When it comes to the science of reaching goals, there are two schools of thought. This sentence is informed by both.
As a small-business owner, I’ve had to learn a lot of lessons the hard way.
One of those lessons came after I was forced to acknowledge something about myself when it came to my goals, both personal and professional.
Once I set a goal, things would start off great: meeting a deadline for a project. Making an adjustment to my diet. Hitting a set number of baskets during basketball practice. I’d stick to my routine, and I’d start seeing results.
That is, until I would make a very big mistake …
I’d tell someone about my goal.
Suddenly, those same goals that I was conscientiously working toward would go up in smoke. I started flaking. I was inconsistent. If I did reach the goal, it took me much longer than I originally set out for myself.
I’d had enough. I needed to use my emotional intelligence–my ability to understand and manage emotions–to help me start sticking to what I had set out to do. To help me do this, I started using a simple, research-backed sentence as a “mental prompt,” to help me get better at reaching my goals.
The sentence goes like this:
Keep your goals to yourself–or share wisely.
Why is this sentence so helpful? Let’s dive into the science that led to this sentence, and how it can help you stay true to your goals and accomplish more in business and life. (If you find value in this lesson, you might be interested in my free course, which teaches you how to build emotional intelligence in yourself and your team.)
Be careful with sharing your goals
When it comes to science-backed research, there are two very different schools of thought when it comes to sharing your goals.
The first was summed up years ago in a popular TED Talk by entrepreneur and author Derek Sivers. Sivers presented research with a surprising revelation: Whenever you tell someone a goal, you actually reduce the chances that you will reach it.
When you have a goal, explains Sivers, you have work to do. Typically, you won’t be satisfied until you’ve actually done the work. But when you tell someone your goal, and they acknowledge it, psychologists have found that you now experience something called “social reality.”
“The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that [the work] is already done,” says Sivers. “And then, because you’ve felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.”
So, my experience is proof of that, right? As I shared my goals with my wife, or my brother, or a fellow business owner, I experienced this feeling of:
Oh, yeah. Look at me. I’m just this amazing specimen of hard work and self-control, aren’t I?
Until, of course, I wasn’t.
Source : https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/emotional-intelligence-how-to-reach-goal-be-successful.html