Do NOT listen to this episode.
Art piece Human Factor by John Underwood (1988)
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Camille
#032 – Do NOT listen To This Episode – part 1
#032 - Do NOT listen To This Episode - part 1July 3, 2020
Transcript:
Imagine you are tightrope walking. Really high, in between 2 cliffs. It’s windy... you are risking your life. Where do you look, down in the abyss? Or straight ahead, focused on the rope?
My name is Camille, you’re listening to Cosmic Dynamics, 5 min of exploration on art, change & the music of the universe.
What image do you choose to project and focus on? The “Where you want to go”? Or the “where you don’t want to go”? It’s common sense, we can all intuitively answer this question. You have much better chances of reaching your goal by projecting “the where you want to go”.
In Neuro Linguistic Programming, this is typically referred to as the “motivation away from” vs. the “motivation towards” something. It’s very much liked a meta-program that is going to condition what will happen next, what you will be attracted towards.
You heard this before I am sure, the mind is generally pretty bad at processing negative statements. There are conditions and parameters of course. For instance, it seems that negation, when it is useful and informative, does not make it more challenging for the brain to understand the negative meaning of a statement. Like in this sentence for instance. it is useful and informative, so it does not make it more challenging for the brain to understand the negative meaning of the statement. But when it comes to a campaign name, a hashtag choice or a “new world” “new normal” idea you want to spread, picking a negative framing is clearly a bad idea. It’s much more productive to spread stories and narratives about what we want, than about what we don’t want.
Don’t think about a pink elephant,
Do not even think about that piece of cheesecake
Do not look down…
If my campaign is called “No Sugar in My Coffee” or “Zero Sugar in my Coffee”, I am still framing the message around the problem, around the thing I don’t want. Mhh.. what should I name it then… “SugarFree Coffee For All” - nope, still framing the problem, we are still metaprogramming “away-from”.
Yes, there are very specific cases in which it can be difficult to get around the negative framing, but most often it’s not that hard... it’s pretty easy I should say. So why do so many mission-driven organizations and campaigns still fail at this? I see it every week in workshops, in projects, in the media…
Why is it so typical that the image created in the audience mind results being the opposite of the campaign goals? We’ll answer this in Cosmic Dynamics nr. 033. In the meantime, you can meditate on this while looking at a sculpture called Human Factor, made by John Underwood in 1988, currently installed in Brisbane. It’s A tightrope walker hanging above the Stanley Street Plaza, and it’s looking down! Crazy…