Here is the concept:
Research shows that The FIRST FIVE (ish) minutes of any interaction likely will set the stage for the remainder of the interaction.
This is from some research I heard years ago, don’t ask me where, but these results make sense, so I believe it! Ok, they may have said the first THREE, but man that is FAST! SO, being the realist I always always always am, we are going with Five.
Have you noticed this in your own life? That the first several minutes of an interaction, of a transition, of an event tend to set the TONE for what happens next?
You get out of bed grumpy: what happens next?
You get out of bed with a smile, or a positive thought for the day: what happens next?
Someone walks into the room with a smile: what happens next?
Someone walks into the room with a frown: what happens next?
If you are thinking, “Oh crap I don’t want to deal with Susan today!” what happens with you see Susan?
Those first few minutes when you get to work and are thinking “crap I’m late! I’m going to be in trouble now! Then you see your boss and RUN the other way” IMPACTs your workday, doesn’t it?
Those first few minutes when you walk through the door at the end of the day thinking “what crap am I going to have to deal with today?!” IMPACT your evening, don’t they?
Of course they do, I call this DUH research, because we didn’t need a big expensive research project to tell us what we already know:
The FIRST FIVE minutes MATTER (for better or worse!)
The good news is:
We have MANY First Fives
This means we have chance after chance to CHANGE our day, to CHANGE our mood, to CHANGE how things GO, even to change how we FEEL…to change the First Five, so that the rest of the event/meeting/interaction goes BETTER.
So, let’s think of some “First Five’s” we have in a typical day:
Waking up
Morning routine
Interact with housemate/loved one
Get in the car
Get to work/school/destination
Go into our destination
See individuals for the first time in the day (each person presents a new chance at the first five!)
Start a task/check email/engage with a project
Go on break
Come back from break
Back to our projects/tasks
Lunch
Back from lunch
Back to projects
Getting ready to leave work
Leaving work
Getting in the car
Commuting
Pulling into the driveway
Walking into the house
Seeing loved ones/roommates/pets
Preparing dinner
Eating dinner
Engaging in conversations
Settling in for the night
Evening routine
Getting ready for bed
Getting IN to bed
Doing what you doooo in bed 😊
I’m sure your list will look different, but I’m equally sure you can find MANY “First Five” moments in any given day.
Think of it this way:
Each “First Five minutes of an interaction, a transition, an event etc… is YOUR chance to set the STAGE for the rest of the interaction! A chance to Influence, to change, to even guide (to some extent) what happens next. How that First Five goes can change our mood, impact the moods of others and can move things (when done well) in a positive direction.
In short:
Focusing on the First Five minutes of any interaction can CHANGE that interaction!
Now I know, we get STUCK sometimes in a Cycle of Insanity. This time the cycle is:
NOT preparing at all for the First Five, then being SURPRISED when things do NOT go well.
Or
Thinking that the First Five do NOT count, that we cannot influence what happens next, that we have NO influence over how things “go” where they “go” or how things turn out.
or
Being surprised (or unaware) that how WE come in to that First Five has an IMPACT on the interaction, the person AND the outcome.
AND
Having our interactions go badly over and over, doing NOTHING differently, and still expecting a different result!
It looks like this:
I got up this morning and “they” were in a bad mood! I don’t understand why, they did not stub their toe on the way to the shower, I did!
Or
I got to work and sure I was running late and was grumpy when I ran in, but I don’t understand why “they” acted snippy like they did!
Or
I know, I could maybe have been more prepared for the meeting but really, I don’t know why others weren’t more prepared, or why it went off track like it did!
The Cycle is not seeing OUR PART, not seeing we CAN and DO have an influence (good or bad) on how things GO. the second part of the cycle, as is always the case, is NOT DOING ANYTHING DIFFERENT, but STILL expecting a different result!
Let’s play with a few First Fives:
Actual FIRST Five of your day: waking up
You wake up grumpy, and before you even get out of bed you are thinking “I wonder what crap I’ll have to deal with today”
THEN:
You stub your toe on the way to the shower and say, “TERRIBLE way to start the day!”
You grumble at your loved one who grumbles back and says, “why aren’t you more careful!” Or “I told you last night to put those shoes away!!!” you think “GREAT it’s going to be another one of THOSE days! I don’t know why THEY can’t be in a better mood!”
And your day starts out awful!
First Five Morning Routine:
You spill coffee on your shirt you think “I’m a total CLUTZ now I’ll be late for work and my boss will be pissed!”
or
Your car doesn’t have gas you think “I am SUCH an idiot; I didn’t get gas yesterday!”
On and on it goes! NONE of it GOOD!
THEN, you head to work, taking these “First Five” feelings with you. This is a version of the addition factor: The YUCK from one “first five” carries over to the next “First Five” and the next and the next. You walk in to work grumbling and uhappy, a frown on your face and LOOKING for the NEXT thing to be MAD about!
First Five at work.
You walk in and see Susan thinking “Susan is the LAST person I want to see!” you grumble at her, and she grumbles back. YOU think SUSAN is the problem!
Or
You see your boss, try to avoid them, but see them look at their watch and the “my boss is going to be pissed!” that you took with you from this morning, impacts how you behave next, and NOT in a good way. Maybe you defend yourself or justify why you are late, of avoid them for as long as you can. Maybe even adding in “they SHOULD understand! This company is unreasonable!” Making things WORSE, not better.
Lets jump to the end of the day, coming HOME first five:
Let’s say you have a day FULL of “First Fives” that did NOT go well, where you are grumbled at, meetings went awry, interactions that were unpleasant, generally what we call a “bad day” (really a series of bad “First Fives” that lead to negative after negative followed by negative added on top of negative). Now you have this MOUNTAIN of YUCK, this compilation of negative experiences and feelings you have basically been COLLECTING all day (not on purpose, just how it works sometimes).
Now, you pull into the driveway and think: “what fresh hell is waiting for me inside the house?” You may feel defeated, exhausted, unappreciated, just generally like CRAP. Then, you walk into the house. What happens next?
Do you SMILE at your loved one, and greet them with a nice kiss and a hug and ask about their day?
PROBABLY NOT!
It’s more likely that I will ignore them, or say something snarky, unkind or even cruel. You likely don’t even MEAN what you say! Its just that after a day FULL of YUCK we walk in the door, our guts tilled with that YUCK and HOME tends to be where we, well, THROW UP all that yuck!
And the result, you guessed it, our loved ones often respond by throwing up all THIER yuck from the day and the EVENING is RUINED! Or, at least NOT what we would like it to be.
So, let’s AVOID ALL THAT!!!! Let’s approach our First Fives in a whole new way. Let’s FOCUS on making those First Five’s COUNT, on doing them WELL, so when we get home at the end of the day we DO smile, greet our loved one(s) with a kiss and ask how their day was!
I’m going to assume I’ve at least partly sold you on the notion that the First Five minutes of any event/conversation/interaction/transition/meeting are IMPORTANT and can influence what happens next. OR at least you see it as important enough to give it SOME attention and important enough to look at.
FIRST what I want you to do is LOOK, look at your first fives. What does your list look like? REALLY look, I bet you have LOTS. Remember it’s any change, its any transition, any event, conversation, on and on.
Now start to think about how you went IN to those first fives? How those first fives WENT, what happened next?
We aren’t looking we aren’t looking at making any changes right now, this is more about SEEING what you are CURRENTLY doing and how it is working (or not working) for you. You can’t change something you can’t see, so TAKE A LOOK.
Maybe you will see you do GREAT and have lots of positive interactions. if so GO YOU! Maybe you’ll find that you don’t do so great, that there are more negatives than there are positives. I will bet, wh you discover is you’d like to do, different.
If you want to have more positive outcomes, think more positive things, have more moments that go well then come back for part 2, where we will look at how to do just that!
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