Ep. 3 Why Goals Fail...

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Seneca, the Great Roman for loss of her sat preparing for a trip besides the list of supplies he would be taking along. He also begins to write down another list. Storm could sink the ship. The captain could get deathly ill. The ship could be attacked by pirates. The food reserves could spoil the wind could die and leave them stranded, et cetera. So we just spent a lot of time visualizing the most compelling, positive, ideal life for ourselves. Why would we, now in a picture, all of the negative things that could happen? Does that kind of kill the vibe? Not if we are negative with specific intention. How does our definition of success shape how we live our daily lives? Join me. Your host, Michael Bellman, as we create a life of six, ends by exploring the cutting edge research in happiness, motivation, psychology, philosophy. Welcome to thrive, culture, success engine. This negative visualization tool actually has its roots in ancient Roman stoic philosophy, and it made up a cornerstone of their thoughts and practice. They called it premeditate yeoman, Laura um, which literally means for seeing bad things, Seneca says. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events. So why would this be important? Well, if we don't do this negative visualization or mental contrast ng, we may actually be in danger of negating or failing to achieve the dreams that we just spent hours visualizing. And this may come as a surprise to most people because we're so immersed in a positive thinking law of attraction culture, one that can so highly tote the effects of positive thinking that there's little to no room or perceived value for anything negative. But Gabrielle, voting in one of the world's leading researchers on motivation, has actually been studying the effects of dreams and wishes on our motivation for 30 years. And this is what she has to say about it. In her book Rethinking Positive Thinking, she considers the act of positive thinking itself. Causal in the failure of achieving positive outcomes, she explains, is by noting that idealizing your future can actually undercut your motivation to take action which is necessary to achieve that future, and this may be due in part to the fact that your brain actually is difficulty distinguishing between reality and imagination. So a study was performed demonstrating this where three groups of participants had the brain scanned every day for five consecutive days. One group was taught how to play a very simple sequence of piano notes using one hand, and they practice is for two hours a day. The second group was taught the same sequence of notes, but practice by visualizing the sequence in the finger movement without actually physically playing it. And this was compared against the brain regions of a control group who didn't practice piano at all for the five days was so interesting is the scans showed almost identical brain growth in stimulation in both the group that physically played the piano and the group that just visualized playing it when it compared to that control group. And these findings have actually been replicated on in a numerous different area. So in sports there have participants actually physically playing a sport, and they compared other participants who just visualizing playing the sports. You'll see a similar adaptation in the brain with those two. So how this applies to our goal setting an achievement is when we do these visualization exercises. Those specific areas of our brain do adapt and they grow and they respond. But on the flip side, he can actually trick our brain into thinking that we've already achieved that goal. Gabrielle says that immersing yourself in positive imagery is much more comforting and relaxing in the short term, but devastating to achieving better outcomes in the long run. So what can we do instead? This is where negative visualization or mental contrast ng comes in. Gabrielle Reason that the best way to get people up and moving was to ask them to dream and then confront them right away with the realities that actually stand in the way of their dreams, she said. If I could ground fantasies in a reality through mental contrast ing, I might be able to circumvent the calming effects of dreaming and mobilize. Dreams is a tool for prompting directed action, and this is exactly what she did. She created the Goal achievement tool called Woop W 00 P, which is a combination of two different strategies. So one is the mental contrast ing, which is kind of the first part of it. The second is the implementation intention, which both separately have been scientifically validated over and over and whoop as a whole has also been scientifically validated. So let's break this down the W stands for your wish. This is the 10 year dream engineering plan and the ideal day visualization exercise that I talked about on the last episode. If you didn't do that exercise, go back to start with that so that you can have the top one year goals in those six life categories to use as your W or the wish next to the O stands for the outcome. And this is the five. Why exercise that we talked about in the last episode? This digs into that deep emotional reason for why you'd want to accomplish that wish or the best possible outcome from achieving that goal. It's often expressed in how you feel so sense of accomplishment, pride. You feel more relaxed for energy vitality, etcetera. The 2nd 0 stands for the obstacle, and this is where we start pairing reality with the wish and the positive intentions that we have. So this is what obstacles might you create that would actually prevent you from making that wish a reality, and if we focus on the obstacles we create, it's it's a better approach because we're focusing on what we can control. Yes, there are obstacles that come up that we can't control. And while it's very effective to have a plan for that as well, it's also important to focus first on the things that we can control. So we write down as many of these obstacles as we think as we can think of. Then we prioritize them based on the likelihood of them occurring or the significance of the effect they would actually have on us achieving that goal. Let's use that physical aspect of our life for an example for this. So let's say your wish or you're one. Your goal was to lose £30 than the outcome of that is that five y so might be that you could be present as a father, more productive at work, to be self confident, to have more self esteem. Then we get those obstacles and we look at what might prevent us from getting there. And it might be simply the fact of just feeling really tired after going toe work and not really wanting to go to the gym. So that's that obstacle and that obstacle. Immediately contrast the dream we're having and that feeling an outcome with the reality of life and what it does is it forces our brain to actually start creating a plan. And that's the P. We ask ourselves. What action could I do to overcome this obstacle when it shows up and we use is to create an, if then statement. So if this obstacle happens, I don't feel like going to work. You know, I don't feel like going to the gym after work. Then I will implement said Action plan to overcome it. So that might be both a preliminary action plan and one that you could do in the moment, and both of them are very important. We can set ourselves up for success before we even run into that obstacle. It's better than if we're trying to handle in the moments are preliminary action plan might be. You know, you already have your workout clothes and you take them tow work and so that you can go straight from work to the gym without going home, because you know that if you go home the chances of you going to the gym decrease pretty significantly. That's a preliminary action plan. The one in the moment might be reminding yourself of the wise or the outcome that you could achieve with that. You know the body that you want to have the feelings that you might have, and that might be enough to get you to go to the gym instead of going back home. So let's talk about some different at examples of this swoop technique in those different areas of our life. We already talked about the physical. Now we can move on to the relational, and this might be into the W for this of the wish. For this might be something like to be more present for your Children and the O. The outcome of that is essentially, it's the best gift you could ever give them to know that their parent was present with them. So then we asked herself what the obstacle might be that would prevent us from being present with our Children, and this could be distractions. It could be the phone things that we have going on in our mind, and again we have a preliminary plan that we can implement and one we can implement in the moment the preliminary one has to do with. Maybe when you leave work, you actually look at the, you know, top three priorities that you have for the next day. You create. You know, your checklist for the next day, and then you use that as a book and ritual to finish what you're doing and then set your attention for you. No going home to be present with your family and then what you could do in the moment. Let's say you find your thoughts drifting or you're thinking about the things you need to D'oh! That's where you can reset your intention to show up with them. So you're If then statement would be if I feel distracted or have things on my mind, and I'll make sure to reset my intention to be present with my kids and to be my best self for my family on the emotional area, you know, one example of the wish might be, you know, control your anger instead of lashing out in a moment. The outcome of that is you feel in control, you know you feel in control of your relationships in control of yourself. You're more peace. Maybe even feel less shame for potentially hurting your family or your co workers. What would the obstacle be? It might be people, you know. People are definitely an obstacle to this. You know, your kids are pushing all your buttons or your boss is driving you crazy, you know, or whatever it might be those of the obstacles toe controlling your anger instead of lasting out. So your plan might be if I feel like the kids are pushing my buttons, then I pause. You know, maybe I noticed when I'm feeling, Where is the anger of my body? Maybe it's a tightness in my chest. Maybe it's a tightness in my throat. And then I actually released that through some deep breasts before making response to my Children or my boss. That would be something that you could do in the moment of preliminary strategy. Might be just getting, making sure to get enough sleep, and that's not something we can do all the time. It's something we should shoot for, but obviously there are times when we retired. But being tired definitely can affect that anger on the mental side of things you might be your wish might be to learn a new language. And maybe this is just for travel. You want to be ableto, you know, interact in a different country, be able to order the food. As for the bathroom is that kind of thing. Or it might be, you know, a business trip. You know, Sizemore, high stakes. You want to be able to understand their culture, and you understand where they're coming from. So the outcome might be, you know, communicate and connect with these different people and learn about different cultures. The oh would be the time that you have toe learn. So the P that you develop could actually include a technique called habit stacking, which we'll talk about in the next episode. But it's essentially pairing a habit that you're wanting to start with, something that you're already doing, like lunch, for instance, So your P might be if you don't feel like you have the time to learn, then you make sure to schedule 15 minutes of language learning right after lunch. So you have lunch. You already have that habit very consistently in your day. You tack on a new habit right after that and in a financial area, your wish might be to get out of debt. The outcome of that is you feel free. You know you don't have that weight hanging over your head or in the back of your mind. The old obstacle would be at the end of the month. You're like, Where did the money go? You really have no idea where all of the money is actually going, and that's your obstacle, said an obstacle of knowledge. So your plan would be if I don't know where the money's going at the end of the month, I'll make sure to schedule time that next week to budget in advance and actually allocate where the funds air going instead of reactively getting the end of the month and not having any idea where they went. So it's a proactive I'm gonna budget allocate these different funds in different categories, said. I can sure that I'm in control of the money and then that allows me toe also be in control of saving and getting out of debt. In the spiritual side, your W might be developing more gratitude or thankfulness and the outcome is both an increasing your personal happiness but also helping others be more happy as well. When you think about that, the obstacle might be complaining. So you notice when you're complaining that you can't be both grateful and thankful at the same time as you're complaining about what's going on in your life. So the plan there if then statement might be. If I find myself complaining that I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna remind myself of the things that I'm grateful for, the things that it maybe even taking for granted to put myself back in that mode of thankfulness and gratefulness. The efficacy of the whoop technique has actually been validated over and over in the scientific literature. But one study in particular really stands out on has to do the maintenance of a healthy lifestyle. So 256 participants were randomly assigned into two groups. The first group received detailed information about the importance of regular exercise, a healthy diet and then they were taught the woop technique in just one session. Along with that, they were talked about how to create both a long term frame, long term, consistent actions such as, You know, I want to make sure I go for a run in the evenings. It's a long term thing. And then also 24 hour goals that you're looking at like having three servings of vegetables in the day. And they use this to develop action plans around their exercise and nutrition in the second group just received the detailed information about the importance of regular diet exercise, but not the hoop technique to implement that the results were actually really astounding. So Group one exercise nearly twice as much as those who just received the health information starting from Week one, continuing all the way out to four months later from one session of the whoop technique, they ate more fruits and vegetables, and they actually were still eating more fruits and vegetables after two years, even though they hadn't been contacted by the researchers between Month four and that two year mark. There are definitely different variables and stuff that comes into play, but that in itself is incredible. The only caveat is that after the two years that participants in the womb group did not differ in their exercise levels from the members of the control group. What the researchers commented about this was that those results for the exercise were achieved with just one woop session, so it increased the exercise for four months. But if you really wanted to achieve a lasting benefit from this, it's recommended to revisit that whoop technique. Thio. Ensure your continued adherence toe plan and the goals that you have now, Tony Robbins says a RealD decision is measured by the fact that you have taken new action. So if there's no action, you haven't truly decided. So what are you waiting for? You could literally be using these techniques to change your life. You need to ask yourself, What areas of your life do you need a woop into shape? Sorry, I couldn't help myself. So let's sum up what we've covered so far in our success engineering process. We started by visualizing ideal life that we want to be living 10 years from now, all the way down from our deal day start to finish. Then we uncovered the why behind that life through that five wise technique to create necessity to build the urgency around it. Next, we took the top one year goals in each of those six categories and applied the woop technique to them. The first parts that wish that outcome. And then we look at the obstacle. We ask ourselves, what is the biggest obstacle that would keep us from attaining that result? This allows us to brainstorm a plan and the exact action we will take to overcome that obstacle again. This on Lee works if you take action. So put some time today into your schedule. Thio Accomplish this to actually get these things done. Now, in the next episode, we will talk about how you can take these actions and can break them down into habits that we can harness through the power of consistency. To build momentum around our success. I hope to see you back for another episode of Thrive Culture, Success Engineering with your host, Michael Bowman. If you enjoy this show, it would mean a lot if you left a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help people find the show till next time. Thank you for listening.