Authors: Sebastian Bailey
This story not only highlights the difference between an optimistic thinker, Kevin, and a pessimistic one, Alan, but also poses an interesting question: How can you develop your own strategy when you know how you’ll play against yourself and, therefore, will be more than capable of defeating yourself? Kevin contends that he deliberately blocks his previous thoughts and, by physically moving to the other side of the board, looks at the problem with a fresh perspective. He admits that it isn’t quite the same as playing against another person, but he is confident that it has helped him improve his game.
When it comes to the idea of arguing with yourself, your reaction is likely to be more similar to Alan’s than to Kevin’s—most of us find arguing with ourselves a struggle because we assume that we are right in the first place, so how can we possibly argue against ourselves? After all, if we didn’t think we were right, we would have changed our view already. Right? Or wrong?
The weak point of this argument (yet here we are, arguing with a previous paragraph we wrote) is the
assumption
of being right. We all assume we’re right. And once we make that assumption, we don’t seriously consider the possibility we could be wrong. Through a combination of mental idleness (autopilot) and a desire to reinforce our self-perception, we rarely open our assumptions up to scrutiny.
Actually, the strongest reason for arguing with yourself is that your beliefs may be limiting you from achieving everything you are capable of. If you believe you’re not good at learning new languages, then you don’t try to improve your Spanish. If you believe your significant other will never come around to seeing your point of view, you’re unlikely to continue trying to persuade them to. Instead, you’ll simply say, “You’re wrong.”
Still, there is great value in allowing your optimist voice to argue with your pessimist voice, and vice versa. It’s like the cartoons where the devil is sitting on one shoulder and an angel is sitting on the other, tugging at your decision-making process. It’s your job to let them argue. And it’s your job to play the role of judge and choose sides in the end. The only question is, How do you get good at arguing with yourself?
Sean was a participant at a Mind Gym workout. During the course of the workout, the following discussion happened between Sean and a Mind Gym coach, though it could quite as easily have happened inside Sean’s head. The important point is the thought process that unfolded—a six-step process of self-analysis we can all learn from and apply to our own internal arguments.
Sean believed he was bad at giving presentations. As a result, he tried to avoid taking any role that required standing up and talking to groups of people (even though he had to make a presentation roughly every eight weeks in his current job). This limited Sean’s exposure in his company and in his industry, which meant that he had not been promoted into the position someone with his track record would expect.
“Whenever I make a presentation,” Sean explained, “there is always someone who disagrees with me. They ask me questions that I can’t answer on the spot, and it looks like everything I am saying is just a bunch of hot air. Plus, my boss always interrupts when he is there, making points that I hadn’t considered; everyone looks at me with totally blank faces; I always have to use notes; and throughout my entire career, not one single person has ever said they thought I made a good presentation. I’m not making it up. I really am a bad presenter.”
At first glance, Sean’s argument that he is a bad presenter seems strong. But there is always a danger with a pessimistic opinion that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy: we are so determined to maintain our self-belief that we will go out of our way to prove it is correct, even if we suffer as a result. Is this what Sean was subconsciously up to?
After the Mind Gym coach asked Sean a few questions, a different picture started to emerge. Sean admitted that people didn’t
always
stare with blank faces. Sometimes they actually nodded and took notes, even though he gave out copies of the slides he used. This actually could be a sign that they were interested in remembering what he had said rather than, as Sean saw it, proof that his visual materials weren’t any good.
Sean also agreed that, over the years, some people had made comments like “That was interesting” or “I wish I had heard that presentation before my last project.” So, while Sean’s audiences didn’t directly compliment his presentation style, they clearly valued the content of his presentations. Sean also accepted that in his company culture, compliments were rare, and when you did something well, most people assumed that you were just doing your job. The culture, however, also favored quickly pointing out when things went wrong. Had anyone ever told Sean he was a bad presenter? The answer was no, even though Sean had done eighteen different presentations.
It turned out that the difficult questions Sean was so afraid of getting asked at these presentations came from representatives of the same department during every presentation. In fact, the reason Sean couldn’t answer the questions was because they weren’t relevant and they weren’t geared toward his area of responsibility. But because Sean believed that, as the presenter, he should be able to answer whatever question came his way (another false belief), he floundered and apologized, which made him appear less convincing.
When scrutinized, Sean’s evidence that he was a poor presenter didn’t look quite so strong. Yet even though his arguments were dismissed due to largely false evidence, Sean maintained a pessimistic outlook on his situation and insisted that he was a horrible presenter. And it’s his perception that matters, not anyone else’s.
If the evidence itself is not enough to disprove an argument, then the next step is to look for alternative explanations.
Sean’s presentations were often about quite technical and complex subjects and were delivered to people from other parts of the organization, not to his immediate colleagues, who would have been more familiar with the content being discussed. As a result, the blank faces Sean saw were likely signs of deep concentration rather than disbelief or boredom.
As for Sean’s boss interrupting him, maybe he wasn’t doing so because Sean was a poor presenter but because he wanted to take some of the credit for the content of the presentation for himself. When this was suggested to Sean, he immediately thought of other times when his boss had taken some of the glory for his work. And as far as Sean’s belief that he wasn’t a good presenter because he relied on his notes, many good presenters use them, especially when they are talking about complex subjects.
The general assumptions behind Sean’s arguments needed to be considered. Quite often, when people see themselves as “failing” it’s due to a misguided definition of success. In this instance, the question was, What does a good presentation consist of? Some people (Sean included) think that it is about making people laugh, speaking fluently, and not using notes. Certainly, if you are a stand-up comedian this is true, but not necessarily if you are a presenter in business.
By this stage, Sean was beginning to see that there might be another side to his argument. But what if he hadn’t considered changing his view? When both the evidence and the alternatives aren’t very convincing, the next question to ask is,
What might be the consequences of my perceptions?
In Sean’s case, what would be the consequences if his initial assumption—that he is not a good presenter—was true? Sean’s perception of his presentation skills was clear. As a “bad presenter,” he damaged his reputation each time he stood up to speak. As a result, he typically tried to stay out of the spotlight because he thought he was failing and wasn’t being considered for new roles or promotions. Also, senior roles in his company tended to require more presentations, so he steered clear of discussing those roles, because he assumed no one would even consider him. At just thirty-two years old, Sean had presumed he had hit a ceiling in his career.
When pressed further about the consequences of being a bad presenter, Sean, it seemed, had exaggerated the effect. He agreed that there were people more senior than him who weren’t great presenters either. They’d succeeded either by joining up with someone who was a more proficient communicator or by writing papers that were widely shared and published. The consequences of being a poor presenter were actually less serious than Sean had initially assumed.
When all the arguments presented in steps one through four have been tried and found wanting, the last resort is to ask yourself,
Is there any use in holding on to my perception?
For Sean, the value in seeing himself as a bad presenter was, well, zero. For that reason, it would be well worth his effort to change his view. The only way his self-belief about being a bad presenter could be helpful is if he uses it as a prompt to take action and therefore become a better presenter.
Challenging the way you look at a situation is probably the single most powerful thing you can do when it comes to altering your beliefs and trying to change from a pessimistic to an optimistic viewpoint. It is certainly possible that Sean, by simply thinking differently about his capabilities, could become a more confident and effective presenter. Perhaps if he grew less bothered by his lack of polish, he could gain authority in his subjects. But thinking differently is not the only thing Sean could do. He could tackle his perceived weaknesses head-on. He could be coached to answer difficult questions more effectively; he could spend more time anticipating the questions that might be asked and so prepare some answers; and he could develop some standard techniques for questions he doesn’t know the answers to. No doubt, there is plenty more that Sean could do to become a better presenter.
When you change your perspective of a situation by arguing with yourself, you will then be ready to quash pessimistic habits (
I am not good enough and there’s nothing I can do about it
) and, instead, do something positive (
I am capable. Now let me get on with it and do something to make me even better
). Next, you need to decide what sort of change to make and when to make it.
In the previous six steps, we charted the “argument” Sean had during a Mind Gym workout. As a result, he
• considered himself a perfectly adequate presenter,
• appreciated that the level of his presenting skills wasn’t as critical to his future success as he had previously thought, and
• knew what he could do to become a better presenter.
This argument happened between two people—Sean and the Mind Gym coach—but it could just as easily have happened in Sean’s head. It is a process any of us can use when we have a pessimistic or negative assumption we want to challenge or change.
The tone of the “inner voice” you have an argument with is up to you, though the tougher and firmer that voice, the more likely it is to win any argument. Imagine, for example, that your inner voice takes the persona of a courtroom attorney or a character from one of your favorite crime shows—a cop or judge who wouldn’t let you get away with any shenanigans. Always be sharp but fair and don’t let yourself dodge questions or responsibility. If you’re going to have the hardest argument you’ll ever have, you might as well do it properly. You can handle the truth.
ARGUING WITH YOURSELF: A SUMMARY OF THE SIX STEPS | |
1. What is your belief? | This will be a pessimistic view. If you are already thinking optimistically about a situation, then you don’t need to argue with yourself about it. |
2. What evidence is there to challenge this view (i.e., the case for the prosecution)? | Work hard to unearth all the evidence against this view. Imagine you are Columbo and Sherlock Holmes rolled into one. |
3. If the evidence isn’t enough, what alternative explanations are there to explain the situation? | There are almost certainly other reasons. Come up with as many alternative explanations as you can before picking out the ones that are most likely to be valid. |
4. If the alternative explanations and the evidence aren’t enough, what are the real consequences if your belief is correct? (i.e., so what?) | You might well have built this belief up into an enormous thing in your mind. A reality check will help put it back into perspective. Indeed, so much so that the belief may become largely irrelevant. |
5. If you are still holding on to your original belief, how useful is it to have this view? | Even when all other arguments haven’t worked, holding on to this negative belief is unlikely to help. Better to see it differently, say, as a good base from which to build. |
6. Given this argument with yourself, what will you do to improve the situation? | There are usually lots of things you can do to improve the situation. Write them all down before deciding what to do (otherwise, you will face roughly the same situation the next time, and since your previous approach to the situation didn’t work, it probably won’t work next time either). Then, of all the possible actions you’ve listed, decide which you will actually do and when. |
Most of us have decided how we look at life, and we tend to use the same approach for most everything. Quite simply, this is your mind-set. If you’ve found that a sense of realism is helpful in one part of your life—say, buying a house or submitting weekly reports at work—then you are likely to use the same sense of realism in every other part of your life, even if it is having the opposite effect from the one that you want. Your upbringing also has a strong influence on how you approach your life.