If You Are Trying to Achieve A Goal, Don’t Think of A Polar Bear

When you are try­ing to achieve a goal, like becom­ing a solo entre­pre­neur, or a solo trav­eler, or if you are try­ing to lose weight, or over­come a fear, or what­ever goal you are try­ing to achieve, your brain can some­times become a bit obses­sive — unfor­tu­nately not always in a sup­port­ive way. Some­times our brains become obses­sive about the very thing we are try­ing to avoid doing. This phe­nom­e­non is referred to as the “ironic mon­i­tor­ing process”, also affec­tion­ately known by its acronym “IMP”.  If we are try­ing to, for exam­ple, lose weight — we iron­i­cally become obsessed with thoughts of the very foods we are try­ing to avoid. If we are try­ing to, for exam­ple, over­come a fear we have asso­ci­ated with becom­ing a solo trav­eler, we can become obsessed by the very fear that we are try­ing to overcome.

In her book, The Four-Day Win, Martha Beck describes this phe­nom­ena as “The Polar Bear Effect”. I’ve also seen it described as the “Don’t Think of a Pink Ele­phant” phe­nom­e­non. Basi­cally, to expe­ri­ence how strong the IMP effect is, try this lit­tle experiment:

Are you try­ing not to think of a Polar Bear? source: Allie Caulfield, Flickr Cre­ative Commons

For the next 10 sec­onds, don’t think of a Polar Bear (if you don’t like Polar Bears, try not think­ing of a Pink Ele­phant). Think of any­thing else you want to think of, but do not think of a Polar Bear or any­thing asso­ci­ated with Polar Bears for 10 sec­onds — no fluffy white fur, no coal black nose, no sparkling white ice, or frigid blue waters — for 10 sec­onds. Ready? 1 steam­boat .…. 2 steam­boats .…. 3 steam­boats .…. 4 steam­boats .…. 5 steam­boats .…. 6 steam­boats .…. 7 steam­boats .…. 8 steam­boats .… 9 steam­boats .…. 10 steamboats.

Could you do it?? Could you think of any­thing except Polar Bears?? Or did you think of Polar Bears?

The ironic thing about the IMP is, that the harder you try to avoid think­ing of a spe­cific thing, like the Polar Bear, or your fear of fly­ing, or food, the more stressed and anx­ious you become and the more you think about the very thing you are try­ing to avoid.

Martha Beck has this to say about the IMP: “Try­ing to sup­press some­thing tends to cause anx­i­ety, which makes the self-suppression more des­per­ate, which makes the ironic effect much worse, which makes us even more upset…” The result is that the “more des­per­ate and pres­sured you feel, the more inten­sively you’ll brood about (and poten­tially do) the very things you’ve sworn off. The higher the stakes, the worse the ironic effects.” (The Four-Day Win, pages 34–35).

So, how do we tame the IMP??
There are a cou­ple of things that we can do to try to tame the IMP.

For starters, we need to become aware of how we are think­ing about the behav­iors we are try­ing to change.

Chang­ing Habits

If you are try­ing to change a habit think of the out­come not the habit. For exam­ple, if you are try­ing to lose weight, stop think­ing about los­ing weight and begin think­ing about all of the ben­e­fits you will gain by los­ing weight. The increased self-esteem, the higher level of energy, the more fun it is to shop, the more self-confidence you will have meet­ing new clients, etc. Let­ting your brain obsess about the pos­i­tive out­comes is a good thing. Quot­ing the Law of Attrac­tion: What you think about, you bring about.

Achiev­ing Goals

If you are try­ing to achieve a dif­fer­ent type of goal, for exam­ple, increas­ing the num­ber of clients you have, or becom­ing a solo entre­pre­neur, then let you brain obsess about the ben­e­fits you expe­ri­ence by hav­ing achieved that goal — the fun you will have meet­ing new clients, the new lifestyle you will have achieved, the won­der­ful peo­ple you now know, etc. You can choose to obsess about how dif­fi­cult it will be to achieve your goal, or you can obsess about how won­der­ful it is to have achieved your goal.

Over­com­ing Fears

If you are try­ing to over­come a fear, then there is another trick you can use, again thanks to Martha Beck. In her Sep­tem­ber 2009 col­umn for O Mag­a­zine, Martha Beck writes about the debil­i­tat­ing, pow­er­less feel­ings we get from our fears.  The more we think about our fears, the more pow­er­less we become, thanks mostly to the IMP phe­nom­e­non. How­ever, if we switch those thoughts of fear to thoughts of love, we become powerful.

For exam­ple, sup­pose that you want to become a loca­tion inde­pen­dent pro­fes­sional but the more you think about it the more you start becom­ing aware of your fears. You can embrace those fears, acknowl­edge those fears, and then work to over­come them. Which works for some peo­ple. How­ever, every time you think about one of your fears, even if you are work­ing to over­come it, you are still think about “fear” and all of the neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions and debil­i­tat­ing feel­ings that fears bring.

Try instead to think about what you love about the sit­u­a­tion that is asso­ci­ated with your fear. Love is an empow­er­ing emo­tion that will help you over­come your fear. For exam­ple, if one of the fears that is pre­vent­ing you from becom­ing a loca­tion inde­pen­dent nomad is the fear of being lonely and you find your­self obsess­ing over find­ing ways to over­come that fear, try this:

• rather than think­ing about your fear of lone­li­ness, think instead of all the things you love about the idea of being a loca­tion inde­pen­dent nomad — the peo­ple you will meet, the com­mu­ni­ties you can be part of, the sto­ries you will be able to tell friends and fam­ily back home. Think of how much you enjoy email­ing friends and fam­ily, of the video emails and pho­tos you could send. These are pow­er­ful thoughts that get the IMP work­ing for you, instead of hav­ing the IMP work­ing against you by esca­lat­ing your fear.

Do you have any lit­tle tricks that you use to help you over­come the IMP and negate the “Polar Bear Effect”??

TTFN

~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~♦~~~~

If you enjoyed read­ing this post, maybe you’d like to sub­scribe to our RSS feed, or sub­scribe via email (enter your email address in the box at the top of the page, on the right) so you don’t miss any future posts. Thank you for visiting!