Autosuggestion

In this short post I will describe two methods of autosuggestion that I used successfully when coaching basketball. It’s a post I have been contemplating for a while now, wondering if it had any value in the field of software testing, but while hearing Kim Knup‘s great talk on positivity at TestBash, I couldn’t help but think of autosuggestion. Kim’s talk in a nutshell was about being positive and getting out of negativity (well, that’s very small nutshell I know, but I urge you to watch the talk over at the ministry of testing when it will be online). That is why I feel that some parts of this post might be interesting for some people.

Back in my coaching days there were games when both teams were well trained, knew their basics and their X’s and O’s. They were pretty much even. In this occasions it boiled down to the mental aspect of the game. To help players being mentally strong, I used autosuggestion techniques as part of mental coaching sessions. Autosuggestion is about telling your brain something and tricking it into believing what you tell it.

Mental Stop

People sometimes get into a mental downward spiral along the lines of “I can’t do that”, “This is too hard” and so on. These are unwanted thoughts that need to be stopped. And the best way to do so is to think “STOP!” or even say it aloud when mere thinking isn’t enough. This has to be followed by thinking of and focusing on something positive that you know you are good at, e.g. writing great bug reports if that’s something you are good at. It is important to make a habit of this and reflecting on this. With my players I would do so at the end of each training session for several weeks and ask them if they really stopped every negative thought straight away. As a tester I might ask myself for example while debriefing exploratory testing sessions or simply at the end of every day. This might take some time, but if you always stop thoughts the same way, you will be able to get rid of them with the help of the keyword “STOP!”.

Pretending

Pretending is about getting into a positive mood or getting motivated if you actually aren’t. The deal is pretty simple: pretend for five minutes that you are positive and/or motivated. This works more often than not, because it again tricks the brain into something that isn’t there (stupid brain). By doing so, you are setting an initial impulse and if you remember your physics classes there is something like momentum conservation. Well, it seems that works on a mental level, too.

These two seem pretty simple and they actually are, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work. To the contrary, but you have to put some effort into them and use them for a while. Our brains don’t fall for it at the first time, but after a while a priming effect will kick in and the brain will eventually fall for it.