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(Applause) Everyone please think of your biggest personal goal. ok. For real. Take a second, you have got to feel this to learn it.
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Take a few seconds and think of your personal biggest goal. OK. Imagine deciding, right now, that you are going to do it.
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Imagine telling someone that you meet today what you are going to do. Imagine their congratulations and their high image of you.
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Doesn't it feel good to say it out loud? Don't you feel one step closer already like it's already becoming part of your identity?
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Uh. Well. Bad news. You should have kept your mouth shut because that good feeling will now make you less likely to do it.
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Repeated psychology tests have proven that telling someone your goal makes them less likely to happen.
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Anythime you have a goal there are some steps that need to be done. Some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it.
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Ideally you would not be satisfied until you had actually done the work but when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it
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Psychologists have found that, it's called a social reality, the mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it's already done.
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and then because you have felt that satisfaction you are less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary. (audience laughs)
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So this goes against the conventional wisdom that we should tell our friends our goals, right, so they hold us to it.
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So let's look at the proof. 1926: Kurt Lewin founder of social psychology called this substitution.
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1933: Wera Mahler found that when it was acknowledged by others it felt real in the mind.
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1982: Peter Golwitzer wrote a whole book about this and in 2009 he did some new tests that were published and it goes like this.
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163 people across 4 separate tests. Everyone wrote down their personal goal. Then half of them announced their commitment to this goal to the room and half didn't.
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Then everyone was given 45 minutes work that would lead them directly to their goal but they were told that they could stop at any time.
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Now those who kept their mouths shut worked the entire 45 minutes on average and when asked afterwards said that they felt that they had a long way to go still to achieve their goal.
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But those who had announced it quit after only 33 minutes on average and when asked afterwards said that they felt much closer to achieving their goal.
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So if this is true what can we do? Well, you could resist the temptation to announce your goal, you can delay the gratification that the social acknowledgement brings.
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and you can understand that your mind mistakes the talking for the doing. But if you do need to talk about something you can state it in a way that gives you no satisfaction.
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Such as I really want to run this marathon so I need to train 5 times a week and kick my ass if I don't, OK.
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So audience the next time you are tempted to tell someone your goal what will you say? (silence) Exactly! Well done. (Laughs)
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Subtitles by iicaptions www.iicaptions.wix.com/iicaptions
