobody else has to know. He doesnt have to carry a note that says speak up.That would be embarrassing to him. He just makes that mug mean that to him.

You can make anything be a trigger to help you remember. Its the power ofyour mind that you have turned it into that symbol.

Its a mantra.

Its like a mantra, exactly. Of course things like stickies on your mirror or yourcomputer or those kinds of things also work. Eventually, you dont need thereminders anymore because you have learned the new thing and youre goinggangbusters.

The other piece about getting into motion and staying there, weve really havetalked about this already, you have to make sure that you are looking forpersistence not of perfection. You are going to do it wrong. When you trysomething its going to feel weird or awkward. Its going to be because its notyet a habit. The very awkwardness of it proves to you that youre doing thenew thing.

We often think awkwardness means dont do it. This is awkward so I shouldstop. No, all awkward means is that its not a habit. Your brain is more aliveactually then. Its more aware then because its not on autopilot. So the

awkwardness means youre learning something new. Dont let it being awkwardstop you. You know that thing about fake it until you make it?

Let me ask you a quick question. Why is our society obsessed withperfection?

I think its because we are confused as human beings essentially. I think thatoriginally when we are born, our brains are set up to track success and discardfailure. You have seen a baby learn to walk, right? What do they do?

They just go do it.

They are crawling along on the ground and then they find a coffee table andthey hold on to the coffee table. They stand up, they let go of the coffee tableand instantly what happens?

They would fall.

www.33voices.com


13/18


33voices.com 12

Yeah, and then what do they do?

They just get right back up.

How many times do they do it?

They keep doing it until they learn how to walk.

Yes. Whats happening in the brain is the brain is like a heat seeking missiletowards whats working. Every time it gets up and the baby falls down again,its readjusting to get more success. Thats how they learn. They are going,Okay, I dont like that.

The baby is not saying to itself, Im a stupid baby. I cant learn. I have awalking disorder. Why is this walking thing so hard? When will I ever learn this?

I cant even learn it. Forget it. Im going to crawl the rest of my life. None ofthat is going on.

It doesnt even have the ability to do it. Originally, our brains have nointerference with tracking success and discarding failure, none. What are thepeople around the baby doing while the baby is doing this?

They are just sitting there wondering one, they are intrigued but two, mostof them are thinking dont get hurt.

Yeah but what are they doing usually? Theyre going, Oh yeah look yourewalking, hurray! Right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Theyre giving a lot of praise to what they are doing right. But then whathappens to these people and these adults and these kids a little bit later?Suddenly their kid is walking and they go like, Dont go over there. Dont sitover there. Sit up like this. Why arent you looking at me? Why are you alwaysso quiet? Why cant you be more like your sister?

What happens is that then we start to have interference. Our brains fromparents, from grandparents, from teachers, from systems, school we start tohave interference with the brain tracking success and discarding failure.

So instead of just experimenting and learning and growing our brains, we startto go, Oh, Im not supposed to do that. Im supposed to do it like this. Imsupposed to do it right or Ill get in trouble. That interference originally is all

www.33voices.com


14/18


33voices.com 13

external. Meaning, it comes from the outside of the kid instead of from theinside.

However, by the time were adults, where is most of the interference? Insideour heads; I dont need my mother to tell me Im going to end up as a bag lady.

Shes inside of me saying it to me. She doesnt need to say it out loud anymore.

So what happens is that all of those voices that have been createdunintentionally, they didnt do it on purpose. They werent trying to createinterference for us. All of those voices have now been internalized and they getin the way of our doing a one simple thing just like babies, tracking when wedo it right until we can do more of it.

It cripples our thinking as we get older obviously.

It cripples our ability to succeed because instead of focusing on the one timewe did it right, we focus on the seven times we did it wrong or more usual,instead of focusing on the seven times we did it right, it focuses on the onetime we did it wrong.

I was working with this woman and she had this really strong problem with aguy she worked with. She had a hard time keeping her temper around him. Hejust pushed every button she had. We were working on that and we were goingalong fine.

We were about a month or six weeks into it and she calls up. She goes, I am acomplete and total failure. Tell me what happened? She said, First of all, Ilost my temper at Joe. What did you do exactly? I didnt yell at him oranything but when the meeting was over I stormed down the hall. I said,Congratulations, thats better than what you were doing before. I said, Howmany times did you meet with Joe this month and how many times did you loseyour temper? It turned out that she had met with him dozens of times. Shehad to work with him on this project.

So the percentage of failure with something like 10% of the time she did itwrong but her brain was only focused on that. I am a total failure she said. You

are right to point it out because this is the way that we sabotage our success.Partly why people come to work with me is so that I can help them focus on the90% when they are doing it right.

All Im saying is, when you did it right what made that possible? Even thoughwith one time that you left work and felt like you had achieved what youneeded to, what made that possible that day? The more that we study our

www.33voices.com


15/18


33voices.com 14

success the more success we create. The more we study our failure the morefailure we create.

Its very, very intriguing. I know we can stick to this topic forever. Imgoing to hold my questions.

No, I want to hear your questions.

I think this is crippling especially when you get to this time of year, youknow, the first instance somebody has a stumbling block regardless ofwhether its a personal goal or a professional goal, whether its a team oran individual, it automatically goes down that path. Its not going tohappen.

Yes. What you need to do when you want to change is you need to increase

your awareness of what youre doing without judging yourself because if youjudge yourself negatively, thats just more interference. So youre looking forawareness, what am I doing or not doing without beating yourself up.

The formula is this isnt that interesting. I, M.J. Ryan, said that I was goingto workout more this year. Its now January 18th and I have only done it fourtimes. Whats that about? Well, I didnt follow my own advice. I have notwritten in to my daily planner.

I noticed how Im understanding how I could create better success withoutsaying Im a terrible person. Im not saying Im a failure, Im stupid etc. Imjust saying, I know I didnt write it in and when I have written it in before itreally works for me. Im going to get back on and do that starting today. Whenyou find yourself that youve blown it, you need to apply

M.J. inevitably its going to happen. Its not such a linear path to the topbecause life happens.

Correct. Its not possible. So thats why its important to understand the fourAs. You Assess - I havent been doing it. You Adjust - what do I need to adjustin order to do it again the way I want to. The next one is Act Quickly because

the quicker you can do it, the quicker that you readjust and just get back ontrack then the better off you are as opposed to, Im on a bender and Im nowdrunk for six months instead of one day.

I had a client and she had been sober for two years. She had a terrible, horrible,emotional experience and she got blastingly drunk. So then the next morningshe had to get up and she had to assess whats the situation. She had to adjust.

www.33voices.com


16/18


33voices.com 15

I dont want to do that again. I dont want to go down this path. Today is a newday, Im staring again. She didnt turn into anything more than one time.

And then the last A is Admire yourself for restarting. Hey, look at me, Ivedone it again, hurray. I can get back on and get going.

Youre a master at this. Im really glad were having this conversation. Notonly obviously is it timely and thats why you have been engaged in theseconversations throughout the month but its something that has to almostcontinually register in our brain so we can keep moving forward.

Absolutely. One of the other things, one of the tricks that I have learned fromathletes; long distance runners, they are thought early on in their careers thatyou never look at how far you have to go because you would give up becauseits really far. You look at how far you have come.

That is such an important idea for all of us, Okay, how far have I come? I usedto never workout. Now, Im working out at least some times. Isnt that good?Hurray. Look how far you have come rather than how far you go.

Measuring backwards, thats really powerful.

Exactly. There are implications for helping other people change. If its our lovedones or employees that work for us, how do we support change in other people.If you have noticed, kind of just telling them what to do doesnt usually workespecially with loved ones. But it also can be tricky with employees. If youbring people in and you trash them, you go, youre really not performing. Youhave to do this. Actually, research shows this diminishes their performance.

It diminishes not only their performance but just their entire self esteemand self worth.

Yes. Guess what the bunny brain is also tracking, what it determines itslooking at four categories, the social things that its looking for danger about.One is status. One is certainty. Is my life going to count on whats happening inmy life? Autonomy, do I get to be in charge of myself. Relatedness, are we okay

with each other or Im going to get kicked out of the tribe? And fairness. Itstands for SCARF. Is this fair or not?

Any time you have a performance evaluation where youre being negative, youare triggering one or two or all of these things. So the person is actually in fightor flight so that makes the prefrontal cortex not work as well and therefore theperformance goes down.

www.33voices.com


17/18


33voices.com 16

If you emphasize performance weaknesses you get more weakness. How do youhelp somebody change? If you nag husband saying, You said you werent goingto eat that cookie and youre eating it. It doesnt create change right becauseit triggers their autonomy issue. Hey, Im in charge of me, butt out.

So what do you do? You praise, you help them track success. So whether this isemployees, friends, relatives, or children; you praise their efforts, theirchoices and their strategies. You catch them doing it right or an approximationof right. Hey Fred, that report you did, you really put more effort in there thistime and you have the details in there that I have been looking for like that.The more you praise what they are doing right, the more right you create.

The power of words is evident in everything you are saying.

Absolutely. What were saying are either triggering the turning on of this

younger more primitive part of our brain that is scared or the powerful thinkingbrain that can work on our behalf to solve the kinds of business and lifeproblems that we really need to be solving.

This doesnt mean that you dont acknowledge that there are issues to work on.Its just that you then say, how can I help this person grow in that direction?When I notice anything thats close then Im going to say do more of this andhere are some examples how you could do more. I can really notice how muchbetter youre trying now. All of that it will be hotter, hotter, hotteryoull getmore and more and more of what you want.

I want to praise you. Somehow or another, you trigger my emotional sidebecause the relevance of what you do its purely relevant to every singleperson out there in the world.

Thank you.

How can people continually keep up with what youre learning? How canthey keep up with the work that youre doing besides just reading some ofthe books that you have?

Go in to my blog which you can get from my website www.MJ-Ryan.com. Impositing a couple of times a week there; all these kinds of stuff up-to-date onwhat Im learning and using with folks. Of course I would be delighted to doany kind of teleclass or anything that you might want to put together.

www.33voices.com


18/18

We believe that the best version of yourself is when you dont have to

choose between doing what you love and making a living. So if yourestuck or simply want an extra spark of inspiration, please tell us how

we can help.

FeedBack

What Are You Struggling With?

ASK A QUESTION THINK WITH M. J.

www.33voices.com
http://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryanhttp://www.33voices.com/mj-ryan

m. j. ryan- adaptability (unplugged)

Documents