I was once at the scene of a man who was being beaten up after a road rage incident.  The man who was being beaten up had been dragged out of his motor vehicle and was lying on the road, while the perpetrator was laying into him with fists and hoofs.

Of course, I immediately stopped my vehicle and ran to aid the victim.  Using my authoritative voice, I commanded the perpetrator to stop and sent him on his way.  In the meantime the victim continued to lie on the ground.  I helped him up and walked him to his vehicle but could clearly see that he was in no condition to drive or behave rationally, so I suggested that I call an ambulance to get him some assistance.

Instead of accepting my offer, the man became agitated and told me he was perfectly fine to drive – to which I replied that I insist on either calling an ambulance or driving him home myself.  I was not really keen on the latter since it was nighttime and I wasn’t feeling very safe anyway.

The victim immediately began shouting at me, using expletives to get me to back away and leave him alone.  Okay, so I felt a moral obligation towards this man, he had been drinking heavily or over a long period of time because he absolutely reeked of alcohol.

When I tried to reason with him he lifted his hand towards me and shouted for me to get away from him.  I’m no fool; I can see a fist coming my way when it’s needed, so I backed off.

There was another time when I was managing a youth center many years ago when the center was closed and I was inside catching up on my admin when a woman frantically banged on the front door.  I went out to see what all the commotion was about and she begged me to let her in.

She had a 10-year-old boy who was being dragged by his hair into the office with her.  She asked to “sort the boy out”, to which I asked the boy to sit down and asked the mother to accompany me into my office.

I asked her what the problem was and she exploded about how bad her son is, what an idiot he is and asked me to talk to him and threaten him by telling him if he didn’t begin to listen to his mother, the police would be coming to pick him up to deposit him in jail.

I agreed to speak with the boy but said I would say no such thing to him.  Rather, I would like to hear his side of the story.

I called the young boy in and we had a lovely chat.  Turns out the boys mother was expecting him to do some unreasonable things and because he refused, she was going to use me to reinforce her threats on him.

When I called her back into my office after talking with the boy, I fed back my observations and told her that I felt that her expectations of her son and of me were unreasonable and that I felt she probably needed to work on her own parenting style and attitude towards the boy before threatening him with anything.

At that moment, she lost it – and I mean lost it.  She screamed at me and told me that I had no right to talk to her like that and I certainly had no right to accuse her of being a bad parent.  Her high-pitched voice hurt my ears and I had a feeling that she was a little annoyed at me.

She stormed out of my office and the building, again dragging her young child by the hair, shouting all the way.

I wonder if the above two people had to see themselves on a video recording, whether they would change their behavior at all?

What makes us lose it so badly – to the extent where we have absolutely no control of our behavior?

Have you ever stopped to think about where our behaviors originate?

As far back in our lives as possible, we begin to learn our behaviors from our parents.  Some of our behaviors are genetic – from grandparents or great grandparents.  Some behaviors skip a generation or two.

For the most part, behaviors that we’ve learned from parents, other family members or people around us can be “unlearned”.   In the same way that we learned these behaviors, we are able to unlearn them and relearn new and better behaviors.

Okay, so how do we unlearn ?

Firstly, you will need to create a self-monitoring system in which you can record your behaviors.  Each time you behave in the undesired way, you will need to write down the event and the triggers.  i.e. what caused you to lose your temper?  What happened, where were you, how did it feel?  Try to record as much data as possible, including things like external and internal effects like shaking, flushing, sweating, elevated heart rate (you don’t need to take a pulse reading, you will feel if your heart rate has risen)

Write down as much associated information that you can, every time you experience the unwanted behavior.

Next step is to analyze the data.  Is there a pattern?  When is this behavior at it’s most prevalent?

Once you’re aware of the trigger of your behavior, you can begin to plan your next move.  What would be a more appropriate way to deal with the situation?

How could you prevent yourself from reverting to this “default” behavior?

Write down all your ideas and study them well.

Now make sure you settle on a more appropriate way of dealing with future situations.  The next time you notice something happening that you know will trigger a bad response from you, quickly substitute the bad response for one of your new responses.

How did it feel to deal with your situation differently?  Did you get the desired response or is there something you could do differently that would facilitate a better change in behavior?

Work on your new behaviors until you are happy with them.  Remember that one needs to practice the new behavior at least seven times before it will become a new habit.

It is also important to note that some habits are harder to break than others and certainly some behaviors are more difficult to crack than others, in difficult circumstances it may be wise to seek professional help.  I would suggest that you still monitor your behavior in a journal and take your findings with you to your therapist – if you decide you need some professional help.

Please feel free to share your experiences if you have managed to kick a bad habit, or if you’re struggling with a habit you’d like to rid yourself of, perhaps we could work on it together.

~  Vanessa

Don't think about the white bear

Don’t think about a white bear.

Try really hard not to let any thoughts of a white bear enter your head.

Keep trying…

So often when we are trying to avoid a particular thought or action, we end up thinking, saying or doing precisely what we were trying to steer clear of.

If you have ever been given feedback on your presentation skills which has highlighted a particular mannerism or repeated phrase, you will know how hard it is to stop it.

A review article in Science by Daniel Wegner examines the reasons for this annoying tendency. In How to think, say or do precisely the worst thing for any occasion, Wegner talks about two processes in the brain.

The first process involves a conscious effort to suppress the unwanted behaviour by diverting attention into other activities. So, in order to stop yourself thinking about a white bear, you make yourself think about something else instead.

The second process is a non-conscious process that actively looks for examples of the undesirable behaviour and flags them up so that the conscious process can deal with them. Every time there is a possible stray thought that might lead you to think about a white bear, this process alerts you so that you can distract yourself.

Unfortunately, the conscious process can get overloaded if there are other things happening to distract it, such as remembering what you were going to say in a presentation or dealing with difficult interview questions. In such demanding situations, the non-conscious process continues its job of looking out for possible dangerous thoughts and behaviours. However, when it passes the message on, your distracted conscious brain sometimes mistakes this as a signal to perform the action rather than suppress it. The result is that turning on the non-conscious monitoring process can actually increase the possiblity that you do exactly the thing you don’t want to do.

• Could giving feedback in interview or presentation skills coaching do more harm than good?