Before I talk about today’s topic, if you are over the age of 30, I’d like your (anonymous) opinion please

During mentoring and coaching others through the years I have come across an extremely simple phenomenon that has far reaching effects. I observe it within myself too and this short article is to help you identify and handle it effectively for your personal growth.

Starts at Childbirth

When it comes to raising humans from childbirth, one simple idea that I try to propagate is “don’t label the child, label the action”. My parents are incredibly yogic in their ways and I do not remember them ever telling any of their four children “you are a naughty child” or “you are awesome”. Admonishment or praise was for an action and so “that was a silly thing to do” or “that was very well done” was much more common. They did not read books on child-raising in the 60s, but are, fortunately, gifted with incredible wisdom.

Labelling is Human Nature

It is natural for you as a human to label – label just about everything – even to slot someone you’ve just met for 5 seconds into a category. It happens automatically. It is a natural survival mechanism of our successful evolution – to separate the poisonous berries from the safe ones, to judge what animal will prey on you versus what you can hunt to eat.

Unfortunately, the natural tendency to label yourself often ends up limiting your growth. It is bad enough when others do it to you from a young age and perhaps you cannot do much to stop that. But what can often be worse is self-labelling. Associating yourself with a label is also natural, driven, perhaps, by a desire to understand oneself and have self-identity. But, even the labels that are supposedly good, taken beyond reasonable levels, often limit you. Intrigued? Read on…

Don’t Ignore the Beast

Since labelling is a natural phenomenon, to advise you “don’t ever label” is foolish. Being aware of the limitations of labelling is what I would like you to be aware of. It started right from the day you were born, and will carry on, well, forever! It is ubiquitous, so having made you aware of it, you will start noticing it just about everywhere. And it is insidious, so you should not ignore it or treat it lightly.

The list of examples of labelling is endless. I shall talk you through a handful where I will show you the subtle ways in which each can have an impact that is often negative.

Labelling in Daily Life 

Condemnation
Teacher to your 5 year old child – “you are a naughty boy” – does your innocent child separate his action from his personality? Is it healthy for your child to think of himself as being anti-social? Wouldn’t “you are capable of so much good, why such naughty behaviour?” create a better outcome including positive introspection by the child?

Non-positive
Child overhears their mother telling a friend – “my daughter is great at art, but she struggles at maths”. Here, it’s just the current ability that is being labelled but what often happens is that the child gets better at art as the years progress, and she has an increasingly negative attitude towards maths. How about if the mother had been overheard saying “…and she’s improving noticeably in maths”? Perhaps the child would have taken the “maths label” on more positively?

Value destruction
Head trader to new MBA grad on trading desk – “oh, you can do programming??  cool, then you can…”. The super-bright grad then begins to hide the fact that he has this invaluable skill because he will get slotted into geekier roles in the future that he might be good at but does not want to do. Did the head trader consider that the smart kid on the desk can easily handle 12 variables in his head when making a trading decision compared to his own 6?

Growth limiting
“You’re a medical surgeon, why on earth would you waste time doing a Maths degree for fun?” is typical of the type of comment that makes most people in the city of Mumbai, where I spend a chunk of my time, quite homogenous in their aspirations. For a city with incredible ethnic diversity, diversity in aspiration has been fairly limited. Things are changing for the good, more diversity in people’s life goals, but there’s still a lot of resistance to the idea that someone can be good and enjoy two apparently very different things. Why label and limit yourself and others?

Self-demotivating
“I’m terrible at … (you fill in the blank)” – as soon as you say this, you have a label on yourself that reduces the likelihood of growth in that area. Compare that with “I could be better at … with deliberate practice”. Might that instill a healthier approach to the challenge?

Hate
“I hate going to the gym, I prefer outdoor workouts” – I hear this being said for a variety of reasons. More often than not it’s because the person had a poorly qualified trainer and a painful experience with strength training, or because they are lazy when it comes to exercise and they see the gym as hard work. In any case, the “hate labelling” closes the person’s mind to an incredible life-changing experience. Remember, there’s a reason our parents told us “don’t use strong words like ‘hate’ loosely”.

Wilful Blindness
“I’m an ultra distance runner” sounds like a cool label to give yourself. If you dig deeper, you will find that among many recreational runners, the escape from improving the quality of one’s training runs to quantity (high mileage) is a way out of the more difficult disciplined focus on the quality of runs. This, in time, leads to injuries, time-out from running, and a host of other non-positive issues…The anchoring on the self-labelling creates wilful blindness. Might a race like this one that requires you to use your brain before you use your legs be better for your development as a runner? As with anything, perhaps before we do a lot of something, we should first learn to do it well.

Big Picture Blindness
“I’m a star employee” is such lovely positive label. But what happens when it takes on a size out of proportion with reasonable balanced living? Does your child really care that you won “manager of the year” or would she have preferred an evening game of badminton with you? Always remember, never forget… no one on their deathbed wishes they had spent an extra hour in the office!

I could go on, but you will, for the rest of today and hopefully beyond, notice similar examples cropping up in your interaction with others and with conversations with yourself. I hope these few off-the-cuff examples give you a better handle on how to spot the beast I call “Labels”. Tame it or become its prey…let them not be limiting labels!

Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.

Hey! There’s a simple question for you at the end of this, don’t forget to scroll down and click on your choice!

Should I really pay much attention to a podium finish?

Most clients around the world whom I mentor into better states of physical existence are surprised (and, perhaps think I am joking) when I say that I have never won a prize for sports in school… ever! No, not even third place! Soon after my last birthday I ran my first race as a ‘veteran’, where my competition was no longer 18 year olds but men my age (45+), and won a place on the podium (2nd place in an 8km race on flat roads).  A few weeks later I ran my second race (25km on hilly roads) and found myself taking home a trophy for second place again. Sure, it’s exciting to win, but this isn’t what drives or motivates me – the novelty of winning, as I expected, wears out soon. Besides that, I’m all too aware of the contribution of luck and skill or effort.

Effort and Luck
In most human endeavours, your natural predisposition (your genetic material) decides ultimate potential. On top of that if you add regular development of skill, and volume of deliberate practice, when combined with appropriate psychological training you can move up the ranking table. For instance, if you happen to pick an endurance sport and are genetically predisposed to doing well at it (e.g. a high percentage of slow twitch muscle fibres along with a strong heart relative to your body mass) then your presence on the podium after the finish is still a function of who else entered the race. If you were lucky and the faster competitors in your age group were elsewhere when you raced, then the result of your effort is your absolute race time – the podium finish, on the other hand, was luck, not hugely dependent on skill or effort.

Where are you in the population?

Societal improvements preferred to Individual wins
What really interests me is the real impact of such races on society and society’s overall levels of fitness. For instance, the fast exploding distance running phenomenon in urban centres in India has done wonders for raising the life expectancy of the residents in those centres over the short, medium and longer term. That it is becoming a part of the culture, albeit not mainstream (yet), is undeniable. May that long continue – the benefits will become more apparent as more time passes.

Extrinsic versus Intrinsic Motivation
An emphasis in our culture of awarding prizes to individual winners (a form of extrinsic motivation) does nothing to guarantee significant long term health benefits. You too will have visited friends whose mantelpieces are loaded with such trophies along with the commentary “in school and college I used to be a national level blah blah…(I’ve usually zoned out by this time)” but where, now, the couch and TV remote are used a lot more than the easily accessible apartment building gym. On the other hand, competition with yourself (a form of intrinsic motivation) has been shown by neuroscientists to have significantly higher success at ensuring long term sustainability in your improving at anything, including your health and fitness.

I don’t care how fast you are – I care that you improve

My Heroes
For me, my heroes in distance running are not the East Africans who have been dominating distance running for decades.  My heroes are the busy urban professionals and housewives who juggle many balls to continue to improve their health relative to what they were (intrinsic) – not relative to others (extrinsic). Most will never win more than a participation medal, but for me, they are my true heroes and heroines. Perhaps you too are one of them?

What better could we focus on?
Every year, despite aging, I have a personal target to run faster, lift heavier, be lighter, move with greater agility, coordination and balance. But, of what good is that to the rest of the world? Perhaps not very much. And so, if I have to look beyond myself for a purpose that benefits society, a question pops into my head “would I trade a podium finish for a 1% improvement in everyone’s health?”. The answer necessarily varies from person to person – for me the answer is a resounding “yes”. Perhaps that choice itself is not so selfless after all. An improvement in health places a lower burden on society and I also argue that a healthier population is better for the environment too. Of course, a 1% improvement in everyone’s health is itself a significant improvement – difficult but not impossible to achieve. So, how could we do that?

Where might we all focus more?

Better Design

Most problems, large or small, are best solved by good design – and that needs thought more than money. (Remember the joke, or perhaps it was true, about how NASA spent millions inventing a pen that would work in outer space? the Russians cleverly just used pencils!) The same is true when designing motivational tools for public health and fitness.
Public Races
One area of application is the design of public fitness competitions (e.g. distance races), to increase participation by the general public. For instance
– greater recognition for improvement in relative performance (your own performance in last year’s race versus this year’s could win you a trophy even though your overall rank went down from 145 to 165!);
– diverting some money that would normally go to the traditional winners towards better route guidance for the stragglers on tricky race routes;
– better quality and sufficient race-hydration and healthier post-race snacks even for those who finish last.
These are but a few examples and they do not even target the disinterested population – even a little more thought and careful execution could yield noticeable benefits to the larger population, especially those at the dangerous right tail of the distribution.
Individuals Can Make a Difference
At an individual level you, yes you, can contribute too. Better “improvers” (note, I didn’t say “performers”) could instruct by leading by example – demonstrating process that leads to improvements. In fact, those who stagnate because of complacency in guaranteed repeated podium finishes set a poor example. And, let’s not forget, being good at something does not mean you can teach it well. If you can demonstrate good process (teaching by example) anyone can take advantage of your effort no matter where they might be in the population performance “bell curve”. And no matter where you might be in the curve.
Just do it…Podium finish not required!

And now, I’d like your (anonymous) opinion please?

Dr Purnendu Nath spends his waking hours focusing on helping individuals and organizations reach their goals, to make the world a better place. He speaks, writes and advises on topics such as finance, investment management, discipline, education, self-improvement, exercise, nutrition, health and fitness, leadership and parenting.