A Follow Through Master program enrollee who recently re-discovered the Right Before Wrong follow through strategy is convinced that this strategy deserves a lot more attention than it gets. Although Right Before Wrong may not be quite as bold as some of the other follow through strategies, she reports that it’s been extremely easy to use and remarkably effective.
Made for situations when you don’t really mind doing what you intend to do
The Right Before Wrong strategy is a strategy that’s designed specifically for situations in which you’re not really reluctant to do the right thing (the thing you’ve intelligently decided you should do), but you aren’t doing it anyway because you just naturally feel more like doing the wrong thing (something you’ve intelligently decided you should not do).
The problem that Right Before Wrong addresses
The best way to illustrate how the Right Before Wrong follow through strategy works is to use an intention related to eating as an example.
Suppose you intend to eat healthy snacks but are violating your intention – not because you’re reluctant to eat healthy snacks when you’re hungry, but because you just naturally feel more like eating unhealthy ones. As is so often the case, when what you’ve intelligently concluded you should do is at odds with what you naturally feel like doing, what you automatically feel like doing wins.
Ironically, if you keep on doing the wrong thing, not only will you suffer the consequences of doing the wrong thing, but you’ll also deprive yourself of the opportunity to do the right thing often enough to make a habit of it. It’s this irony that the Right Before Wrong follow through strategy addresses head-on.
How and why Right Before Wrong works
To use Right Before Wrong, you essentially give yourself permission to continue to do the wrong thing but only on the condition that you first do the right thing.
So, for example, instead of forbidding yourself to eat those yummy unhealthy chips when you’re hungry, you allow yourself to eat them BUT only after you’ve eaten a healthy snack.
Right Before Wrong lets you avoid having — and losing – a tug of war between doing the right thing and doing the wrong thing. By not forcing you to give up doing the wrong thing in order to do the right thing, Right Before Wrong paves the way for you to do the right thing often enough to have a shot at making a habit out of doing the right thing.
Many people who use Right Before Wrong report that the strategy does more than just get them to do the right thing more often. They discover that doing the right thing actually feels more satisfying than they thought it would be! In fact, it can become satisfying enough that they actually start to feel more like doing the right thing than doing the wrong thing.
When to use Right Before Wrong
Although it’s probably easiest to see how Right Before Wrong works on an intention related to eating, it will work for virtually any intention where you’re not reluctant to do the right thing and are just doing the wrong thing because you feel more like doing the wrong thing.
For example, Right Before Wrong has helped many people follow through on their good intentions related to their relationships with loved ones, coworkers and employees. By allowing them to do the wrong thing that comes naturally, such as scolding, BUT only after first doing the right thing – the thing they know they should do – such as saying something positive and supportive.
If you’re enrolled in the Follow Through Master program, you can learn more about Right Before Wrong in the Follow Through Strategies course.