Let’s get excited!
“The words we use or lower our performance and that of the people around us”
0:00
/
0:00
Let's get excited!
There is a great chapter in Adam Grant’s book Originals that illustrates the power of words, which made me think of all the parents of children getting ready to sit their exams!
In his research he gives a case study where students who were fearful of public speaking were randomly separated into two groups. Group one was briefed to ‘be excited’ before they made their speech and the others were told to ‘be calm’. The ‘be excited’ group gained in confidence and outperformed their “be calm” colleagues in every test.
Even more interestingly it seems that telling someone ‘don’t be anxious’ actually leads to a worse performance than not giving any advice at all. In contrast, students in the test group who were instructed to ‘get excited’ outperformed them by almost 30%!
Now, please don’t call me up if your child still does poorly but do reflect how useful this is for our own inner talk as well as that for people around us. My guess is that people who wake up each day telling themselves how exciting the day ahead will be, are more successful and happier than those who don’t!
