I just caught a section of Derren Brown’s ‘trick or treat’ program on Channel 4 and the theme was negative reinforcement.

He was conducting an experiment with a tight rope walker, a good one at that, not only could he walk a tight rope, he could skip at the same time. . . . . . .

After seeing the guy do his stuff on the high wire Derren Brown asked him to repeat the performance, BUT while thinking “I must NOT fall”. The “Do NOT fall” message was reinforced by adding an inflatable crash mat and Derren Brown repeated the instruction “Do NOT fall” several times and just before he started.

Guess what ?

The same tight rope walker who had a moment ago walked the high wire, skipped with a skipping rope and all without any safety net “went to pot”. His balance was poor, his movements less accurate and eventually he fell to the mat.

This graphically demonstrates how focusing on a negative element of your performance simply reinforces that negative. In the case of the tight rope walker, focusing on “not falling” caused him to eventually fall.

So in a simple skiing example, when your ski instructor says “Don’t let your hands drop back” and you keep that as your focus on your next run, as likely as not you’ll end up doing exactly the thing you were trying to avoid and the instructor was trying to address.

For success it’s far more effective to focus on the positive. In the case of the “hands” a more helpful instruction from the Instructor, and focus for you could be “Keep your hands forward”.

It’s all to easy for instructors to fall into the trap of using ‘Negative’ instructions with their clients, so should your Instructor say “don’t do” such and such, gently turn the request around and ask them to tell you what you should be doing !

ps. It should be possible to see the program again for 30 days using C4s on demand service – see http://www.4od.com