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061 - Keep Your Goals to Yourself

Hello there!

Kevin, here – with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast.

The only podcast that is helping you become not only a fluent English speaker, but a fluent person. More fluent in life, business and relationships.

Today I have a Ted Tuesday lesson where I go over a short interesting TED Talk; from ted.com. And I help you understand the English, and I also give you a few ideas and a few of my own ideas on talk.

Today’s talk is by a guy named Derek Sivers, and we’ve actually had another talk by him, but I really like his ideas. And today’s talk is about goals. So when you have a goal, something you’re excited about, do you tend, meaning do you often share this with all of your friends and family or do you keep it a secret?

According to Derek Sivers, there is actually a better way of doing this. “Do you keep your mouth shut or do you tell everybody your goals?” Based on some scientific research there is an answer which can help you achieve more goals.

If you want a transcript to this, go to: feelgoodenglish.com, where I post transcripts to my episodes so you can learn the lessons even deeper – cool ha?

Now let’s get into the Ted episode.

“Everyone please think of your biggest personal goal okay, for real. Take a second you’ve got to feel this to learn it. Take a few seconds and think of your personal biggest goal – okay?”

So, here he says, “everyone please think of your biggest personal goal for real meaning “do it”, he’s being serious.

“You can take a second, you’ve got to feel this to learn it,” so the lesson he’s going to teach you have to feel.

“Imagine deciding right now that you’re going to do it. Imagine telling someone that you meet today, what you’re going to do.

Imagine their congratulations and their high image of you.

Doesn’t ist feel good to say it out loud? Don’t you feel one step closer already? Like it’s already becoming part of your identity?”

There, he’s pretty clear he’s telling you to think of a goal that you have, and then go a little farther and imagine yourself telling the people in your life about that goal. Doesn’t it make you feel great? Doesn’t it take you one step closer to that becoming part of your identity?

“Well, bad news; you should’ve kept your mouth shut! Cuz that good feeling now will make you less likely to do it. “ And bad news, “you shoulda … kept your mouth shut – should’ve is the very common form of saying should have, which is the past conditional. Meaning you should have kept your mouth shut, but you didn’t. You should have studied yesterday, but you didn’t. You should have called me a lot more when you were traveling, but you didn’t. So should have is when you’re talking about something that did not happen in the past but you think it should have.

“The repeated Psychology test has proven that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen. Anytime you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it. Ideally, you would not be satisfied until you’d actually done the work. But, when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, Psychologists have found that it’s called the social reality; the mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done. And then, because you felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hardwork necessary. “

So he says, “But, when you tell someone your goal and they acknowledge it, Psychologists have found that it’s called a social reality. The mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it’s already done and then, because you felt that satisfaction, you’re less motivated to do the actual hard work necessary,” when somebody acknowledges something, means they

recognize something, they give attention to that. So, they acknowledge the fact that you said you have a goal. If they didn’t acknowledge that, they wouldn’t recognize it or notice that you had a goal. So, that’s what acknowledge means. And that’s a key point of this talk is that, that sense of feeling satisfied that the person that you told already knows about your goal, you almost already feel that you’ve accomplished a part of it, but you haven’t done anything. You’ve only told them about it. Very interesting, huh?

“So, this goes against the conventional wisdom that we should tell our friends our goals right? So, they hold us to it, yeah.”

Goes against our conventional wisdom, means it goes against our traditional knowledge or what we commonly believe. So, against our common beliefs. To hold somebody to something; I’m going to hold you to this or he says, “they hold us to it” means to expect somebody to do something. So, you said you’re going to do that, and I’m going to hold you to it. Kevin, I’m gonna practice English every day. And I said well, Billy, I’m going to hold you to that. I’m going to expect that you do that.

I am going to make sure that you follow through, that you complete that objective. To hold somebody to something.

“So, let’s look at the proof: 1926, Kurt Lewin, founder of social psychology called this Substitution. 1933, [06:23] Peter Moller found when it was acknowledged by others, it felt real in the mind. 1982, Peter Gollwitzer have wrote a whole book about this, and in 2009, he did some new tests that were published goes like this.”

So, let’s look at the proof 1926, the year 1926, Kurt Lewin a name, founder of social psychology called this substitution. In 1993, Wera Moller found that, if it was acknowledged by others, it felt real in the mind like we talked about a minute ago. And in 1982, Peter Gollwitzer wrote a whole book about this and in 2009, he did some new tests that were published.

“A 163 people across four separate tests; everyone wrote down their personal goal. Then half of them announced their commitment to this goal to the room and half didn’t. And then everyone was given 45 minutes of work that would directly lead them towards their goal, but they were told they could stop it at any time. Now, those who kept their mouth shut worked the entire 45 minutes on average. And when asked afterwards, said that they felt that they had a long way to go still to achieve their goal. But those who had announced it quit after only 33 minutes on average. And when asked afterwards, said that they felt much closer to achieving their goal.”

So, you had an experiment, they divided the room into two groups. Everybody talked about their goal, but then only half of the group said they are going to commit to achieving this goal and the other group kept their mouths shut! They stayed quiet.

What did this experiment find? The people that kept their mouth shut, worked longer. Worked the full 45 minutes and then said they had a lot of more work to do, where the other people simply stopped at on average 33 minutes and said they were almost there.

“So, if this is true, what can we do? Well, you could resist the temptation to announce your goal, you can delay the gratification that the social acknowledgment brings and you can understand that your mind mistakes the talking for the doing.”

So if this is true, what can we do? Hey, that rhymes ha? Well, you could resist the temptation to announce your goal, you can delay the gratification that the social acknowledgment brings.

To acknowledge; the noun form is acknowledgment. The acknowledgment, meaning other people noticing or paying attention to what you say. And then you can understand that your mind mistakes the talking for the doing. Understanding that your mind doesn’t know the difference between talking about what you want to do and actually doing that.

“But, if you do need to talk about something you can state it in a way that gives you no satisfaction. Such as, I really want to run his marathon so, I need to train five times a week and kick my ass if I don’t – okay. So, audience, next time you’re tempted to tell someone your goal, what will you say? Exactly! Well done.”

So, what does he say? That if you have to tell somebody about your goal, and I know it’s very hard sometimes. You are excited about it, but don’t say it in a way that satisfies you. “Like, I’m going to be a fluent English speaker next year!” And then the other person says, “wow good job!” And then you say, cool – yeah, okay. I guess I feel like I’m already there, so let’s go have a beer. No, say I’m going to be a fluent English speaker next year. So, I’m going to have to practice a little bit every day and if I don’t, you can kick my ass, meaning, Get mad at me or keep me motivated – right?

And then he says, the next time you’re tempted to tell someone your goal, what will you say? Tempted of course, means to have the desire to do something, you’re tempted you want, you really want to say something, you’re excited. I have this big idea; I want to let everybody know about it! And you’re tempted to say that. Maybe you’re tempted by chocolate or you’re tempted by shopping. But anyway, next time you’re tempted to tell your goal to somebody, keep your mouth shut or tell them that, but don’t tell them like you’ve already felt satisfied by it. Don’t be satisfied with the goal itself. That’s easy. The hard part is following through.

So, what do you think about this? Do you think it’s important to keep your goals to yourself, to not share them with other people, or do you think you should share your goals with other people so they can support you and help you and make you feel excited about it and give you tips and help you along your journey to reach that goal?

There are both sides, I’ve heard both arguments so, it’s kind of up to you to choose and to experiment with both. Personally, I find a balance between the two. I like to share with people what my maybe big objectives are, my big long term goals are, but small ones and how I want to achieve that, how I want to get there; maybe I would keep to myself. Not telling them every little thing I’m doing to get there. For one, I think it just helps me keep things more private so I can kind of test things out or try things without people watching every move that I make. But also two, I don’t want to tell people I’m going to do something if I haven’t shown any progress or shown any results on that, sometimes. So, I like to do things first say hey, this is what I’m doing what do you think? As opposed to “hey, this is what I’m going to do, what do you think?” Alright.

I hope you enjoyed this TED Talk. The objective is for you to hear the native speaker in the Ted video, and then I kind of break it down for you, make it a little easier for you to understand, to really train your ear and to train your listening – okay? If you want, go watch this short, cool TED Talk on ted.com. I will put a link on my website, so go to feelgoodenglish.com to find this episode and go a little more deep.

And I’m going to leave you with a success joke – to brighten your day a little bit. Actually, this is more of a quote and it goes;

“Behind every successful man there is a woman with nothing to wear!”

Until next time, keep your goals to yourself or share them.

Bye, bye!