Overcoming the must

When completing tasks or dealing with people, remember to

• replace the words “I must” with “It would be nice if …”.

He had set his sights high for this competition. The time would come in 30 minutes. He had to jump over the 2-meter mark. He felt a great deal of inner tension. What if he didn’t succeed? A feeling of fear spread. There was no alternative for him! What if he didn’t make it? No, it had to be 2 meters!

He realized how the demands on his own performance put him under a lot of pressure. How could he alleviate the pressure? Did he really have to? He thought that it would be nice if he could do it today. This new view brought a noticeable sense of relief. The pressure lifted slightly. Even with this new view, it would be possible for him to reach 2 meters. Another aspect occurred to him: would he be happy if he could do it with the claim “I have to”? Good question! Because the 2 meters were the least he had to achieve with this requirement. He decided to take the new view: it would be nice if I could do it and looked forward to the next jump.

She often felt tense and depressed among her colleagues. The feeling was particularly strong when her colleagues were not friendly towards her or looked funny. She thought: “All my colleagues must like me and it’s terrible if they don’t! Her working days were correspondingly stressful if she didn’t receive a friendly smile. It couldn’t go on like this, because she realized that she thought about it every day.

She asked herself the following questions.

1.  Where was the law formulated that she had to be liked by all her colleagues?
2. What was wrong with someone not liking her? Was that terrible? No!
3.  She remembered that she didn’t like every colleague either.
4. How high a price was she prepared to pay to be liked by everyone? Then she thought: It would be nice if I were liked or appreciated by many colleagues. But I don’t like all my colleagues either. And if they can live with it, so can I.

She decided to keep a tally sheet in a little booklet to keep track of how often she used the words “I need to be liked” during the day. She would set up 2 columns. In the first column was the thought: I need to be liked. She decided to make a line in the column every time she noticed the thought. In the second column was the new view: It would be nice if I were liked by lots of colleagues. Every time she noticed the thought: I need to be liked, she immediately replaced it with the new view: It would be nice to be liked by as many colleagues as possible. The tension slowly disappeared from her with the new view. The tally sheet allowed her to keep track of how often the thought had occurred and how often she had replaced it with the new view.

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