Be Bulletproof

by James Brooke

  Extrinsic motivation is not a bad thing per se, but when it roams unrestrained in your mind it is likely to raise the stakes for you in terms of fear of loss. The athletes who carry the weight of expectation on their shoulders are more likely to ‘choke’ and find it harder to recover when they do.

  If we are working with an account team, for example, who are going into a major sales pitch, we advise them to remind themselves that they do not really need to win this piece of business. Nobody will starve if they don’t. They remain unattached to the outcome. Here is the key, however: their motivation comes from delivering the best possible sales pitch.

  If you are going for a job interview, remind yourself that you do not really need to be offered the job, but set yourself the goal of giving the best possible job interview.

  These are sometimes called ‘process’ goals, or ‘learning’ goals, as opposed to ‘outcome’ goals. Process or learning goals mean that you are less likely to be hamstrung by fear-of-loss motivation; therefore we feel calmer and more in control. People who focus on learning or process goals are more resilient.25

  Summary

  When we need something, our minds tend to focus on the cost of failure

  The emotional impact of losing something is twice as great as that of gaining something

  Bulletproof people train their minds to reduce the amount they need something, but sustain the extent to which they want it

  Focus on ‘learning’ or ‘process’ goals rather than the outcome

  Imagine starting again from rock bottom

  ‘Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential,’ J.K. Rowling has written.26 ‘I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me … And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

  ‘You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learnt no other way.’

  Rowling was rejected by nine publishers, her mother died after a long battle with multiple sclerosis and her marriage failed, leaving her a single mother with a daughter to provide for. Rowling is right: we may never ‘fail’ on the scale that she did, but we can take her point. The point is not that Rowling showed super-human powers – she would be the last to suggest this – but that from the eventual position of achievement she has the wisdom to recognise that, for most people who ultimately succeed, failure is a fairly weighty chapter in their story.

  We cannot achieve anything without being prepared to withstand rejection. Success comes from having the courage to propose our ideas, our products, or – most sensitive of all – ourselves to others.

  We’re taught the virtues of persistence from an early age. Rejection is damaging because it exhausts the reserves that we need to persist. Our minds form stories to make sense of our experiences. If we are talented performers, if we are great salesmen, if we have a great product or a great business idea, this is incongruent with the experience of being rejected. And because our minds don’t readily live with incongruence for long, they accept the story that we are not great or talented, or that our product, idea or business plan is not worth the effort after all. As anyone who has been in this position knows, being told to ‘stick at it’ really doesn’t help.

  Once Rowling had hit rock-bottom, she had eliminated the type of fear-of-loss motivation that drains us and increases our anxiety. The prize may have seemed a very long way off, but the good news is that she was left solely with joy-of-gain motivation.

  To help people to emerge from the cave and ultimately through to success, we use a branch of cognitive behavioural theory called ‘solutions focus’. This is being used increasingly in a clinical setting when the need is to move somebody forward from a particularly low ebb. It is proving remarkably effective in a workplace setting. The essence is to focus on signs of success, no matter how tiny, and to focus on the first steps, no matter how small. There are the only steps forward from this position.

  Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, was the daughter of immigrant parents who entered Britain with virtually nothing. From an early age, she became interested in the way that immigrants who faced harsh odds would often rise to become very successful. When the obstacles seemed too great and success seemed too far off, she would put herself in the shoes of an immigrant. ‘Think like an immigrant’ became a private mantra.

  Rowling’s point is remarkably true: sometimes rock bottom can be the best foundation on which to rebuild. We’re not suggesting that you aim for rock bottom in order to try this out, but there is a simple and very effective thought experiment related to this that you can do.

  There is a time when every entrepreneur has no customers, no business on the books, no goodwill and brand or reputation, but it tends to be precisely the time when she has the greatest energy, focus and optimism. It is a place that all of us can go back to any time we choose. The ability to generate a sense of renewal, no matter where you are on the journey, gives you a useful source of optimistic energy to tap into.

  Try this thought experiment: imagine starting again from zero, or square one. Like Anita Roddick’s immigrant, you have nothing, or, in other words, nothing to lose. You do have energy, imagination, optimism and determination. You can combine this with the ‘advocate-for-your-success’ exercise.

  The ‘too-late’ thinking distortion

  We often hear people argue that it would be too late for them to start anything anew. The sentiment runs along the lines of: ‘If I were going to do [abc], I would already have done [xyz] by now.’ You have probably said it to yourself at some point. But this is simply another thinking distortion to be challenged.

  The name ‘Colonel Sanders’ (the face of KFC) probably evokes an image of a folksy-looking elderly gentleman beaming out from a multi-billion-dollar fast-food franchise. The story of the real Colonel Sanders is a useful one to remember when you want to challenge the ‘too-late’ thinking distortion. For much of his career, Harland Sanders cooked for passing motorist trade at his service station at Corbin, Kentucky. It was steady business, successful but unspectacular. But around the age when most of us would like to retire, 65, Sanders found himself virtually bankrupt, with nothing more than a social security cheque for US$105. The opening of a nearby interstate highway had drained off both his customers and his livelihood. Sanders was left with nothing but his recipe for fried chicken. With this, he decided that his best option was to try franchising. He set about looking for potential franchisees. KFC is one of the world’s best-known food brands and, through the foundation he established, Sanders was able to donate more than a million dollars a year to aid charities and scholarships. A world obsessed by youth strengthens the too-late thinking distortion – in reality many people achieve remarkable success later in life.

  Summary

  Think like someone who is starting from zero – everything to gain, and nothing to lose

  If you were starting from zero, what personal attributes or strengths would you point to that indicate you should succeed?

  Bulletproof people are able to generate a sense of renewal and can therefore tap into its source of optimistic energy

  Reject the ‘too-late’ thinking distortion

  Visualisations can help

  All things being equal, we will experience a series of rejections, and then a success. It’s useful to imagine this inevitability as being a staircase: each success is waiting for us on a landing; the rejections are the steps in between the landings. There is no reason why the successes should equal the number of rejections; simple probability tells us that there will be far more steps than landings (as most competitive situations involve a number of ag
ents going for one prize). In fact, we only need a relatively small number of successes to achieve overall success in any given field. There is no reason why the number of steps between landings should be evenly distributed. They are not. They are random. Sometimes you will stumble over one landing after another, and other times you will find yourself on an unusually long unbroken flight of stairs.

  People don’t need to be told that they should keep going through the setbacks – they know that. The metaphor of the staircase gives them something that they can visualise in an active way. The key also is to think of the staircase without judging. You do not know when the next landing is coming up; all you can do is keep taking the steps up. You only need a small number of landings to succeed.

  Visualisations play a crucial role in refocusing attention. In a neurological sense, to visualise yourself doing something is pretty much the same as physically doing it. If you want to refocus your attention away from less helpful thoughts and towards more helpful ones, visualising the more positive outcome really helps.

  By the way, don’t make the mistake of attempting to visualise the bad thing disappearing. This simply means that you are devoting important neural resources to something that is bad news. Kristi Richards was a world-champion freestyle skier and looked set for a medal at the 2010 Winter Games; the Canadian team even employed a squad of ‘Fourteen Mental Preparation’ consultants. Richards was advised to write down all of her negative thoughts on toilet paper, which would then be flushed down the lavatory. As a result she spent a good few hours pondering about the negative thoughts she could bring to mind. She finished last.

  If you’re on a journey on which you need extra resilience to deal with rejection and knock-backs, choose a visualisation that works for you. It may be the staircase or it may be something that is more personal to you. When you receive a knock-back or a rejection, picture yourself taking the next step up the staircase. You know that there is always a landing with a prize on it ahead of you – you do not know how many steps ahead it lies but you do know that it’s there.

  And, of course, you can visualise any worthwhile prize at the end of it. Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl, managed to help himself to survive the unimaginable by visualising himself lecturing about the experience to packed lecture halls, as he devoted the rest of his life to enlightening future generations. He focused on giving meaning to his goal.

  And don’t waste time with fear-of-loss motivation either. Instead, give yourself an alternative image to re-focus your mind. Visualisations are cognitively more powerful than simple thoughts, as they require more neurons to fire up together. Remember British athlete Dame Kelly Holmes, and the two-year-long spell of injury in the nineties that almost finished her career? During this period she consistently visualised the gold medal being placed around her neck and she then went on to become a double Olympic gold medal winner.

  Visualisations work.

  Summary

  Visualise your success as waiting for you on a landing with your rejections being the steps between now and the future

  Visualisations are crucial in refocusing your attention on the positive things

  Visualising yourself doing something is much like physically doing it

  Bulletproof people refocus attention from unhelpful thoughts towards more supportive ones

  On a journey where you need extra resilience to deal with rejection, visualise a worthwhile prize at the end

  What’s your story?

  Can writing things down help us, especially when we face challenges and setbacks? The evidence from psychologists suggests that it can. The process of writing about events can help us to see our lives as a narrative, or a story, as it’s better known. After all, we’re all familiar with stories. Humans need stories. We learn about the world through stories – and about ourselves. They can help make us bulletproof by putting things into context and framing knock-backs and problems.

  ‘The stories we construct to make sense of our lives are fundamentally about our struggle to reconcile who we imagine we were, are and might be in our heads and bodies, with who we might be in the social contexts of family, community, the workplace, ethnicity, religion, gender, social class and culture writ large,’ says Professor Dan McAdams, Department Chair of Clinical Psychology and Personality Psychology at Northwestern University. ‘The self comes to terms with society through narrative identity.’ Put simply, stories exist to help us make sense of ourselves and the world around us.

  Writing your story is an effective way to handle any knock-back but it can be especially effective with rejection; how and when is up to you.

  Thinking in terms of the story of your journey helps you to sustain optimism and focus during difficult times, thus helping you to overcome adversity. Because the essence of great stories is often about overcoming adversity, positioning a journey of change as a story allows you to be completely honest and frank about the nature of current adversity, while focusing on a realistic but positive outcome.

  Creating a narrative is a powerful psychological tool. To help someone triumph through adverse experiences or circumstances, psychologists will often ask people to place such adversities within a story – a chapter, if you like – of their life. Such a narrative enables people to describe the journey, allowing a processing of the difficult reality, and thus helping to lead them towards a positive outcome. What will not help is glossing over or denying a difficult reality, or even forcing a person towards positive thinking without allowing them to ground their story in reality; this type of approach will confuse them and no doubt make their experience of the adversity worse. In order to sustain optimism and focus during difficult times it is important to focus on a positive outcome, but the journey through the adversity must be acknowledged.

  If you are going through a tough patch and want to boost your resilience, start thinking about your story – where are you now and where will the story take you? What is the best, most credibly optimistic outcome for your story? If it helps, write it down.

  Stories work because, in most of the stories that capture our imagination, the hero or protagonist, with whom one identifies, invariably goes through a period of adversity during which his or her resolve is seriously tested. The best stories set up a big question to be answered, a problem to be solved or a challenge to be overcome. How our protagonist deals with this reveals his or her most profound values, and gives us the moral or take-out of the novel or movie. The protagonist inevitably spends time at the heart of the story in his or her cave or wilderness.

  As well as writing about what has happened, you can write about what might happen. This is your story so you can write your own ending. Obviously, it won’t be helpful to make it a tragedy where you suffer horribly – but neither will constructing an amazingly wonderful, fairy-tale-like conclusion help much either. The trick is to be ‘credibly optimistic’. This means describing a resolution that is possible and believable but also positive and optimistic. You could write, for instance, about how you overcame this problem, learnt from it and used those lessons in later life. Or you could describe how you eventually achieved your goal – or even a more modest version of it. Make it believable and possible but, at the same time, motivating and optimistic.

  Summary

  Stories capture our imagination, providing coherence and sense-making

  The power of story helps bulletproof people get through tough periods

  Bulletproof people are able to write down a credibly optimistic outcome for their personal story – clarity increases the likelihood of success

  It’s putting it into words that counts

  When psychologists investigate the impact of various types of trauma on health and well-being, they find something very interesting. The type of trauma is less important in predicting mental and physiological recovery than the actions that individuals took following the trauma. It seems that those who open up and talk about their experiences recover better and quicker than those who don’t. The former
group – we could hypothesise – may well have been feeling the benefits of sense-making and coherence as a result of starting to piece together their story.

  Psychologist Jamie Pennebaker sought to discover whether people’s well-being could be improved by writing about something distressing that had happened to them in their lives.27 Participants in the experiment were given blank journals and asked to write for roughly fifteen minutes a day, for roughly four days. The results were remarkable. Participants showed measurable and significant health benefits for several months after the experiment, compared to the control group.

  It gets more interesting. Pennebaker then sought to discover whether any sort of expression would work in a similar way: the methodology was repeated to test whether a range of different modes of expressiveness, dancing, painting, sculpting and so forth would work in a similar way. And guess what? They didn’t. Or, to put it more scientifically, there was no measurable difference for these versus the control. It is the process of putting it into words that counts. (So if you’ve ever sat in a workshop at work and a team of management consultants come in and encourage you to throw paint at a canvas to express your vision, or if your friend advises you to go dance away the pain of your divorce at that alternative therapy group, it is worth bearing this piece of research in mind.)

  Psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that this is not a case of that old folk wisdom ‘letting off steam’, or ‘getting it all out’. Indeed, one of the great myths about emotions is that they are better once we get them ‘out’. As Haidt points out, expressing anger makes us angrier. It is the act of sense-making that works for people.

  Summary

  Those who open up and put their traumas into sense-making words recover better than those who don’t