Speaker 1: Should is one of the most problematic words when it
Speaker 1: comes to self talk, and I'm sure you've heard this
Speaker 1: before and we all use it. I should go to
Speaker 1: the gym. I should accept this event invitation. I should
Speaker 1: call this friend and see how she's going. I should
Speaker 1: spend less time on social media and so on. Shoulds
Speaker 1: are very, very unhelpful. They have the double whammy of
Speaker 1: making us feel guilty and they don't actually help us
Speaker 1: change our behavior. So today I want to share with
Speaker 1: you two alternative words or phrases to replace the shoulds
Speaker 1: in your life. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm
Speaker 1: an organizational psychologist and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about shoulds and how to get rid of them. Firstly,
Speaker 1: if you've been invited to do something or a request
Speaker 1: is being made of you, it can often feel really
Speaker 1: hard to say no, and a lot of people feel
Speaker 1: quite guilty when they say no to things that they
Speaker 1: feel like they should be doing for various reasons. Thankfully,
Speaker 1: marketing professor Vanessa Patrick investigated the impact of a four
Speaker 1: letter word that might be able to help you a
Speaker 1: lot when trying to make it easier to say no.
Speaker 1: In one of Professor Patrick's experiments, one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: university students were recruited and asked about how relevant setting
Speaker 1: goals around healthy eating was to them. Patrick recruited the
Speaker 1: type of people who would say to themselves, I should
Speaker 1: eat more vegetables, I should eat less chocolate and sugary foods,
Speaker 1: and so on. Then the participants were taught a strategy
Speaker 1: for managing unhealthy food temptations, and group was taught to
Speaker 1: say I can't eat X like unhealthy snacks whenever presented
Speaker 1: with an unhealthy snack, and the other group was taught
Speaker 1: to say I don't eat X. Then participants were asked
Speaker 1: to turn their attention to a completely different and irrelevant task.
Speaker 1: But then when they got up to leave the room,
Speaker 1: the crux of the experiment happened. They were offered a
Speaker 1: choice of two snacks. One was a chocolate bar and
Speaker 1: the other was a healthy granola bar. The experimenters quietly
Speaker 1: noted which participants picked which bar. It turns out there
Speaker 1: was a big difference between the strategy people were taught
Speaker 1: and the bar that they chose. Thirty nine percent of
Speaker 1: those who were taught to say I can't eat X,
Speaker 1: when presented with a temptation, chose the healthy granola bar.
Speaker 1: In contrast, sixty four percent of those in the I
Speaker 1: don't eat X group picked the healthy granola bar. In
Speaker 1: other words, changing one simple word increased the chance of
Speaker 1: selecting the healthy snack by over fifty percent. When the
Speaker 1: researchers delved deeper into this very significant effect, the reason
Speaker 1: they uncovered for the huge shift in behavior was that
Speaker 1: those in that I don't group felt more empowered to
Speaker 1: say no. Saying you don't do something sounds like you're
Speaker 1: the one in control of your choices, whereas saying that
Speaker 1: you can't do something sounds like someone else is calling
Speaker 1: the shots. So, when you're thinking about making a change
Speaker 1: to your life, the language that you use when talking
Speaker 1: to yourself is critical. Become a dope person instead of
Speaker 1: a can't person or a should person, and you'll be
Speaker 1: well on your way to making some positive changes to
Speaker 1: your life. Now, the next phrase that you might find
Speaker 1: really helpful is, rather than telling yourself, Oh, I should
Speaker 1: do this thing that's good for me, I should try
Speaker 1: to walk ten thousand steps every day instead a really
Speaker 1: great reframe that you can use for self talk, which
Speaker 1: I learned from a couple of people, including best selling
Speaker 1: author Dan Pink and also from burn survivor and all
Speaker 1: around motivational person to Reapit. So something they both do
Speaker 1: is they reframe their shoulds into get tos. So, for example,
Speaker 1: when it comes to doing exercise, rather than say I
Speaker 1: should exercise, they instead say I get to exercise, or
Speaker 1: I get to eat fresh vegetables. And for me, when
Speaker 1: I don't want to do something but I know I
Speaker 1: should be doing it, this is exactly what I do.
Speaker 1: So I get to walk over ten thousand steps a
Speaker 1: day because I'm healthy and my body's working properly, and
Speaker 1: I get to eat lots of vegetables because I have
Speaker 1: access to fresh food. And for me, I find that
Speaker 1: this is a very very helpful reframe. So those are
Speaker 1: two strategies that you can use maybe to day to
Speaker 1: get rid of the shoulds in your life. That is
Speaker 1: it for today's show. If you know someone who is
Speaker 1: maybe a victim of the shoulds, you might want to
Speaker 1: share this episode with them and maybe they might find
Speaker 1: it helpful. How I Work is produced by Inventium with
Speaker 1: production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to
Speaker 1: Martin Nimber who did the audio mix and makes everything
Speaker 1: sound awesome. See you next time.