Chapter 9: The Power of Parsimonious Positive Action

Overview

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels would be churches and poor men s cottages princes palaces.

William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Two identical twins, Julie and Sandra, are very shy. A great mutual friend is giving a party they really want to attend , so they decide to cure their shyness . They turn to the self-help section of their local bookstore.

Julie buys a bestseller about positive thinking by a famous motivational coach. She learns that she must suppress her shyness. Whenever she feels shy, bing , she should dismiss the thought. She should tell herself that she isn t shy any more, that inside her introvert personality there is an extrovert that can be liberated.

On the afternoon of the party, Julie is having second thoughts. She is thinking, I always feel awkward at parties, let s not go. But she tries to stimulate some positive thinking. She says to herself, Nonsense, my girl! You can be the life and soul of the party! Let s pretend you re not shy at all and you won t be.

Just before leaving, to calm her nerves and help awaken the extrovert within, she has a large vodka and tonic.

In the taxi with Sandra, Julie feels all pumped up. Positive thinking is working! But when they arrive at the party, she senses the vodka wearing off, the bar is crowded, and she is anxious as usual. She tries to feel positive, but after 15 minutes she hasn t talked to anyone , not even Sandra, who s deep in conversation with a gorgeous young man. Not wishing to interrupt and feeling as bad as ever, Julie leaves after half an hour . The only answer is: no more parties! Perhaps she can meet a man at work.

At breakfast , Julie asks Sandra how she got on. Great! says Sandra, noticing Julie s depressed face too late. How, Julie asks, did you manage to suppress your shyness? The thing is, I didn t. When you were all bubbly in the taxi, I was as anxious as ever and dreading the party. But the book I bought told me not to worry about feeling timid, just to take some positive action. So I said to myself , ˜However bad you feel, Sandra, you are going to go up to the first man you like and introduce yourself and say something, anything. You are going to do this within 10 minutes of arriving. If the first man isn t friendly, that s OK, try two other men and if that doesn t work, you don t have to worry about talking to anyone else ” at least you ve tried. So I saw this cute guy with the blue shirt and asked him to dance . I was watching carefully and I think he half-smiled at me. Anyway, he said yes, and introduced me to his friends . After two dances, I wasn t nervous any more.

What was the book? Oh, I ve got it upstairs, some funny title with numbers in it.

Positive thinking may work for the small minority of people who are natural optimists ” but they don t need help. The problem with positive thinking ” and with much advice from self- help gurus ” is that it can be unrealistic and lead us to deny our emotions. Kidding ourselves that black is white does not usually work for long.

We cannot change how we feel about life very easily or quickly, nor do we need to. All of us are bound to continue having negative emotions: feeling down, anxious, angry , or weak. These emotions are valuable , because they tell us something useful about ourselves.

Emotions should be accepted, not crushed. We should use our deliberate , thinking capacity to talk to our emotions and reason with them. Treat emotions like people with whom we disagree . Instead of interrupting them, have a cup of tea with them, let them have their say, admit your feelings ” and yet resolve to act positively.

Julie attempted to quash her shyness, but it simply popped up again at the party, causing her spirits to sag. Sandra did not beat down her shyness, so she was not depressed when she felt shy. She accepted that she was shy and might well come back from the party feeling bad, but she decided to take a few actions that had the result she wanted. When she took action, she was shy and admitted it to herself. Yet she forced herself to act ” and before long her action had changed everything, including her feelings.

In the Nazi death camps, the writer and therapist Viktor Frankl knew that his chances of survival were slim. He even calculated the odds ” twenty-eight to one against. There was no power in the power of positive thinking at Auschwitz ” being unrealistic led straight to the gas oven.

Yet Frankl acted positively. When I was taken to Auschwitz, he wrote, a manuscript of mine ready for publication was confiscated when in a camp in Bavaria I fell ill with typhus fever , I jotted down on little scraps of paper many notes intended to enable me to rewrite the manuscript, should I live to the day of liberation. I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost manuscript in the dark barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the danger of cardiovascular collapse.

Frankl also composed speeches in his head and imagined himself giving them to audiences after the war, so that the death camps could never recur. Though he thought it extremely unlikely that he would survive, he stopped worrying and took all the positive action he could.

His reconstructed book, Man s Search for Meaning , sold over nine million copies. The Library of Congress voted it one of the ten most influential books of the twentieth century. ^[1]

Viktor Frankl didn t deny his emotions. His book is bleak and realistic about the horrors of camp life. Still, he asked himself, What can I do that might possibly work, that will give me a reason to continue living? And then he acted ” even though most of the time he felt depressed, hungry, and physically tormented. He didn t attempt to think positively, just to act positively.

He noted that other individuals also managed to act positively: The experiences of camp life show man does have a choice of action We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.

If inmates of a concentration camp

can take positive action ,

can t we all?

Next time you feel blue, ask what positive action you can try to change your mood. If you re stumped, try one ” or all ” of these:

• Stand upright, stretch, and smile at yourself in the mirror; then find another person to smile at ” even if it s a stranger!

• Go for a long walk or take some other exercise.

• Perform an act of kindness.

However bad our circumstances or emotions, we can change our lives by a few 80/20 actions ” the relatively easy actions that make such a big difference to our happiness and the happiness of people around us.

The Shakespeare quote at the beginning of the chapter is right: it s a lot more difficult to act than to know what to do. How many times have we all resolved to do something positive, only to resume our normal lives without making that decisive step? To change our lives, we have to make things easier on ourselves ” we have to achieve decisive change, but do it without superhuman effort. This is where the 80/20 Way is so different and so much more effective, for two reasons.

One, the 80/20 Way does not require us to change how we feel . That will come later, naturally, without strain, as our actions produce the desired results.

Two, we don t have to increase the effort and energy we already bring to our daily lives. By focusing on less is more ” the very few things that really matter to us ” we can transform our life while actually exerting less effort and having fewer worries than now. If we are highly selective about what we want and limit ourselves to the key things that express our individuality , we can be lazier and yet act more effectively. By using the idea of more with less, we can find a much better solution that uses less energy.

The secret of 80/20 action is to be parsimonious ^[2] in our positive actions . Be stingy and economical with your energy. There s a limited amount of it. Only use it in those few actions that can really make you happy and powerful.

It s easier to change a few of the things we do than the things we habitually think and feel . Take the few right actions and your feelings will take care of themselves .

All you have to do is reflect, then act:

• Work out what you want: the few things that are most important to you. This is the 80/20 destination.

• Work out the easiest route for you: the few actions that will produce the results you want with the least strain and stress. This is the 80/20 route.

• Take the few most important next steps along the route. This is 80/20 action .

So far in this book, we ve concentrated on the thinking. Now is the time to experience less is more and more with less ” the time to act .

The good news is that we can apply the 80/20 Way to the process of 80/20 action. There s a simple action program that really does work. And here it is, in our final chapter

^[1] Viktor E Frankl (1946, 1984) Man s Search for Meaning , New York: Washington Square Press.

^[2] By parsimonious I mean being economical and therefore highly selective with our actions.