Why Telling Children What to Do Is Often A Bad idea

Adults teach children how to behave. One of the things we teach kids is that they need to follow instructions: 'Go and wash your hands and come and sit down for dinner'; 'Say, 'Thank you' to Grannie'; 'Come and help me with the washing up'. We praise kids when they do as we ask and punish them in some way when they don't. Eventually they learn that it is a good idea to do what people in authority ask you to do.

Following instructions with good grace is an important skill. We all know kids (and adults) who haven't learnt that skill and they are painful to be around - everything feels like a battle.

However we want our children to be discerning about this. We don't want them to blindly follow instructions. We want them to question authority. We don't want them to be trapped into being a people pleaser. We don't want them to just go along with peer pressure. ( If you are in doubt about this then read Philip Zimbardo's works on the dangers of compliance.)

So we need to teach them another more important skill. This skill involves being in contact with what is going on in the present moment (How do I feel? What is really happening here?); being able to consider the longer term ramifications of their actions; draw on some values that feel personally meaningful and then making a decision how to act.

This skill is psychological flexibility and it is strongly associated with well being.

Which is why we often need to pause when we have the impulse to just tell our kids what to do and instead coach them to come to their own decision. So when Grannie gives them a present that they don't want, we might take a moment (whilst Grannie is in the garden) to talk through how they feel (disappointed), how Grannie might be feeling (worried that she has got it wrong?), what they want their relationship to be like with Granny and then help them decide the best approach to this. Which might be to give Granny a big hug and a thank you now and perhaps on another day have a conversation with Grannie about how they would love to go shopping for their next present with Grannie and choose it together.

Jumping Off a Piece Paper

Do you have something important that you need to do but even the thought of it makes you feel so uncomfortable that you just avoid it?

It might be risking rejection; doing something boring; risking looking stupid.....

In this great podcast, DJ Moran talks about slicing these challenges up really thinly. Finding the point where you have made it small enough that you will take action. He uses the metaphor of jumping off a piece of paper. Even though the jump is really, really tiny; you are still jumping and that is very different to not jumping at all.

And once you have gotten moving, you might tackle jumping off the phone book next!

Another cross post from Working With ACT

Why is Taking a Break So Difficult

I took a ‘sicky’ the other day (is that just an Australian word? In case it is - it means an 'unplanned absence’). I wasn’t sick. I was just tired. Normally I am full of energy and enthusiasm for my life. I feel that each moment drips with meaning and purpose. From writing the speech I am giving next week on goal setting to attending my daughter’s commencement ceremony at school, it all matters so much. And this is wonderful, but now and again I get very, very tired.

A pot of green tea on my deck

So i made myself a pot of green tea, downloaded a Georgian Historical Romance onto my ipad and spent a few hours on the day bed on my deck, snoozing and reading.

Now I feel better.

You would think that taking a few hours off would be an easy thing to do... but not for me. My mind alternates between reminding me of all I have to do and busily problem solving (‘I need an activity to illustrate that point about goal setting, what would work? I must remember to ring the plumber. That balustrade needs painting...’). Of course, if I had decided to carry on working, my mind would have gone on and on about how tired I was (‘I am sooo tired. I need to rest. I can’t concentrate. I wonder if I am getting sick?’).

A few years ago, Russ Harris taught me, ‘Your mind is not your friend'. I find it is helpful to know this. Whatever I do, part of my mind will chatter away in an unhelpful fashion. This is part of being human. The trick is to do what is right in that moment - whether it is to rest or work or play - and take my chattery mind along with me.

This is a cross post from my Working with ACT blog - hope you don't mind

Persistence and Success

Ellie passed her written driving licence test today. We were very pleased and celebrated with fish and chips at a park by the bay. Lovely!


She has had a few unsuccessful stabs at the test. She knows the answers but freaks out and can't remember them. But she wants to be able to drive a car so we just kept going back until she passed.


As her Mum I am very heartened to see her displaying such persistence because it predicts future success.


Stephen Kaplan reports his finding that:

'CEOs who are persistent, efficient and proactive get things done'

However we need to know what to persist at, this poor fellow on Dragon's Den is persisting in investing time and money in a product that no-one wants:




So how do we know whether to persist or not? 
Seth Godin has some suggestions in The Dip and I have some from negotiation theory

• Work out the cost benefit ratio  - and do some research to make sure that these two are accurate. Your best guess is unlikely to be right.
• Decide some markers in advance that tell you it is time to quit - 'If in 6 months time I am still not turning a profit, I will quit' or 'If in 3 months time we are still fighting every week, then I will leave'. Write it down and then stick to it. Again, research this, so the marker is reasonable rather than a figure you made up.
• Consider that it might not be the goal that is wrong but your approach to achieving the goal - get some good advice and see if you can improve your chances.
• Work out what your best alternative is if you quit and see if you can improve it
• And remember:

“The Opposite of Quitting Isn’t ‘Waiting Around’…the opposite of quitting is rededication. The opposite of quitting is an invigorated new strategy designed to break the problem apart.” Seth Godin

We Need Reminding to Do The Right Thing

Doing a spot of weeding

Today I did some gardening. I love gardening. It is good for me and it makes me happy. But I don't do it very often.

What made me do it today? (FYI That is a solution focussed question - much better than -'Why don't I do it more often?')

Well, at the weekend I had a conversation with Albert about my hopes and dreams for my life. I realised that I am doing quite well in most areas of my life but one of my dreams is to create a lovely garden and I am not doing well on that one. So today I did some gardening.

And what else seems to help me get out into the garden? (another solution focussed question!)

A few weeks ago I found out that the most long lived people in the Terman study (a long term study of clever people!) didn't do 'exercise' they were just active doing what they loved. This suggested to me that I needed to garden more often.  So I got out there on that day.

What I think this means is that Alain de Botton is right. We need repeated reminders to help us do the right thing. He suggests we need to structure our lives to include those reminders. I am not sure how to do that yet - I will let you know!

How to Tell If Your Therapist is Any Good

 Susan Lwellyn has found that therapists are often out of sync with their clients around what they are doing in therapy that is useful. Clients find it most useful when they feel reassured and develop some strategies to solve their problems. Whereas therapists think they are being most useful when the client develops some insight into the cognitive and emotional causes of their problem. 

As a former therapist I know just how satisfying it feels to guide a client to an insight. I used to think "Now they understand how their current behaviour relates to their childhood experiences of emotional neglect, so they will now find it easy to change!" But, you know what, those long conversations didn't actually lead to a whole lot of change. I think they were based on a misunderstanding of what needs to happen in therapy.

William Miller (founder of an approach called Motivational Interviewing) discovered that some therapists do a much better job at helping their clients to change than others. Miller studied the differences between effective and ineffective therapists and found that the highly effective therapists:

• Were good at empathic listening and were genuinely interested in understanding the client’s perspective
• Coached the client to explore the pros and cons of change and helped them to make their own decision about whether they wanted to change
• When the client resisted the idea of change, the effective therapists ‘rolled with that resistance’ rather than arguing with the client.
• Had a respectful stance
• Honoring the client’s autonomy – the client gets to choose whether they change or not, and as adults, they take responsibility for the consequences of their choice.
• Viewing the client as the expert in their life. They didn’t talk down to the client but took a collaborative approach where they worked together to figure out what to do next.

So, here is my advice, if you want good therapy: 

• Look for a therapist who treats you and your perspective with respect
• Avoid therapists who argue with you; make you wrong or talk down to you
• Avoid therapists who want to spend hours working out how your parents/childhood messed you up
• Ask for the research evidence that supports the approach they are taking. 

How to be More Charismatic

Research suggests that charisma is determined by:

1. How expressive you are verbally and non-verbally
2. Whether people feel heard when they speak to you

When you are talking, what is the experience like for the listener? Are you open, animated, demonstrative and dynamic? Is there a degree of intensity and passion in your communication?  These characteristics capture people's attention and help them to connect with their own passion. Even something as simple as saying 'hello' to a friend can be 'charismatic' and demonstrate clearly how pleased you are to see them or be muted. That 'hello' may then set the tone for the interaction and, if it is the first time you have met, the rest of the relationship.

However, all that expressiveness wears pretty thin if people get the message that, in the end it is all about you. That you want all the limelight. Truly charismatic people also know when and how to give their attention to others. They listen intently. Their non-verbals show that they care about hearing your opinion and are moved by what you say.

So, if you aren't naturally expressive, would it be fake to adopt these characteristics?

I think, it depends on the reason you want to become more memorable and engaging. Does it align with some deeply held values? Perhaps you want to connect more deeply with the people you meet? Perhaps you want people to have a better experience when they interact with you?

When a change in behaviour is about becoming more like the person you want to be, then it might feel fake at first but over time it feels more and more like an expression of the 'real you'.