Do the opposite
Some call it The George Costanza Effect off the back of an episode of Seinfeld where George, who is regularly down on his luck decides that if all his instincts and decisions have led nowhere then maybe, he should do the opposite. You can watch the 2-minute clip below.
If you think about it. It makes perfect sense. Or at least, it does to me.
By and large, I am who and where I am because of the decisions I’ve made.
Am I where I want to be in areas in my life? Am I doing what I want to be doing? Am I seeing the benefit in the things I’m doing?
Surely, if the answer is no then maybe I should try something else?
So I’ve been doing this lately.
Partly inspired by the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, partly motivated by my experience of the pandemic and of course this clip, I’ve been trying to do the opposite of many things that I’ve been doing for some time.
To stop feeling overwhelmed, I’ve been practising saying ‘no’ more rather than ‘yes’ to everything — embracing JOMO (the joy of missing out) rather than FOMO (the fear of missing out).
To stop feeling sluggish and negative in the morning I’ve been practising having early nights, not drinking alcohol and testing healthier morning routines like proper stretching and taking a walk before working rather than getting up and immediately checking social media and emails.
There are other things, but you get the idea.
I guess I’ve been practising what Greg refers to as ‘reverse pilots’. I’ve been testing ‘not’ doing things as well as practising as the clip suggests, doing the opposite.
Heading into the festive season in 2021 I was feeling pretty rough. Mentally and physically a bit burned out and low. So, seeing as The Netherlands was in lockdown at the time, I decided to start my ‘reverse pilots’ in mid-November.
I can say with all confidence that it’s helped, massively. A lot of what I’ve piloted has stuck and evolved into good habits. And as we head out of January I’m feeling noticeably healthier and happier. I’m definitely feeling more focused without feeling overwhelmed so much.
For example. In later autumn I decided that I’d like to learn to surf, so I booked a lesson. It was a humbling experience. The teacher was confident that he could teach anyone to stand up on a surfboard in one lesson. I didn’t. He had to try to teach me 3 different ways and the end result was that I managed to get one to one knee and one foot, like a bended knee and then fell off. I felt like crap. I was clearly out of shape, overweight and stiffer than the board I was trying to stand on.
My determination to not feel so s**t about the experience helped me to think about what's stopping me from doing that? What do I need to do differently? What do I need to start? This is where the stop being so sedentary and do the opposite action came in — I started doing Yoga with Adriene, a 30 day online (free) course for 20 minutes a day when I woke up instead of getting out of bed and slumping into a chair with toast and social media.
2 weeks after that soul-destroying lesson, I stood for about 10 seconds having got up in white water (a broken wave) and now 10 weeks later, I’ve been able to get up (not pop up, get up) 80% of the time and hoping to consistently surf unbroken waves by late spring. Oh, and I’m still doing the Yoga. Pretty good I think.
I know this all sounds overly chipper and yes, maybe I’m on the crest of a wave rather than being tumbled by the swell for the moment (pun totally intended). But hey, as Carol Dweck says ‘becoming is better than being’ so I accept that there will be bumps in the road.
As Derek Sivers says, this might be ‘obvious to you but it might be amazing to others.’ So I’m sharing in the hope it might be a useful way to refocus if you’re not seeing the results you’d like to see in whatever you're doing. To me, this shift in attitude has been amazing.
Doing the opposite in today's world is fraught with fear. We’ve been taught to act and behave in certain ways. When we consider alternatives we get a rush of anxiety, ‘what ifs’. We’re scared of ridicule and judgement. Scared of standing out. This is something I’m defiantly aware of and again, trying to do the opposite of.
George: Yeah, I should do the opposite, I should.
Jerry: If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
