Chapter 10
Practicing Praise
Joey was having problems in preschool. He wanted to feel connected with the other children, but when he touched and grabbed them during circle time they pulled away. After repeatedly correcting him, his teachers resorted to taking Joey out of the circle, making him feel even more alone.
Before I entered private practice as a therapist, one of the positions I held was directing an early intervention program for preschools. When a child was having emotional or behavioral problems at a preschool—being disruptive or not complying with teachers’ directions—we provided a therapist and an early education specialist to come in, observe, and help to solve the problem.
What we consistently observed was that the teachers gave the “acting out” children like Joey the most attention when they were acting out. This attention usually took the form of scolding the child or removing him or her from the group. We also confirmed what the teachers already knew: what they were doing wasn’t working. In fact it seemed to be making matters worse. All of us, especially preschoolers, need attention, and if positive attention isn’t available, we’ll settle for—and even seek out—the negative kind.
Our primary intervention at these preschools began with helping the teachers identify the behaviors they wanted to see in the children who were acting out. Joey’s teachers said that mostly, they wanted Joey “to keep his hands to himself.” So we encouraged the teachers to begin a new practice.
Whenever the teachers noticed Joey with his hands in his lap, or occupied in a way that was not disturbing others, even if it was only for a few seconds, they looked at him and smiled, saying “Joey, good job keeping your hands to yourself!” They also looked for other instances of desired behavior from Joey, as well as from the other children, and gave attention to those behaviors too.
As this strategy became part of normal classroom protocol, all the children who had been acting out, including Joey, began doing it less. This strategy improved the entire atmosphere of the classrooms, helping to create a culture of inclusion where everyone tended to progress, regardless how far along they were.
Positive Focus
Conventional wisdom is that we should be punished for doing wrong so that we will want to do right instead. In every situation we encounter we tend to keep our focus on noticing what we are doing wrong. While negative reinforcement does help us learn when it comes from our environment, for instance learning not to grab a rose by the stem, it is rarely effective when it comes from other people or from ourselves. As I have seen over and over in my professional and personal practices, we learn best when we are consistently rewarded for what we are doing right.
This is true for learning anything new and difficult. A pianist who is praised by her teacher for her focus and her expression—even when she misses notes—will ultimately make better music than an equally talented pianist who is praised only when she performs flawlessly. A basketball player who is praised by his coach for shooting with correct form—regardless of whether he hits the basket—is more likely to develop a good shot than a similar player who is praised only when his attempts are successful.
When it comes to changing your own behavior, the lesson is the same, except you are the one who has to give the praise. In your practice you are both teacher and student, both player and coach. As teacher, you make the lesson plan. You set a conscious intention that you, the student, will practice thinking and acting expansively. Just as Joey’s teachers tried to see how many times they could catch Joey keeping his hands to himself, you the teacher must zero in on what you’re doing correctly. The questions to ask are: Did I honor my values? Did I employ expansive strategies? Did I welcome necessary feelings?
Acting as a teacher or a coach for yourself may feel awkward, but it is a role you need to be aggressive about. Remember that the default coach is the monkey. The monkey mind will not sit quietly while you are failing to respond to its alarms. The monkey will be pacing along the sidelines blowing its whistle, screaming You’re in danger! Look what you’re doing! This is a disaster! By coaching yourself you will keep your focus on your agenda and not the monkey’s.
Process Over Payoff
If you read the Expansion Chart I shared with you in chapter 8, you may remember my expansion strategy was to write for only a 30-minute time period. During much of those 30 minutes I felt as though I was writing nonsense. I imagined my husband and my editor reading it and I forgot what I was practicing. I was evaluating what I was writing by the monkey’s standards—anything that wasn’t book-worthy was a primordial threat.
I was hijacked. I’d forgotten that the monkey’s requirements are impossible to meet. I was thinking that my output had to be good, without any mistakes to blemish me, and worthy of universal approval from everyone. What a bunch of bull’s-eyes!
When this happens to you it’s time to pull out your Expansion Chart. As soon as I completed the exercise, that’s what I did. I’ve reprinted it here to demonstrate.
Rereading the chart, I remembered that writing coherently was nowhere on my chart. My goal was to make sentences for 30 minutes, while practicing honoring my values, using expansive strategies, and feeling whatever was necessary for me to feel.
I thought for a minute. Had I been creative? Had I been authentic? Had I been courageous? Yes, yes, and yes! Had I stuck to the time frame? Allowed for imperfection? Welcomed necessary feelings? Yes, yes, and yes again.
There was plenty of success in my practice session, and to acknowledge that, I check-marked everywhere I had practiced successfully. Until my new expansive strategies and mind-set became the new default, I would have to make it part of my practice to be my own wise teacher, my own consistent coach.
This kind of hijacking happens all the time in my work as a therapist. Let’s look at an exercise I use with my clients who have a fear of public speaking. The practice is to give a five-minute oral presentation in my office. There’s little point in doing the exercise without being prepared, so before the exercise I have each client complete an Expansion Chart.
No amount of preparation, however, can quiet the monkey. Once the client begins to speak and those necessary emotions kick in, some hijacking inevitably occurs. When I ask the clients to give themselves a letter grade for how well they did, it is very common for them to tell me they presented terribly and give themselves a low grade. They will say things like, “My mind went blank. I was so nervous and I stuttered over my words.”
When we revisit their Expansion Charts, however, and evaluate their presentation as a practice opportunity, they are surprised and relieved. When they ask themselves What values did I honor? What mind-sets did I employ? What strategies did I use? they realize the successful work they’ve done.
As they check off each feature of the practice they were able to employ, they are transformed from frightened students into wise teachers. With every check mark, they are giving themselves recognition and praise. They almost always deserve an “A” when grading on new criteria.
Less commonly, the opposite can happen. Sometimes a client will deliver a surprisingly smooth presentation, and give herself an “A” right away for looking confident, not feeling very anxious, and remembering everything she wanted to say. This is grading on hitting a bull’s-eye, which is monkey mind-set criteria.
Evaluate your practice session on the process, not the outcome. Did you honor your values? Did you cultivate an expansive mindset and employ expansive strategies? These are the things you can control, and it is your focus on them that will bring you new experience and learning.
When you hit a bull’s-eye or have less anxiety in a practice situation, it is an indication that you are ready for the next level. If you aren’t being challenged with necessary feelings, you are not building resilience to future anxiety. Don’t let a bull’s-eye distract you from your expansive mission! You can download your own Expansion Chart to practice with at http://www.newharbinger.com/35067.
Checking off the fields of our Expansion Chart isn’t the only way we can give ourselves positive feedback. For example, I give some of my clients points. I tell them, “Good job! You get a point for that.” We don’t necessarily keep a tally, but it is effective just the same. When my clients are welcoming necessary feelings in my office, I keep a running commentary using words like “awesome,” “excellent,” and “keep it up.” I get to see the power of praise firsthand, which is very rewarding.
When you practice, be your own coach and teacher. Praise your planning, praise your execution, praise your courage welcoming negative feelings. Praise everything about your practice except the outcome!
To help you understand the role of praise in expansion practice, let’s follow along with my clients during the first few weeks of their practices. Each met their own unique challenges with their own unique brand of praise.
Eric’s Refocus
In the session after Eric’s appointed confrontation with his employee, I asked him how it had gone. “Not great,” he said. He began talking about how anxious he’d felt during the meeting and how defensive the employee had been. He wanted to focus on what had not gone well and what the employee’s husband—who was also his friend—would say about him when he found out.
Eric was hijacked. In his anxious state he was thinking that he should be confident, sure of himself, and show no signs of anxiety. He also thought that because the employee responded negatively, he must have handled the situation poorly. He felt like he’d failed and it was only a matter of time before everybody knew. It was his old perfectionist mind-set at work. I could have spent the session reassuring him and problem solving his relationship with his employee, but would that have furthered Eric’s expansion practice?
Instead I asked Eric what his new expansion strategy was. It took him a moment to remember—talk honestly to the employee and offer additional training. Although he’d been very anxious and the employee hadn’t responded well, Eric had done exactly that. He needed to refocus on what he did right and give himself a pat on the back. I often have my clients literally pat themselves on the back for accomplishing a desired behavior, and I do it to myself all the time. Sure, patting yourself on the back seems silly, but it’s nowhere near as silly as kicking yourself in the butt for not being perfect. That is just plain ridiculous.
Maria’s Big Score
Maria described her first week of practicing tolerating uncertainty as a “mixed bag.” She had set the limit on looking up symptoms on the web to only once a day, but on several days she’d done it more than once. She’d decided not to call her doctor or discuss symptoms with her husband either, but she’d done those a number of times too. She came into session unsure if she’d really made any progress.
I asked Maria how many times her monkey mind began chattering that by not checking a sensation out she might be missing something deadly. “Dozens,” she answered.
I asked her how often her monkey screeched that this was a new sensation or that it was stronger than ones she had experienced in the past. “Lots,” she said, smiling.
Then I asked her how many times that week she thanked her monkey and said, “I am choosing to live with uncertainty.” This was, after all, the essence of the expansive mind-set and strategy we’d planned the week before. Maria’s eyes lit up from within. “Too many times to count,” she said. “I’m giving myself a hundred points this week!”
Maria had a great week of practice. By continually reminding herself what her new expansive mind-set was, she had been feeding that mind-set. By reviewing how well she had welcomed her fight-or-flight sensations and negative emotions, she had been rewarding what she did right instead of punishing herself for falling back into safety strategies.
Samantha’s Star Quality
For my over-responsible client Samantha, it was a real challenge to resist checking up on her son, and she invented a whimsical way to reward herself when she was successful. Recalling how good she felt when she found a star sticker on a grade school paper, she decided to reward herself that way. Every time she was faced with an overwhelming urge to check on her son and she reminded herself that she was not responsible for his choices in life, she gave herself a star. Every time she used a Welcoming Breath to process her anxiety she gave herself another star. Every time she was able to resist checking on him she got another star, and so on.
Although she sometimes broke down and checked up on him anyway, and would continue to do so for many weeks, as long as she was able to follow through with some element of her practice, she got some stars. By the end of each week she had a constellation of proof to herself that her practice was progressing.
Co-coaching
Patting yourself on the back, awarding yourself imaginary points, and drawing stars or happy faces on your Expansion Chart are only some of the many ways you can coach and reward yourself for practicing expansion. If your friend or partner is also practicing, you can support each other.
After a trying day it’s tempting to treat our friends and partners as a kind of dumpster for our frustrations, but when we’ve been practicing expansion, our stories are more positive. Descriptions of the challenges we faced, the negative emotion we processed, and the new experience and learning we had are exciting to recount and inspiring to hear. When I am doing my practices, I look forward to sharing them with my husband that evening at dinner. And yes, I love it when he says “Wow! That was inspiring.”
Whether you are receiving praise from a friend or loved one, from a therapist or from yourself, you are keeping your focus on what matters—your values, your strategies, your process—not those of the monkey. Praise is the jet fuel that will do the heavy lifting, getting your practice off the ground. Don’t be stingy with yourself. Make giving and receiving praise a permanent part of your practice. In fact, why not begin right now? Reach your hand around your shoulder and give yourself a pat on the back for your willingness to read this far in the book!
Cruising
Since I used the analogy of flight for your practice—using praise as your jet fuel—you may be wondering, Do I ever get to cruise at altitude?
Yes, one day you’ll look out your metaphorical window and see you’re above the clouds, and the problems that once loomed so large will appear as tiny specks below. Your old behavior of constantly second-guessing your stock picks, with practice, may be replaced by reevaluating investments on an annual basis. Being afraid to be heard at meetings might evolve into speaking up when you have something to say. Or perhaps the need to get your husband’s approval for everything will change to following your heart even if he may disapprove. Maybe you’ll find yourself falling asleep at night without a worry in the world. You might be tempted to think, I’ve made it.
Don’t. Expansive living is a lifelong journey with unbounded challenges as well as rewards. I cannot predict how high or how far your practice will take you. What living beyond the limitations of the monkey mind-set will look like for you is for you alone to discover. But I can outline some of the many rewards your expansion practice has to offer you, which is what I’ve done in the next and final chapter.