Imagine that you see your child precariously picking up a glass of water and you shout at them “don’t spill that!!”. You know what’s next; water all over the floor.
You may have heard that this happens because the unconscious mind can’t process negatives, and while that’s a common belief, the truth has more nuance to it. The unconscious mind can process negatives, just not always as fast or as effectively as we need it to.
In order to process a negative, we first need to bring up the positive. If I say “Don’t think of a purple elephant”, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? A purple elephant, of course. Then you try to push it away or distract yourself with other thoughts so that you can NOT think of that.
The key point is that when processing a negative, we do it in two steps. We first bring up the positive, and then as a second step, we try to not do that thing.
So if both of us are relaxed and I hand you a glass of water and calmly say “don’t spill the water”, your brain will first consider the actual spilling and then will realize that it’s a negative and not do it. So far, so good.
The gotcha is when we’re stressed or things are happening fast around us. In this case, our brains start to prioritize all the items coming at us and it gives a higher priority to the first part (spill the water) than to the second (don’t do it) and it becomes possible for other items to get in between them. We’re reacting so fast that we finish processing the spill before our brains realize that the “don’t” is coming.
Now we’ve got water all over the floor and we’re left wondering why we did that.
How is this relevant in an office environment? High stress or anxiety causes exactly the same problems, and many workplaces are hot-beds of both.
If people are calm and the pace is slow then it doesn’t matter how you phrase things, but you don’t know what other people are dealing with. They may be stressed for reasons unrelated to the current situation.
When giving instructions, say what you want, not what you don’t.