Think SMART
Have you been at a party chatting to someone and then, out of the blue, heard your name?
How did you hear your name over the noise?
Have you heard a mother tell her child, “Don’t run,” and the child immediately starts running? Or ask yourself, “Why am I so clumsy?” and directly drop something.
Your subconscious or reticular activating system ‘RAS’ is continually working, trying to solve problems and looking out for things of interest.
The RAS is part of the reticular formation in the brain comprised of neuron clusters, which form three wide columns down the brainstem. They have extensive axonal connections to the hypothalamus, thalamus, cerebellum, cerebral cortex and spinal cord. The reticular neurons regulate the entire brain’s arousal.
The RAS filters out familiar, repetitive, or weak signals. It is estimated that 99 % of all stimuli are filtered out. You will remember days going to work or walking the dog; you do the same route every day, but there will be days that you cannot remember a thing about the journey. The RAS has filtered out the details, and nothing was out of the ordinary to be noticed. This filtering enables us to deal with sensory data without being overwhelmed.
It is important to know how it works and work with it not against it.
Watch the behaviour of a child who is told ‘not’ to run and immediately starts running; the RAS cannot process a negative.
Whenever you ask yourself, “Why am I so poor?” the RAS hears “‘poor” and looks for ways to perpetuate this. If you continually say, “Why is it always me who has to do all the hard work?” it hears “hard work” and looks for more opportunities to work hard.
You can think of so many examples - ‘It is not fair that I always go on holiday when it is bad weather.’ The RAS hears holidays and bad weather and focuses on bad weather when on holiday.
However, if the RAS were to hear I love holidays regardless of the weather because we can always think of fun things to do - come rain or shine,’. The RAS hears holidays and fun things to do.
There are a lot of self-help books on the importance of positive thinking. This is important because each time you criticise or get cross with yourself, you attract the opposite of what you want or persist in discomfort.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that a positive attitude in the office is more likely to result in increased productivity.
It also explains why positive reinforcement is key to the success of a team.
If a boss says to a staff member, " I trust you will do a good job for this client, the RAS notes the boss has entrusted the junior to do a good job, and will use their best endeavours to do so.
Staff appraisal is therefore vitally important to be framed positively. One way to do this is for the staff members to complete the questionnaires in this program and discuss them at the staff appraisal meeting. If reviewed alongside the training, the positive message is that improvements will be made with practice, and the bosses can confidently say that a higher rating will be achieved the following year. By following the tips set out in the Modules.
How bosses feel about themselves can occasionally be projected onto their staff and colleagues. It is not uncommon for bosses to criticise their employees for failing to deliver in harsh and unpleasant ways when the real problem is a lack of confidence in the minds of the boss, this can result in confusion and hard-to-follow instructions.
Ongoing negative feedback can affect staff morale and productivity, and nagging signals a lack of trust and invariably drive down performance.
If a member of staff hears repeatedly, you are useless - your work is consistently of a poor standard. The RAS hears useless and poor standard and looks for more way to repeat this behaviour.
But on some occasions the boss may not be aware that their negative attitude is affecting the performance of the team. They may have been brought up to believe that praise will make the staff complacent and they will stop looking for ways to improve.
It is vital, therefore, to have a 180-degree review where employees can give feedback about the performance of their bosses and the working environment in. This feedback should be anonymous so they can be honest. Where necessarystaff members whether bosses or junior employees should may need some coaching on how to improve their attitude whether about themselves or the people around them.
Understanding how the RAS works also explains why a business plan should be SMART; specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely.
To think smart we need to engage the reticular activating system with a SMART plan. In particular, it must be specific, positive and with a date when it will be activated.
S – Specific - Your RAS must be given clear instructions, you must not give your RAS vague or confused instructions
M- Measurable - To assist in giving clear instructions it needs to be measurable to see if the plan is on track
A – Attainable - The instructions must be able to be done - otherwise you will get downheartened
R – Relevant - There should be a reward in achieving the objective or it probably won’t be repeated
T - Timely - And always set a deadline with actions which must be done NOW to achieve it.
The purpose of a plan is to instruct your RAS as to what you want to achieve which should be activated NOW so as to be complete by the deadline set. It will then look for ways to achieve your goals.
However, as said before the RAS cannot process a negative - such as I mustn’t waste time with interruptions. The plan must be phrased in a positive manner. such as I will put a do not disturb note on my door when I want to focus on a complex task.
If the plan is framed in a negative manner you are in danger of increasing the behaviour you want to reduce, and if framed in a vague way, won’t know what it should do. The plan should not say, I want to be better at communicating’ this is too vague. However if it says I want to write short communications, it hears short communications and strives to do more.The RAS also ignores messages which are not for now. Again there are numerous self-help books on the power of now.
If you say, “Today, I will have a good day,” the RAS hears that the good day is not for now. It is in the future, so it ignores it. However, if it’s phrased as “It is a good day,’ The subconscious is activated to make it feel like a good day and, when activated, looks for things to justify feeling good.
Understanding how the RAS works also explains why bad things are said to be like buses; they come in threes. Something unexpected happens, which is unpleasant, and a thought pops up, ‘This is so typical; bad things always happen to me”. The RAS hears bad things always happen to me - and programs itself to look out for a few more bad things.
The opposite is also true. When something unexpected and bad happens, you should immediately respond with ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’ and ‘Something good will come out of this’.
With repetition of this mantra, your mood will change, and the RAS will be activated to look continually for things to make you feel good.
Ironically, when you feel good, others pick up on it and seek out your company because you make them feel good, which leads to more business being done without working any harder.