The No Nots Game

Mar 13, 2018

There’s a game I’ve learned to play which I have found immensely helpful. It originally came from Miles Robinson over at Living. He calls it the No Nots game, and I’ve taught it to several of my friends when their negative self-talk was getting to me. Essentially, the game is simple and yet it’s surprisingly, wonderfully challenging. I’ve learned that it works best to start the game and brain-training with writing, then as your skill improves you can take the game into your speech and ultimately thinking. Before I explain the game, here’s a quickie assignment: write down a short paragraph exploring your choice of these questions.

What do you value most about yourself?
What kind of person do you want to be?
What does your ideal situation look like?
What is your personal creed?

Once you’ve finished and you’re satisfied with the answer, go through and circle all of the “not” references. For every single one of them, rephrase the sentence. Keep going until all “nots” are gone. If you really want to challenge yourself, go until all negatives have been removed as well. The goal is to remove both the nots and the negative, limitation focused thinking.

When I first started playing this game, it was a real struggle to rephrase sentences. I found myself replacing the negative with another negative. So I’ll warn that it’s likely to be quite challenging at first, but the ultimate intention of the game is to change the way that you think. Know also that the subconscious mind sorta overlooks the word “not” anyway. How many times have you left a single word out of a sentence and it just so happens that it’s “not”.

As a funny historical reference illustrating this is simply human nature rather than a modernism, in 1631 a printer was publishing a copy of the King James Bible. It was all perfect, save for one word. One tiny little word, left out of a strategic location. This Bible instructed people that one of the Ten Commandments was “Thou shalt commit adultery.” Oops! It was dubbed the Wicked Bible and a few copies still exist today.

Indeed, leaving out the “not” is considered one of the most common and innocent of mistakes (unless you’re printing a Bible of course) and many writing style guides advise writers to avoid using them entirely. This mental ability of the brain to completely overlook this little negative word is why I always try to “remember something” rather than “don’t forget something”. Rather than being prompted to not forget, my brain instead hears “forget” and thinks DONE! I’d prefer to see you set yourself up for success by using positives. You’ll likely remember more of them, and you’ll start seeing potentials where before were limitations.

Once you’ve begun to master this seemingly simple game, I suspect that you will also start to become aware of just how frequently others use it as well. I know that for me it became glaringly obvious to the point that I started prompting friends to reword their ideas, guiding them away from “not” thinking. Notice I mentioned limitations above? When you start to hear the word in the thought process of others, it becomes increasingly clear just how much “not” is a limiter, a hard stop. When it comes to my potential, I want doors, sign posts, guides, guard rails maybe, paths forward, roads, bridges. I now choose to see these instead of barriers, and I’d love for this barrier to be removed from all of your potential as well. Know that when this game starts to really sink in, your thinking changes. Change your thinking, change everything.

The Audio

The Video

For a change of pace, enjoy the video of this episode on the Stepping Up to Your Potential  YouTube Channel, featuring my cat watching the fish.

About the Featured Image

Taken at the turn-around train stop for the Skunk Train near Glass Beach, CA amongst the gorgeous Redwood giants. These heavy ropes had been around the trees so long that they were strangling them. I thought this was a perfect metaphor for how “not” works to strangle the full potential of our thoughts.