Announcing Goals Leads To Failure

In fact, January 8th is when most people give up their new year's resolutions.Announcing your plans makes you less motivated to accomplish themIt seems obvious that we should want support. Shouldn’t we announce our goals, so people can rally around us? Isn’t it good networking to tell people about your upcoming projects? Doesn’t the “law of attraction” mean you should state your intention, and visualize the goal as already yours?Nope.Tests done since 1933 show that people who talk about their intentions are less likely to make them happen. In fact, announcing your plans to others satisfies your self-identity just enough that you’re less motivated to do the hard work needed.In 1933, W. Mahler found that if a person announced the solution to a problem, and was acknowledged by others, it was now in the brain as a “social reality”, even if the solution hadn’t actually been achieved.NYU psychology professor Peter Gollwitzer has been studying this since his 1982 book “Symbolic Self-Completion” (pdf article here) — and recently published results of new tests in a research article, “When Intentions Go Public: Does Social Reality Widen the Intention-Behavior Gap?”Four different tests of 63 people found that those who kept their intentions private were more likely to achieve them than those who made them public and were acknowledged by others.Once you’ve told people of your intentions, it gives you a “premature sense of completeness.”You have “identity symbols” in your brain that make your self-image. Since both actions and talk create symbols in your brain, talking satisfies the brain enough that it “neglects the pursuit of further symbols.”A related test found that success on one sub-goal (like eating healthy meals) reduced efforts on other important sub-goals (like going to the gym) for the same reason.It may seem unnatural to keep your intentions and plans private but try it. If you do tell a friend, make sure not to say it as a satisfaction (“I’m going to run a marathon!”), but as dissatisfaction (“I want to lose 20 pounds, so kick my ass if I don’t, OK?”)

PhotoCredit: Sabina I. Rascol

Leadership Lesson In 3 Minutes Or Less

There are two kinds of leaders in this clip: the movement maker, and the leader-follower.

Watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and take notes:

A movement maker needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple making him easy to mimic.

LESSON 1: Being easy to mimic means you are naturally instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Soon comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to be a good follower. Notice the movement-maker embraces him as an equal. It’s not about just him anymore — it’s about them, plural. Notice the leader-follower calling to his friends to join in.

LESSON 2: It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower provides legitimacy. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

LESSON 3: The second follower is the turning point, providing proof the first has done well. It’s not about a lone wolf or even two wolves. One more and three is a crowd. A crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers because new followers emulate followers — not the leader. Now here come two more, then three more. Now we’ve got momentum. This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

LESSON 4: As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed. They won’t stand out. They will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry. Over the next minute, you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made!

To Recap:

1. Be easy to follow. Keep your message simple.

2. Nurture your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

3. Be public and inclusive.

4. But the biggest lesson here — did you catch it? Leadership is over-glorified. Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened: It was the first follower that transformed a lone wolf into a leader of a pack. There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone wolf doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.

A good read related to this:

• Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders (Center for Public Leadership) by Barbara Kellerman

• General McChrystal’s Failure of Followership, Barbara Kellerman

THERE IS A COUNTER-MELODY IN ALL THINGS

There is a counter-melody in all things

A lot of people think my advice and opinions sound strange.

When I was first starting to write seriously, and experiment with finding my “voice” on an issue (let’s say…business) where (let’s say…I had a LOT of opinions) and was righting in extreme black and white scenarios, my partner said to me, “Do you actually mean the stuff you write?”

So, a little explanation:

Do you know what musical counterpoint is?

Underneath the main melody, you have a counter-melody that goes against it, and together they make harmony.

This is different than just harmonizing, where someone sings along with the melody at an interval. This is a separate melody that could stand on its own but is really there to complement the main melody.

Well, if my advice and opinions sound strange, it’s because I’m just the counter-melody.

I’m not the only voice you hear. There’s a message I know that most of my clients, readers or listeners are hearing because it’s a common message we all hear these days. So let’s call that the melody.

I may love that melody too, but I don’t want to just duplicate it. So I try to think of a good counter-melody.

I do it to compensate (or over-compensate) for something I think is missing in the common message.

So my public posts are a counterpoint meant to complement the popular point.

For example:

• There’s a glorification of leadership and those who start companies. I think that it’s more effective to be an early follower.

• The popular “law of attraction” says you should tell everyone your goals. But there is an interesting study showing that telling your plans makes them less likely to happen.

• To people who are too focused on money, I suggest that generosity is a more effective path to success.

• To people who are too focused on passion and purpose, I suggest that money can lead you towards your purpose because it shows how you’re valuable to others.

• It’s not about taking the opposite position just to take it. It’s about managing the middle.

Now if you ask me if I think the stuff I say is the only way to go, of course not! I’m just offering the counter-melody.

My best advice is to listen to the combination. To both seek and manage the tension. Eventually, you’ll find yourself singing along with the melody you like best. Or making up your own.

I think fast

I’m a fast thinker

And my practice is in the slow response. I find that I mull things more, I listen more since I earned my doctorate. I don't share this to hold up having an advanced degree. I'm reflecting on its impact on my personality.Doctorate work has a way of beating all your initial responses out of you for their foolishness. So many people rush to an opinion and form a judgment with so little information. They are in the middle of an amygdala hijack--excited by, threatened by, or interested in what is being discussed--they have an immediate reaction and feel compelled to share it.When a friend says something interesting to me, I too have that immediate spark of interest. I make connections with things I've read in the past, people I've spoken to. But I find that I don't have a well-informed reaction until much later.When someone asks me a deep question, I say, “Hmm. I don’t know.” The next morning, I think of something interesting to write about.This makes me a disappointing person to try to debate or attack. I just have nothing to say in the moment, except maybe, “Good point.” Then a few days later, after thinking about it a lot, I have a response.I used to judge slow responders as "being slow" and it's not until I slowed down myself that I can fully empathize.  Isn't that how it always goes? But I’m not trying to win any debates.It’s a common belief that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s triggering a knee-jerk emotional response to something that happened long ago.If you take some time to think it through, you might find that your first reaction wasn’t current and true--not really. Or if it was, then you can say so with more conviction.The point? When you’re less impulsive and more deliberate with your thinking, it might be less interesting for other people, but that’s OK.Someone asks you a question. You don’t need to answer. You can say, “I don’t know,” and take your time to answer after thinking. You have to slow down to really unlock an idea.Maybe, by example, you can show others that they can do the same.(Can you imagine how the world would work if we all slowed down in order to "unlock ourselves"?)

(Freedom Sculpture — Zenos Frudakis)

 

No, it's me...not you.

I have a bitchy resting face. That is, when I am thinking or reflecting on something, my face looks angry. I don’t really ever get mad, but I do experience frustration, which can look a lot like being angry.

But, if I’m really honest, there were a few years before #MeToo brought everything to the foreground, where I was very angry.  I spent a few years being really mad at my former colleagues.

They corrupted the culture of the group. They resisted change they themselves said they supported. They focused on their own gains instead of collaborating.

They this. They that. Does this pattern sound familiar?

When someone upsets you, it’s human nature to feel it’s entirely their fault.

But at some point, I flipped a bit and I started thinking maybe it was all my fault.  Yes, really, even in an environment that mercilessly punishes those at fault.

• I created the environment that let the rotten apples spoil the barrel.

• I ignored problems instead of nipping them in the bud.

• I was aloof and away instead of managing or developing others.

• (I could list many more examples, but you get the idea.)

It was a little bit liberating to decide it was all my fault!

This is way more effective than forgiving. When you forgive, you’re still assuming everyone one else is wrong and you’re the victim. You’re just charitably pardoning their horrible deeds.

But to decide it’s your fault kept me in the driver’s seat! Now, it’s not that I was wronged. They were just playing their part in the situation I created. They’re just delivering the punch-line to the joke I had set up. In the end, human interaction comes down to algebra: what is done on one side, impacts the other.

What power! Now you’re like a new super-hero, just discovering your strength. Now you’re the powerful person that made things happen, made a mistake, and can learn from it. Now you’re in control and there’s nothing to complain about.

This philosophy feels so empowering that I apply the “EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT” filter before reacting.

It’s one of those base rules like “people mean well” that’s more fun to believe, and have a few exceptions, than to not believe at all.

• The artist that stole $750 from me? My fault. I should have taken the art that day, rather than do him the favor of leaving the piece hanging as part of the exhibit. (To this day, I think he sold that piece twice).

• I didn’t find my dream job after graduate school? My fault. My dream was much too broad.

• Don’t like my government? My fault. I could get involved and change it.

See what power it is?

Yes, it is all about personal responsibility but to me that’s such a somber concept. It’s the vegetables no one wants to eat. The lesson no one wants to hear. Whereas “everything’s my fault” is a fun rule-of-thumb.

Try it. Move some of those bricks to the other side.

Think of every bad thing that happened to you, and imagine youhappened to it.

Kinda blows your mind, doesn’t it?

That power looks good on you.

Artist Jason Ratliff’s series “Super Shadows” shows popular superheroes in kids’ shadows.

Saying yes to say no

Steven Pressfield had called himself an author for years, but he’d never actually finished a book. I wonder if that made him feel smug because he thought of himself as an author.

But the psychological pain of not producing kept building until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He decided to finally beat that devil he calls “The Resistance”.

He created a situation with no escape. Rented a cabin with only a typewriter, and shut off all other options. In his book Turning Pro, he writes:

“I had a book in mind and I had decided I would finish it or kill myself. I could not run away again, or let people down again, or let myself down again. This was it, do or die.”

“I didn’t talk to anybody during that year. I didn’t hang out. I had no TV, no radio, no music. No sex, no sports. I didn’t read the newspaper. I just worked.”

After an incredibly difficult year of wrestling with those inner demons and avoiding all temptations, he did it. He finished his first book. It wasn’t a success, but it didn’t matter. He had finally beaten The Resistance. He went on to write many successful novels.

He told this story in the great book “Turning Pro”, the third in his series of little books about the creative struggle, including “The War of Art” and “Do the Work”. Read all three.

When I read it in 2015, my own psychological pain of not producing had built up to an unbearable level. I had announced my first book but never finished publishing it. I attempted it many times, but each time I completed a version, I was overwhelmed by the publishing costs (just to get seen). I didn’t want it to be a vanity book. I wanted it to matter.

To make it worse, I was on the heels of graduate school, with a lot of pressure to start making a more steady income and start paying down mounting student debt.

To get to a version I felt warranted an editor, I did shut off all other options. Time to finish what I started.

I looked for work, but I said no to all requests. It’s not the nicest mantra, saying no, no, no all day, but it strengthened my sense of mission. I made a decision to stop deciding. I made one decision, in advance, to answer to all future things is “no” until I finished what I had started. It’s saying yes to one thing, and no to absolutely everything else.

There will be times you can't pay someone to care

I work with people looking for mentors.

In the beginning, when you are first learning, my advice is to assume nobody is coming. Sometimes, it is more useful to assume that it’s all up to you. This is not being negative. It’s about learning to manage the emotions that come up around early failure: frustration, boredom, depression. Self-management is an invaluable skill.

There may be times you will come out of tough, challenging situations requiring great reserves of strength, like when Aron Ralston got trapped in a remote canyon for five days. He had to cut off his own arm to escape because he knew nobody would rescue him. They made a movie about it called “127 Hours”. If he believed that someone would come, he would have just waited. But because he knew it was entirely up to him, he rescued himself.

When you assume nobody is going to help, you have to use all of your strength and resources. You don’t hesitate to experiment. You can’t wait, because there’s nobody to wait for. It keeps your focus on the things in your control — not outside circumstances. It’s productive pessimism.

Aron’s lesson of extreme independence also made him confront his hubris in going it alone. Knowing how to connect with others, be part of a group, and when to ask for help are equally important life skills. They force you to empathize and to learn through vulnerability. Strive to work with the best collaborators, stakeholders, leaders, etc.

But never count on their help. That’s the difference. Again, it’s about managing the tension of independence and interdependence.

Then, when someone does help you, you’ll be more focused with how you connect.