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