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Ditch those old tapes

Old voices from the past can harm
your performance on the job now

ILLUSTRATION BY BRYANT FUKUTOMI

Self-talk is a key factor determining true self-confidence -- one characterized by humility and grace, a documented quality of successful leaders. Digging into the roots of self-unfulfilling self-talk will bring us face-to-face with a level of "touchy-feely stuff" not normally seen as acceptable coaching topics.

This stuff to which I am referring are internal tapes that have been recorded very early in our lives. Frustrated parents and teachers regularly implant messages that we carry into our adult lives. A repeated sharp voice and menacing finger when we spill a glass of milk: "How many times have I told you to be careful!?" becomes encoded into the "I'm not worth very much!" file in our self-esteem program.

All that changes as we get older is the context. Any mistake gets treated as if it were "spilled milk." Only now the "sharp voices and menacing fingers" are our own, and they are playing out on the stage of our mind.

How many times have we heard or used the phrase: "He pushes my buttons!" That imagery is affirming a current event that has the power to activate a previously recorded internal tape. Once activated, the tape plays itself out as if the current precipitating event was the same as the original set of circumstances, including a replay of our own initial set of reactions.

Making up our minds to change the make-up of our minds, therefore, means we have to be willing to explore the historical roots of our responses to questions like:

Such explorations, while difficult to voice, can lead to important insights.

In my own case, for example, no achievement was ever "good enough." A 95 percent on an exam elicited the question, "What happened to the other 5 points?" A score of 100 percent often got the wry comment, "I guess it was a really easy test!"

Consequently, if I am not careful -- very careful -- that tape can negatively influence my current performance in several ways. I can inappropriately allow almost all of my energies in a training program, for example, to be drained away by the one or two people out of 100 who seem to not be "liking me."

I can end up ignoring, and not adding energies to, the 98 who are motivated to apply what we are learning. Needless to say, I've heard managers, and subordinates, complain of the same dynamics.

What can be done? How do we go about changing the makeup of our minds? Unfortunately, simply replacing negative statements with positive statements and affirmations -- re-recording new content over the old tapes -- is not likely to result in a long-term change.

If you've ever tried to talk someone else out of their negative self-talk, you've experienced this. They say something self-disparaging. You counter with something meant to be positive like; "Come on, you know that's not true!" or "Aren't you being overly hard on yourself!"

If their tapes are deeply grooved, you'll either get

This ping-pong game will continue for a while. They will put themselves down and you will try to pull them up. But, pretty soon, you get tired of the game. You shrug your shoulders and quit trying to make them treat themselves better. Soon thereafter, a silent voice goes off in their head saying something like, "Boy, I must really be a loser. Even my best friend has stopped complimenting me!"

Score yet another victory for a self-unfulfilling prophesies.

Making up our minds to change the make-up of our minds will require a bold new approach, well beyond re-recording. Well beyond simply "thinking positively."

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