Wanting to win is useless without setting yourself up to win.
Only aspiring to win doesn’t move you far on your endeavor. Positively dreaming about your goal is necessary, still not sufficient.
As you can’t make a cake with only flour, you can’t achieve anything with only wanting to. Even when you genuinely, really, and deeply want something and are motivated to the moon and back: it will be as having lots of flour, won’t make it taste like a cake.
The intention to win is necessary and is not enough to achieving anything.
The commitment to prepare and do what it takes to win is what sets apart achievers from “plan-and-dream-only” people.
Think about this: Who do you know who does not like or want to be fitter, healthier, or have better personal relationships? How many people genuinely want a promotion or salary increase? Still, most of them can’t really make it happen.
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die” while is not clear who came up fist with this quote, it is clear that it could apply to most (all?) of us.
A friend who works with millennials entrepreneurs shared her complaint with me: “Everyone wants to publish a book, but no one wants to write.”
So, if almost everyone has the will to achieve or get better, why so few people end up getting what they say they want?
Some of the elements for failing to become what we say we want to be are:
- Self-deception (or self-deceit).
- GAP of expectations; over or underestimating capabilities, resources, or timing.
- Lack of support; for creating momentum, monitoring progress, and regulating through the effort.
- Absence of: method, skills, or persistence until the experience is created, about the challenge at hand.
In this article, I will focus on self-deception.
Self-deception is the least spoken or heard of the above processes, and when used, it appears limited to a little and negative part of it.
Self-deception is seeing the world the way we wish it to be rather than the way it is.
When people have a self-deception, they use their hopes, needs, desires, theory, prejudices, expectations, memories, and other psychological elements to construct how they see the world. They could be aware or, most often, unaware of it.
Self-deception is simply a motivated false belief (conscious or subconsciously) and is indistinguishable from positive illusion.
Self-deception is a resource with many different uses. It has negative consequences as well as benefits. Self-deception may have evolved as an adaptive strategy for deceiving others without being discovered. In this context, self-deception can prevent the liar from emitting nonverbal cues of guilt, minimize the cognitive load associated with lying, and reduce retribution via pleas of ignorance. However, the bad parts is that
Self-deception can restrain us from seeing what is going on, hindering us from doing what we need to do to get what we want.
Great, now: How to stop deceiving myself and start doing what I need to do?
First, it is almost impossible to not enter into some self-deception. Second, even if there is still little research, what’s available right now shows good promise so far confirming:
There is a great decay rate of self-deception when exposed to the truth.
In one investigation, people who had cheated on a test (and deceived themselves into thinking they did well due to their ability) took a series of additional tests without access to the answers; self-deception lingered beyond the next test, but, faced with repeated poor performance, people eventually stopped believing they were better than they actually were.
The best way to get rid of self-deception is to taste reality early and as often as possible.
We have to set up a plan, like sketching a map, testing, and correcting it while we use it, like changing the car's wheels while running. In this case, the value of preparing a plan is not the plan itself but using it as a tool to see where reality truly lies, and keep adjusting it to prevent self-deceit.
The early and the more precise you see your obstacles, the better you will develop strategies to overcome them. Simple and not easy to do.
There are many effective ways. I will speak about one that works: it truly works across cultures, domains, and areas of life: Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions (MCII). It is based on making clear what you really want and why you are really not doing it. How?
Get ultra-clear and specific about: What is your dearest wish? and What holds you back from achieving it? Then, develop upfront implementable strategies to cope in the desired direction.
Do not Only think positively
Through numerous research, appears that the more time people spend thinking positively, the less effort they put into actions. Staying long enough to dream, the positive thought gives the mind a sense of “already achieved” lowering the effort they will make. In one broad research, it was found that the more students dream about getting a great job, the less paying employments they got.
Positive dreams have the consequence of ending up putting less effort.
However, we need positive dreams; we need to flirt with “the crazy impossible ideas” to get excitement, motivation, and self-determination kicked in.
We need to combine positive thinking with reality. Once we combine positive thinking with the reality that stands in the way of our positive dream: mental associations form and behavior change happen.
How to put all of this together, give me a process, please:
WOOP. Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan.
Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan (WOOP) is a systematic way to increase motivation and change behavior, largely research and developed by Gabriele Oettingen. It makes the mental contrasting with implementation intentions, easy to apply, in even 5 minutes.
Give it a try, NOW:
Wish: What would you wish to have done in the next 24hrs? It could be big or small, hard, or easy. What is that thing you truly wish to say by the end of today: I've done this!
Outcome: Get really, REALLY specific, and clear. Using 3 to 4 words to describe it: having accomplished that outcome, how would make you feel? How would you see yourself while obtaining it?. Now, IMMAGINE this outcome as vividly as possible. Give your thoughts and images free rein. Let your mind go. Please close your eyes and feel it as fully as you can.
Obstacle: What holds you back from realizing your wish? Take a closer look; what behavior or emotion could stop you from doing the actions you need to do?… Find it, paraphrase it in 3 to 6 words. Now IMMAGINE those thoughts and those feelings really happening. Go there, feel all that happening.
Plan. Identify one action you can take or one thought you can think about to overcome your obstacle. Focus Only on the obstacle you’ve identified. Summarize it in 3 to 6 words and make an if-then plan:
If / Then plan: Put your obstacle before the word “if” and set the behavior to overcome your obstacle after the word “then”:
If … (obstacle) … then I will …(behavior)
eg1: If (I feel like not writing) then I will (only “darken the page” with words).
eg2: If (I feel like not training) then I will (go out and walk for 10 min)
You dont need to think, reflect, or reconsider the action. When the IF happens, you shortcut to do you THEN.
This process breaks the possibility of self-deceiving, it takes ‘literally” 5 to 10 min to do it, and most importantly, it is amazingly effective. I’ll be happy to support you with Any doubt implementing this process, just write me an email/or comment.
Good luck :-)