TED Talk of the Week: Keep Your Goals to Yourself
New Year’s is coming up – a chance for new beginnings, starting fresh, and drafting up resolutions for the coming year. Your first instinct would be to share these ambitions with your friends and family. You might declare your intention to lose 10 pounds, or maybe you tell your friends about your commitment to read more books, or perhaps divulge your commitment to eat out less. Imagine the satisfaction of these announcements – people offering their congratulations as you swell up with pride and feel an extra surge of motivation. It feels good, doesn’t it? Almost as if you’re already one step closer.
As Derek Sivers explains in this TED Talk of the Week, that’s actually a barrier to success. Telling someone your goals tricks your mind into feeling that it’s already done. It’s that sense of satisfaction that makes you less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary to achieve the goal. In this concise three-minute clip, Sivers shells out some useful advice: if you want to achieve your goals, keep them to yourself.
