Coffee House Book Review – “Seeing Red Cars” By Laura Goodrich

One of the common themes I’ve written about on my blog is the key role focus plays in our ability to be successful. But how many of us are actually focusing on what we want to accomplish, as opposed to focusing more on the things we’re trying to avoid? That’s the premise behind the book “Seeing Red Cars – Driving Yourself, Your Team, and Your Organization to a Positive Future” by Laura Goodrich.

Goodrich starts her book examining why 70% of the thoughts we have on any given day revolve around issues we’re trying to avoid or things we don’t want. Referring to findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience, she points out that this tendency toward an avoidance focus is the result of two factors. The first being the social conditioning we received growing up, where well-intentioned parents and teachers taught us not to do certain things out of fear of a negative outcome (“Be careful! You might fall and hurt yourself!”, “If you don’t study this well, you won’t pass this test”), not to mention the common tendency to feel we’re undeserving or incapable of achieving certain goals.

The second factor behind our tendency to focus on avoiding things or situations is our real-life experiences where we encounter something negative or traumatic, leading us to focus on ensuring we don’t do anything that might lead us to a similar situation again.

This doesn’t mean that we have to remain a hostage to our past and not elevate ourselves to a point where we can be more proactive instead of apprehensive in our efforts. After all, recent studies in neuroscience have shown that our brain is far more flexible and capable of being rewired to change how we frame a given situation and subsequently, what we choose to focus on.

Of course, this isn’t about simply thinking good thoughts and suddenly having your wishes fulfilled. As Goodrich points out, there are a number of internal obstacles that can prevent us from making this shift in our focus, obstacles like our fears, wanting to stick to what’s comfortable and familiar, and unproductive habits. In a later chapter, Goodrich addresses each of these internal obstacles and what the reader can do to overcome them as part of the process of moving toward focusing more on what they want to accomplish.

This is one of the reasons why I enjoyed Goodrich’s book; the goal of her book is not simply to get readers to shift their focus towards the goals they want to achieve, but to also recognize the role negative thinking plays in sabotaging our ability to be successful in our efforts.

What’s more, as Goodrich repeats throughout her book, the process of creating this intentional shift from focusing on what we don’t want (avoidance) to focusing on what we want (intentional action) takes time and awareness of our tendency to fall back into familiar patterns.

And this is where the real strength of the book can be found with the inclusion of what’s called the “Red Cars Toolkit”. The toolkit features a number of exercises the reader can use to identify their strengths and passions and using them to develop a clearer picture of what it is they want to accomplish. These exercises also encourage the reader to focus on those elements that are within their ability to control, allowing for a shift from being driven by the instinctual fear-response we naturally have to any form of change, to one where we examine how we can adapt/respond to it in relation to fulfilling the vision we created through these exercises.

More importantly, the exercises in this toolkit are designed with a long-term focus in mind, a key consideration for ensuring that the awareness brought forth through this toolkit are not soon forgotten, thereby allowing for the brain rewiring that’s needed to help people shift their focus from avoidance to creating actions to help them achieve what they want.

While “Seeing Red Cars” can help individuals in shifting their perceptions to focus more on what they want to achieve, the ideas and exercises shared in the book can also be used by leaders to help them gain a greater awareness of the individual strengths of their team members and what drives them internally to succeed. Having these kinds of insights about their employees will help leaders in not only developing stronger team cohesion, but also allowing them to provide responsibilities and opportunities to their employees that will help to fulfill their inner sense of purpose.

In this light, “Seeing Red Cars” can be a valuable read both for professionals and organizations that are interested in moving away from avoiding negative outcomes and looking instead at what measures are within their control to implement to affect the change they want to see in themselves and their teams.

You can buy “Seeing Red Cars” on Amazon.com (or Amazon.ca for Canadian readers).