"I Am Not a Crook."

I had certainly not planned on doing two postings within two weeks based on comments by Richard Milhous Nixon. Then I realized today is the 33rd anniversary of his oft parodied remark, and provides a reminder of the importance of speaking in positive rather than negative terms.

Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. On the right side of the line list the following terms:

• A crook
• Polluting
• Destroying
• Gouging
• "In tobacco's pocket" (an early but unintended message of Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign)

Now go back and put the word “not” to the left of the line before each of the five terms.

On which side of the line do you find the vivid words? On which side do the words evoke visual examples? Obviously, on the right. "Crook", "destroying", etc. are far more vivid, and more likely to create mental pictures, than "not."

Research originally done at UCLA Medical School using brain imaging found that the adult mind takes 50% longer to recognize the presence of the word "not." It first creates a picture of the vivid negative terms, then backs up and says, “oops, that isn't the case."  But the image of the negative has already been reinforced. (Therapist and author John Gray points out that children under the age of nine often visualize themselves doing what they are being told not to do—“don’t trip" gets internalized as “trip.”)

Lesson: When you hear yourself starting to say what you are not, stop and rephrase in terms of what you are.

And I promise there will be no more Nixon quotes to kick around.