Read 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot for Free Online Page B

their business ambitions. Similarly, those relying on willpower, using thought suppression to erase images of cream cakes and chocolate sundaes from their mind, focusing on the bad things that would happen if they didn’t achieve their goals, or spending their time daydreaming were also wasting their time. All of these techniques constitute yet more striking examples of the types of motivational myths that prevent people from taking control of their lives.
    A different story emerged when we examined the data from the people using the techniques that have an odd number in the questionnaire. Each of these five tools significantly increased the likelihood that people would successfully achieve their aims. Let’s look at each in turn.
    First, the successful participants in our study had a plan. Author Zig Ziglar once famously remarked that people don’t tend to wander around and then suddenly find themselves at the top of Mount Everest. Likewise, those moving aimlessly through life are unlikely to end up suddenly starting a new business or losing a significant amount of weight. Successful participants broke their overall goal into a series of sub-goals and thereby created a step-by-step process that helped remove the fear and hesitation often associated with tryingto achieve a major life change. These plans were especially powerful when the sub-goals were concrete, measurable, and time-based. Whereas successful and unsuccessful participants might have stated that their aim was to find a new job, it was the successful people who quickly went on to describe how they intended to rewrite their résumé in week one and then apply for one new job every two weeks for the next six months. Similarly, although many people said that they aimed to enjoy life more, it was the successful ones who explained how they intended to spend two evenings each week with friends and visit one new country each year.
    Second, successful participants were far more likely than others to tell their friends, family, and colleagues about their goals. It seems that although keeping your promises to yourself helps ease the fear of failure, it also makes it too easy to avoid changing your life and to drift back to old habits and routines. This is in keeping with several key findings from the psychology literature illustrating that people are more likely to stick to their views and promises if they go public. In one classic experiment, students were asked to estimate the length of some lines that had been drawn on a pad and either make a public commitment to their judgments (by writing them on a slip of paper, signing the paper, and handing it to the experimenter) or keep the estimates to themselves. 4 When the participants were informed that their estimates might be wrong, those who had made a public commitment were far more likely to stand by their opinion than those who had not told anyone. Other work suggests that the greater the public declaration, the more motivated people are to achieve their goals. 5 Telling others about your aims also helps you achieve them, in part because friends and family often provide much-needed support when the going gets tough. In fact, some research suggests that having friends at your side makes lifeseem easier. In a series of studies carried out by Simone Schnall from the University of Plymouth, people were taken to the bottom of a hill and asked to estimate how steep it was and therefore how difficult it would be to climb. 6 When they were accompanied by a friend, their estimates were about 15 percent lower than when they were on their own, and even just thinking about a friend when looking at the hill made it seem far more surmountable.
    Third, those who ended up making and maintaining permanent changes in their lives frequently tended to remind themselves of the benefits associated with achieving their goals. It wasn’t a case of imagining their perfect selves but rather of having an objective checklist of how life would