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Comment by rivo | Hacker News Reader

I don't quite remember where I heard this and whether or not it was a joke, but a skydiving instructor told this story where his students were supposed to land on a plain empty field. But there was one tree somewhere on this field. And whenever he cautioned his students not to land on that tree, invariably, at least one student would manage to land exactly on it. When he didn't mention it, it wouldn't happen.

With children, I find it's almost always a better strategy to focus on the positive sides of an experience. Of course, it's more difficult when they're already afraid of something (maybe through their friends, a previous experience, or the parents themselves). But there are lots of blank slates and it's one of the great parts of being a parent to let them write something positive on it instead of tainting it with fear.

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Can't remember where i read this (so certainly don't take this as an absolute truth), but all movement tend to strongly follow line of sight. If you drive and look intently at an obstacle to make sure you'll avoid it... chances are you'll hit it. Skiers hitting easy-to-miss trees are frequent.

My personal theory is that if you intently focus on something to make sure you avoid it (physically or psychologically), you're naturally aiming for a near-hit: you're trying to _closely_ avoid the thing rather than missing it by a mile when not even paying attention to it

This was something that they talked about on the show Canada's Worst Driver. One of the keys to avoiding hitting obstacles on the road was to look where you want to go, not at the obstacle.

Rings true to me. Nothing more annoying when playing golf for example than someone telling you to watch out for the ditch on the right just before you hit your teeshot!

This is one of the key things I remember from when I was first learning to drive: Don't actually think about turning the steering wheel; just look to where you want to go and let the steering happen.

I also remember being told to look ahead a few hundred feet, not at the road directly in front of you. This is because you will naturally turn in a smooth arc, instead of constantly adjusting your steering every second while hunting all over the road.

It's like learning to hit a baseball (at a little league level). You don't try to think about where you should swing. You just look at the ball and swing. Your mind unconsciously does the math for you.

That doesn't really work when the pitchers are throwing fast since you have to predict where to swing. But it really works for early levels of the game.

As for movement following line of site, I've felt that. I took an instructional (dual) hang glider ride and at one point the instructor told me to look right cause we were going to enter a right hand turn. And then told me to look straight now that we were going to level out.

And once it was done, he was like "great, good job". Turns out he had literally been hands off the whole time. What I had thought had been me just seeing where he was sending us, actually corresponded to my own movements making it happen.

This is often called "target fixation". The natural inclination is to head towards where you are looking - this can cause a fear driven feedback loop driving you right into an obstacle.

Supposedly, Adam and Eve were told they were free to do anything except one thing, we know what they ended up doing...

> With children, I find it's almost always a better strategy to focus on the positive sides of an experience

I spent my entire childhood trying to make this clear to my parents, but I never succeeded. For a lot of people I think this is just very difficult, if not impossible.

When learning to ride a motorcycle they taught us about target fixation [1]: looking at an object in the road and then hitting it even though you're trying to avoid it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Target_fixation

I find something similar happens when mowing the lawn. When I try to mow in straight lines by pushing next to the previous row, I end up with wavy shapes. But when I fixate on a distant reference point beyond the lawn (like a rock or weed sticking up above the grass) and just walk staring at it, I end up with perfectly straight lines. It's uncanny.

This is also a trick for drawing surprisingly straight lines on paper. If you start at a point and watch where you're drawing, you'll end up with a terrible line. If, however, you start at a point, focus on your target, and move the pencil towards the target, the result is surprisingly good. Also works for circles.

It's especially a problem with motorcycles because many of your natural fear based reactions are exactly wrong for the situation.

Example: you come into a corner a little fast, see you are going a bit wide, fixate on the ditch/edge of road, get afraid and hit the brakes - which stands the bike up and drives you wide; sometimes right off the road.

The right response here is to look away from the ditch to the line you want on the other side of the lane and lean into it more. Easier said than done if you are afraid or anxious.

> With children, I find it's almost always a better strategy to focus on the positive sides of an experience.

I find it's a lot more complex than that. I have had that backfire where if I focus too much on the positive aspects, my kid doesn't feel that their fears are heard and understood.

Kids and emotions are complex and highly variable. There's rarely simple solutions. You kinda just have to throw your whole brain and heart at the problem and navigate it as best as you can.

I heard something similar but in relations to soccer players and the goalie when taking a penalty shot: "do not hit the goalie!"

The point made was that it's impossible to not-do something, you can only do.

So when told "do not do X", the "not" disappears and it effectively translates into "do X". And so the soccer player being told not to hit the goalie ends up doing just that.

The moral of the story was to focus on what you should do, rather on what you should not do.

This. The subconcious/animal doesn't get negation, we need to translate and try to do it with our conciousness/neocortex, which is pretty weak in comparison. Wasn't there a term like ego depletion? To many Nos over a day leaving no self discipline left at the end of the day? Same goes for should/should not, but maybe worse, if you don't/do do it (which you probably will) you feel bad afterwards.

Telling what to focus on works with kids, drunks and adults.

> With children, I find it's almost always a better strategy to focus on the positive sides of an experience.

Which, according to the article, was the second step of Fred Rogers' rewriting process.

The effect you describe in your example is called target fixation.

Sounds kind of like the advice given to new drivers: look where you want to go, not at oncoming traffic. If you fixate on something, you’ll tend towards it.

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