The Clothes Make the Person

The Clothes Make the Person

Brent Engel
Contributing Writer
Direct Energy Solar

Real quick, think of ten things that shape your attitude on a given day.  It probably starts when you get out of bed and continues throughout the day until you go back to bed.  Do you have your list?  Still thinking?

If you are like most people, you listed things like traffic jams, significant other’s attitude, running late, angry boss / customers and etc.  If you examine the list, most of it probably has a negative skew.  If you reread the instructions, you were simply to think of ten things—not ten negative things or ten positive things—the skew was your choice.

We have a survival mechanism that has us think about and analyze most of the situations we are in.  This allows us to check the environment for potential threats.  This mechanism is often called self-talk.

As a survival mechanism, self-talk can keep us from harm, such as when we judge an approaching car is travelling too fast for us to safely cross the street.  It can also keep us from good stuff as well, like when we don’t ask for a second slice of cheesecake because of what others will think.

Self-talk usually has a negative skew and leads us to expect bad things will happen.  When we think bad things will happen, we tend to behave in ways to prepare.  Unfortunately, our preparations sometimes cause those bad things to happen.  It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Self-fulfilling prophesy is the concept that we make our beliefs come true.  Have you heard stories of people feeling better after taking pills that were nothing more than sugar?  Or have you heard of the 1960’s research by Rosenthal and Jacobson who told teachers that certain students were late bloomers.  Although the “late bloomers” were really randomly chosen, they all bloomed.

The self-fulfilling prophesy is constantly working.  For example, suppose you come home and expect your spouse to be angry at you because he/she is always angry.  How do you treat those who are angry at you?  Do you avoid them?  Do you yell at them?  Do you treat them selfishly because they deserve it?  So now you come home and avoid your spouse, or yell or act selfishly.  Your spouse is thinking, “What a jerk, I don’t deserve to be treated like this.  Well two can play this game.”  The next thing you know you are both angry and you really don’t know why.

This idea that self-talk, which is usually negative, shapes our expectations or beliefs and that shapes our reality can be pretty scary if you think about it.  As a business owner, what happens if you expect to lose a bid or not get paid?  How are you behaving to sabotage your business?  As a sales person, what happens if you expect your customers will say “no,” because they don’t want or can’t afford your products?  Are you down-selling or rushing through the presentation because this effort is a “waste of time?”

It’s important to control this self-talk and turn it to a force for good.  The Internet is full of lots of tips to change your thinking and your self-talk.  For example, various authors recommend:

·       Softening the words from, “I’m such a loser for not making such an easy sale,” to “He just wasn’t the right customer at this time.”

·       Thinking of positive words when negative ones fill your head.

·       Keeping a log of self-talk

·       Giving the inner critic a funny name

·       Visualizing success

Another thing we can do is to use the advice from those who look at the way the environment shapes our thoughts.  It’s the old “fake it until you make it” idea expressed by Amy Cuddy.  She suggests:

·       Standing in the superhero pose for a few moments before an important meeting (fists on hips, chest out).

·       Practicing your smiling

·       Using an open stance and making yourself look as big as you can

The final thing we can do is to watch the way we and our teams dress.  While it may seem silly, research shows that simply putting on a lab coat increases a person’s attention.  Clothes and appearance can help us feel more confident and self-assured.  Kia surveyed employees in 2014 to find what helped them feel confident and they found grooming and clothes were at the top of the list.  While I’m not arguing against casual Fridays, I am saying it does appear clothes do indeed make the person.