Getting Motivated cont
Research shows that if you share your intentions with other people you are far more inclined to see it through to the finish.
The main reason why people might not tell others is due to a fear of failure, but it also gives you a get out clause, a permission to fail, because you're only disappointing yourself.
By sharing your goal you might be creating an extra fear of failure, but you're less inclined to fail in the first place, and fears are easily overridden with the right sort of visualisation.
In a famous conformity experiment of the 1950's, participants were given the simple task of comparing the length of lines. They would very often give the wrong answer simply to conform with other peoples opinions but what the researchers found is that when they were asked to write down the opinion and give the answers to the researcher, they were more inclined to stick with their wrong answer, compared to another group who were asked to keep their answer to themselves and were more inclined to change their mind.
Another rather odd experiment, which was designed to test someone's perception of how difficult a hill was to climb, showed that when accompanied by a friend the participants were more optimistic about climbing it when compared to participants who were alone. They even estimated that the hill was an average of around 15% lower than the alone groups estimation. Strangely what the researchers also discovered is that the participants felt that the hill was easier to climb when they were simply 'thinking' about a friend!
Remember, the mind does not know the difference between what is real and what is imaginary, imagine a friend and as far as your brain is concerned your friend is there with you.
So you can see how important it is to let everyone know what you're doing. Not only will you be more inclined to stick with it, but it will actually make it seem easier to do.
In fact the wider the knowledge of what you're doing the more support you'll feel you have. There's a big difference in motivation if you only tell your little Sister compared to creating a Facebook page or a blog about it.
Research has shown that it is possible to boost willpower by making small changes to your habits.
For example, if you plan to stop smoking next month try brushing your teeth by using the opposing hand in the mean time, and you're more likely to succeed.
It's as if by proving to yourself that you can learn a new habit and override an old one, even a simple one such as this, it strengthens your ability to stick to a new habit such as quitting smoking.
The same trick works by eliminating "er" and "um" out of your everyday speak, or by parking your car in a different place and walking a little further than you normally would also has the same effect.
But, and it's a BIG but, don't push yourself to hard. Brushing your teeth in a different hand is one thing, but if the change in your habits is too great it can have a negative influence on your determination.
Going from 3 sugars in your tea to 2 would be ok, but to cut it out all together is likely to create an effect called Ego Depletion.
In one experiment undertaken by Florida State University, 3 groups of people were asked to complete a geometric puzzle, which unbeknownst to them, was totally unsolvable. The 3 groups were all asked to skip a meal to induce hunger, one group was to go straight to the puzzle and the other 2 groups were given a bowl of radishes and a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
Of these 2 groups the first were asked to eat 2 or 3 radishes and ignore the cookies and the other were to eat 2 or 3 cookies and ignore the radishes, before they were all given the impossible puzzle.
What was found is that the group with the least persistence was the radish eaters, and that the cookie eaters had the same persistence as the hungry group.
So don't try and do too much all at once, otherwise you increase your chances of simply giving up.