Visualize Your Future (or Stop Making New Years Resolutions!)

Thinking about the New Year and what your resolutions should be? Well, don't! Most of the time resolutions never turn into realizations. The cause is most people focus on what they don't want to happen in the New Year vs. focusing on what they do want in the New Year.

Visualize your Future

New research in the field of personality and social sciences demonstrates that visualizing your success increases ones chances of success. What was especially interesting was that visualization was more successful when viewed from the "third-person" as if witnessing a movie of one self vs. seeing this success in the "first-person" (i.e., I will do this goal...). This "third-person" technique, according to the writers, increases ones acheivement motivation.

A "third-person" viewpoint focuses on personal abilities and efforts vs. luck of the situation. It has been long understood that people who see success as internal vs. exte
al do better at specific tasks and goals. For example, if you believe that your success if based on your abilities instead of your circumstances, you are more likely to achieve a goal.

Additionally, if you see your failures as exte
al to you vs. it being about some defect in yourself, you are more likely to achieve a goal.

SOURCE: Noelia A. Vasquez and Roger Buehler
Seeing Future Success: Does Imagery Perspective Influence Achievement Motivation?
Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2007 33: 1392-1405

30 Minute Action Plan: Take ten minutes to visualize what you want out of life. To really ensure this visions success, write it down (see post about visualization jou
als below). Be sure to list your internal resources and abilities that you will use and objectively identify exte
al barriers to move around.