Curiosity: You Are NOT the Cat

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My grandmother frequently admonished me throughout my early years by saying, “Curiosity killed the cat.” This reprimand usually coincided with actual or contemplated mischief, so I heard it a lot from my grandmother’s lips. She used the quip to keep me in line. 

I notice people stating this idiom to their children, to other adults, and to themselves. Clients will even say it to me as an excuse for not considering their range of possibilities.

Repetition of  phrases like this, said as statements of fact, causes us to internalize them. They become a guiding rule for our behavior, acting on us below the level of  our conscious awareness. Adhering to the notion that curiosity killed the cat, therefore it will kill us, keeps us locked in our safety zone. When we stay locked in our safety zone, we sacrifice growth and development in exchange for the comfort of what we already know.

By doing this, we become vulnerable to the pitfalls of failing to exercise curiosity in a world teeming with places, things, and ideas to explore. We become susceptible to problems like:

  1. Group Think
  2. Functional Fixedness
  3. Stagnate Learning
  4. Decline in Neural Networks
  5. Poor Problem-Solving
  6. Failed Relationships

People caution others not to express curiosity as a subtle cue to not rock the boat, to walk the straight and narrow, to maintain the status quo. The message hints that if we ask questions such as, “How does this work?” or “What are my other options?” or “Why is this way the right way and that way the wrong way?” we will be ostracized from the in-group and cast into the out-group.

This conviction activates the limbic system within the brain, where emotions and the flight or fight response are governed. The brain’s sole purpose is to keep us alive. It operates on the prehistoric principle that to be kicked out of the clan means certain death by exposure to the elements, illness, starvation, or predator. Your brain truly believes that curiosity killed the cat and that curiosity will kill you, as well. Thus, it creates a feeling of fear in order to discourage curiosity and regain a sense of safety.

I can 100% guarantee you that you are not the cat. In most cases, curiosity poses no hazards to you. In fact, it expands your worldview. It connects you in deeper and more meaningful ways to the people around you. It profoundly transforms your ability to overcome challenges. And it leads to greater creativity, happiness, and life satisfaction.

 

Your brain is an incredible organ. Though charged with surveying the environment for danger and triggering a response to it, the brain can also be taught that what it once perceived as dangerous is not. It has this marvelous plasticity that allows it to change based on the environment and how you interact with the environment. By indulging in curiosity, even in small ways, you begin to mold your brain to not only embrace curiosity, but to crave it even more.

 

Coaching Minute: Consistency Is Key

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How to Make Persistence Pay Off

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My psychology students, all 21 of them, bent over the slips of paper I handed out moments before. Most had quickly worked through the first challenge on the paper. As the minutes ticked, most accomplished solving the second problem on the sheet. Within about 10 minutes ¾ of the class put their pencils down and raised their hands to indicate they had completed the task.

The five students still working were scattered amongst those who were finished. Their body language – shifting in their seats, chewing their bottom lips, gripping their fingers into fists – indicated that they were feeling pressure and frustration. Determined to not be outdone by their classmates or my little challenge, they continued to scribble out answers then scratch through those answers to scribble out new solutions that would then be scratched through. They persisted in their effort far longer than even I had anticipated they would.

President Calvin Coolidge is credited with saying, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.” I beg to differ. Persistence alone will not solve the problem, move the dial, or save the day.

Just ask the five students who struggled to solve the puzzle on their paper. It wasn’t their fault, of course, and their inability to solve it didn’t reflect poorly on them. I had intentionally given five students an unsolvable anagram. All 21 students received a paper with three anagrams to solve. The anagrams in the sequence became progressively more challenging. Nonetheless, 16 students received a list of anagrams that were solvable. Five randomly selected students received tow solvable anagrams and a third unsolvable one. 

No amount of persistence would have ever rewarded them w
ith the outcome they sought.

Persistence, also known as grit, can lead to astounding success. It allows the underdog to rise up and overcome obstacles to achieve what no one thought he could. Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in the power of persistence.

 

I believe in the power of persistence when there is a plan. Without a thoughtful plan, a person is engaging in blind persistence, which can result in sticking with a faulty strategy
, working at accomplishing something that cannot be accomplished, or attempting to solve something that isn’t the true problem.

Blind persistence leads to

  1. The creation of false obstacles.
  2. Feelings of frustration and defeat.
  3. Self-comparison to others.
  4. Negative self-talk.
  5. Feeling helpless.
  6. Physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion.
  7. Impaired decision making skills.
  8. Impaired communication skills.

To make persistence work for you

  1. Identify the real problem that needs to be solved 
  2. Determine if that “problem” is something that needs a solution or simply needs you to make a choice. 
  3. Identify what you know from prior experience with this or similar problems.
  4. Identify what you already know about the current situation. 
  5. Clarify for yourself if this is a problem or goal that is important to you or if it is something you are trying to accomplish because you think you should, you think others want you to, or you fear you’ll be judged negatively if you don’t.
  6. Create a plan for persistence that specifically states the end goal, the actions you will take, when you will take each action, how much time you will commit to each action, the resources (including people) you will use to help you complete each action, what success will look like at each step along the way, and the timeline (including end date) for achieving your stated goal.
  7. Stick with (persist with) the plan.

Turn Ideas into Action

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To Be Liked or To Be Likable, That Is the Question

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The 9th-grade English teacher, after receiving the call over the intercom to come to the office, gave the class a writing assignment

and excused himself from the classroom. He trusted his students to diligently pursue excellence in his absence.

Silence encapsulated the room as students put pen to paper. Then the door clicked closed. Relief washed over the students, anxious to release their pent up need for socializing. Friendly chatter erupted. Laughter followed. Students ventured out of their desks across the room to visit their friends.

For one young man, this brief reprieve from the constraints of classroom decorum was not enough. Not only did he engage in chatter, and laughter, and wandering around the room, but he climbed atop a desk and began traversing from one side of the room to the other by athletically leaping from obstacle to obstacle and loudly calling attention to his feat. 

All eyes turned to him. Loud cheers urged him on in his quest for the spotlight. The young man goaded students, who had managed to keep working despite the chaos he created, to join him in his fun. He felt energized and unstoppable. He was receiving exactly what he wanted: to be perceived as the cool kid that everyone yearned to be friends with.

The other students, more self-aware and less willing to be caught in non-compliance, kept a watch on the closed door. They saw the form of the teacher in the rectangular sliver of a window and heard the knob turn and felt the breeze from the hallway as the door opened. Immediately, they postured as if they had been writing the entire time. 

This left the blond, blue-eyed desk-leaper looking conspicuous in his mid-air lunge toward the teacher’s table. He landed in a stack of papers, sending them wafting upward and outward. The teacher’s eyes locked on the boy’s through the papers drifting to the floor.

The young man was awarded a trip to the office, detention, 25 bear crawls at baseball practice, and one phone call home to me, his mother, to explain the situation. In his misguided effort to be liked by his classmates, my son failed to forecast the potential  consequences.

By adulthood, most of us do not act out in quite so obvious ways. Nonetheless, we are still plagued with that age-old dilemma: to be liked or to be likeable? Have you considered the difference? What does it mean to be liked? What does it mean to be likeable? Which goal motivates you more, and how does motivation toward that end influence your behavior, your happiness, and your success?

My son’s sole purpose was to be liked by his peers. He confused being liked with being likeable. He quickly discovered, however, that although his classmates really, really liked him in the moment, they distanced themselves from him afterward. They liked his wildness and his disregard for conforming to expectations, but they didn’t find him to be likeable.

People who desire to be liked and place a premium on it tend to do three things:

  1. Blur their personal boundaries. They are reluctant to stand strong on their personal beliefs and values. When the goal is to be liked, people tend to mold themselves to the expectations of others. They forego what they would generally claim to be important to them. There is a fear that if they clearly demarcate their boundaries, others will view them as overbearing, wrong in what they believe, narrow-minded, hard-headed, unfriendly, shallow. So they bend to the whim and will of whoever they are with in order to be liked.
  2. Fail to ask for what they want. Again, this is out of fear. No one wants to be seen as needy or demanding. People driven to be liked are especially sensitive to the impression they feel others have of them. Thus, they never make their own needs, wants, or desires known to others. They believe they are more likeable if they never come right out and ask for what they want.
  3. Act on impulse. See the above story about my son as an example. When we are motivated by the goal of being liked, we do things we ordinarily would not. We act out of character. Perhaps we tell an off-color joke to get a laugh or we do something potentially dangerous to grab admiration.

People motivated by the goal of being likeable tend to do three things:

  1. Behave consistently. We like them because we know that our perception of who they are and how they will behave is accurate. People who are likeable are predictable and dependable. They demonstrate self-awareness which translates into confidence. They like themselves, so we like them, too.
  2. Honor other people’s boundaries. They listen to others in order to learn about them. They accept others as they are for what they value and believe. Though people who operate from a stance of being likeable may challenge someone to leave her comfort zone, they won’t ask her to act against strongly held values and beliefs. There will always be respect for the other person. 
  3. Express empathy. Likeable people generally have high emotional intelligence. They’re able to recognize and identify emotions in themselves and others and to respond appropriately. They don’t discount the feelings of another person, nor do they try to tell others how they should feel. Because they are able to lean into us (empathize), they pull us toward them (being likeable).

Fortunately, my son, too, has come a long way from the 9th-grade version of himself. Now in his 20s, he has a deep and wide network of friends. He attracts people to him, not by impulsive antics, but by authenticity. Although he got there the hard way, he has become an incredibly likeable person.

How do you think being liked versus being likeable affects a person’s success? Where do you fall on the spectrum between the two? What can you work on to become more likeable?

 

Coaching Minute: What Is Fear?

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Set Consequences Not Intentions

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A popular buzz phrase in the self-help sector is “set the intention.” The philosophy goes that before any activity, pursuit, or interpersonal engagement, we should take a moment to set our intention so that we might achieve our best results and our best selves. For example, a person might set the intention of maintaining eye contact in order to connect with someone he or she is meeting for the first time. This intention might be especially important to a person who has difficulty with first impressions and one-on-one conversation.

On the surface, “setting the intention” is akin to setting a goal. Unfortunately, when things don’t turn out as we wanted them, we tend to fall back on our “intention.” When the person who set the intention to maintain eye contact is alerted that the intensity of the eye contact came across as disconcerting and intimidating, the person will say, “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” This statement doesn’t correct or minimize the consequence, and it sounds like an un-empathic excuse lacking acknowledgement of accountability.

Consequences trump intent every time. Let me repeat: Consequences trump intent.

The consequences of our actions, whether intended or not, impact relationships, both personal and professional. Nonetheless, many relationship coaches and marriage counselors will ask a partner in a conflict, “Do you think it was his (or her) intent to make you feel that way?” or “Do you think it was her (or his) intent to cause that outcome?” as if the lack of intent or the intent for a different outcome excuses the offending partner of culpability.

This line of questioning creates a situation in which one partner does not have to take responsibility for the hurt caused to the other partner. In fact, it places blame on the hurt partner. The hurt partner must now either accept the offense as okay or defend him or herself. Neither event will turn out well for the hurt partner or for the relationship.

Consider this scenario: I’m at a backyard party enjoying a can of soda. I finish the drink and crush the can, while surveying the landscape for a recycling bin. I see it about 10 feet away, and I toss the can toward it, hitting a fellow party-goer in the head. A gash opens on her head, and I rush over to tell her, and everyone else aghast at the can that came of nowhere, that I meant to throw the can in the recycling bin.

To the bleeding woman:
– Does it sound like I’m concerned for her wellbeing?
– Does it sound like an apology?
– Does it sound like I am accepting responsibility for my action?
– Does it matter what my intention was?

If someone attempts to de-escalate the situation by saying to the bleeding woman, “Do you think Lucy intended to hit you with the can?,” the bleeding woman is put in the position of either accepting the consequence of my action as okay or defending her own reaction. I, on the other hand, am excused by my intention to throw the can in the bin not at the lady.

Sometimes we are the bleeding woman, beset by another’s ill-fated intention. Sometimes we’re throwing cans without consideration of consequences and with loud shouts of, “I didn’t mean for that to happen.” No matter which role is ours in a particular situation, our relationship with the person in the alternate role will suffer.

My challenge to you is to step out of the cycle of those roles, to be the person who makes the effort to walk the can to the recycling bin.

My challenge to you is to Set the Consequence and work back from there. Like setting the intention, Setting the Consequence is about identifying a goal or desired outcome. BUT, when we Set the Consequence, we consider all of our alternative actions and intentionally choose the best action for achieving our specific goal.

Setting the Consequence is harder than setting the intention. It takes more forethought. It takes analysis of alternative action plans. It takes planfully making a choice rather than impulsively pursuing an intention no matter where that takes us.

When we set the consequence and the results go awry, we’re more likely to acknowledge the error in our selected action and accept responsibility. Acknowledging the error in our action will sound less like an excuse and more like an apology to the offended party. It eliminates interrogation of the offended party as to whether he or she believes the other person intended to do harm. This opens the door for reconciliation and a stronger bond.

When we set the consequence, choose the best possible action path, and achieve the desired outcome, others view us as trustworthy, reliable, thoughtful, and considerate. It demonstrates respect. What a great foundation upon which to build a friendship, a team, a partnership, or a romance.

It is not the intent that precedes a behavior that matters; it is the consequence that follows the behavior that makes all the difference. Set your consequences to build better relationships at work, at home, and in the world.

Problem Solving With the Three Ps

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Remember the big, gooey, green monster from childhood that lived under your bed? Remember how you learned to leap from your light switch so it couldn’t grab you by the ankles, pull you under, and gobble you up? Remember how you hid under your covers while in your imagination that ugly green monster grew and grew and grew?

For many of us, that nasty green monster has followed us into adulthood. It nips at our heels. It snatches at our ankles. Fear of it keeps us up at night. Exhaustion from fending it off drives us to hide deep under our covers.

Only now, it’s not a creature of our overactive juvenile imagination. It’s real. It’s the problem we can’t shake. It’s the career, relationship, habit, health issue, financial stumbling block, or insecurity causing us stress. And the more we try to shove it under the bed, the bigger, and Bigger, and BIGGER it grows. Believe me, if you don’t do something about it, IT WILL EAT YOU ALIVE.

In his book, The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier, discusses the three Ps of every problem. And every problem can be analyzed to discover its three Ps. Essentially, they stand for: Project, People, Patterns. Each one contributes to the problem and, if appropriately addressed, can contribute to the solution(s). Project is the task. People refers to relationships we have with others. Patterns expands to our patterns of behavior.

Lets consider an example. In a recent coaching session I had with a college student, he noted money management as his primary concern. He said, “When I feel like I have a lot of money, I go out and spend way more money than I should. I tell myself, ’It’s just this one time.’ But it never ends up being just one time. Then by the end of the semester, I’m barely paying for essentials. It’s not fun.” He stated that he wanted to get his wild lifestyle swings under control so that he was in a “steady” comfort zone financially.

After explaining the three Ps to him, I asked him to look at his problem in terms of Project, People, and Patterns. This is what he came up with:
*Project – “I need to set up a budget so I can be on cruise control.”
*People – “I have a lot of friends. That’s one of my drives to go out. I have FOMO.” (FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out)
*Patterns – “When I see I have a lot of money, I say, ‘Why not? I’ll do it just this one time.’ When I’m drinking, it’s easier to talk myself into spending money. Also, if someone buys me a drink, I feel the need to return the favor, even though I know he doesn’t really expect me to pay him back.”

Wow! The look on his face once he had finished his analysis. He had dragged his big green monster out into the open, was looking straight into its cesspool eyes, and staring it down! He had clarity on how to wage his attack and could focus his efforts one P at a time. His monster was shrinking SMALLER, and Smaller, and smaller.

Some people are fine to face their monsters alone. Most of us, though, feel far more confident when we have a partner in the fight. Fear of our monsters creates chatter in our heads. Guttural growls from our monsters creates distraction in our environment. It can be hard to hear our own voice over the din.

That’s where coaching to the three Ps can be most useful. A coach provides a quiet, safe space in which to calmly and collectively assess problems, break them into the three Ps, map out targeted solutions, and confidently implement change.

Can’t take on your big, fat, gooey, green monster by yourself? Let’s do it together!

Four Steps to Maintaining Your Boundaries: The Man in Plaid Pants

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A summer week in Savannah with my grandparents came with the heady juxtaposition of townhouse living with a parking lot to play in against farm living and running fields in rural georgia.

Staying with my grandparents also came with challenges. There was the series of clown portraits that lined the wall of the staircase leading to the room I slept in. There was the sweet odor of overripe melon that hung thick in their kitchen. And there was the man in plaid pants.

The summer I was four, during my week-long stay, my grandparents decided to take me to lunch and show me off to friends. This is where I met the man in plaid pants. My grandparents introduced me to him, and what happened next has been repeated in my family a thousand times in the years since.

I refused to speak to the man in plaid pants. I refused to look at the man in plaid pants. I refused to sit next to the man in plaid pants. I refused to give in to my grandparents’ acrobatics to get me to quit being rude and acknowledge the man in plaid pants. When sternly interrogated about my motivations, I defended my actions with the simple statement, “I don’t like his pants.” The adults laughed, covering my grandparents’ embarrassment and confusion.

I relate this brief memoir to illustrate that it is never enough to follow the oft offered advice, “Know your boundaries.” Evaluating your values and naming your boundaries is important and necessary work. Yet, what good is knowing your boundaries if you don’t maintain them in the face of challenge?

A note on vocabulary: I use the word “maintain” boundaries not “defend” boundaries. “Defend” implies aggression, battle, and potential weakness and defeat. Approaching the topic from that mindset indicates that we see the world as threatening and see our boundaries as permeable. When we “maintain” boundaries, we do it from a place of strength and self-confidence. We view the world as engaging in collaborative union with us to achieve our best outcomes and view our boundaries as those solid structures that bind us in that union.

Four Steps to Maintaining Your Boundaries

1. Articulate your boundaries clearly.
Knowing your boundaries and articulating your boundaries are two different actions. Knowing happens in our heads and is an intangible intermingling of thoughts, images, facts, and emotions. Articulating involves a clear, verbal explanation of what we will not tolerate or allow from another person. Being open and specific about parameters and defining our expectations honors the other person and what/he she needs to know to engage with us successfully.

2. Understand that power disparities do not negate your boundaries.
Your boundary is your boundary is your boundary. It exists in alignment with your values. Your core values do not change to fit a relationship or a situation; therefore, your boundaries do not change to fit a relationship or a situation.

3. Demonstrate compassion.
We are designed to be in relationship with other humans, yes. Paradoxically, we are also designed to serve our own self-interests. This can cause communication breakdown. Thus, not everyone we are in relationship with will understand our words or trust our motives. Acknowledge other people’s points of view while standing strong on your own.

4. Respond to “Why?” with “What?”
Frequently, when people take issue with a boundary we’ve set, they demand to know the “why” behind the boundary. When we respond to “why” questions, we come from a place of defensiveness, which opens the door for the other person to debate us on our particular decision. The best way to respond to a “why” question is to ask something like, “What are your concerns?” or “What information can I give you?” The other person feels heard, the challenge is diffused, and you receive valuable feedback about his/her perspective.