Future Visualizations to Achieve Goals, Not Just Good, Good, Good Vibrations
Posted on January 14, 2010 at 11:00 am by: Stephan
Future visualizations are great emotionally uplifting tools. They allow clients to bask in the possibilities of an open future. While these are great techniques to feel good, clients want to make progress on their goals. Especially if they are paying you for it.
Not surprisingly, research concludes that future visualizations can dramatically improve goal achievement too. But there’s a catch. Researchers Noelia Vasquez of York University and Roger Buehler of Wilfrid Laurier University have discovered [1] that the visualizer needs to imagine looking at themselves successfully accomplishing their goal from the eyes of an on-looker, (third-person perspective), and not from their own eyes, (first-person perspective).
To give you an example, imagine preparing for a public speaking engagement:
Visualized from the first-person perspective
6 months from now, I’ll be stepping onto that stage. I’ll walk up to the podium, look out at the crowd, smile, take a deep breath, appreciate all my adoring fans, and deliver my speech. It’ll feel incredible to be recognized by all the people that are important to me.
Visualized from the third-person perspective
There I am, 6 months from now, standing on the stage delivering my speech. Looking at myself, I can feel the energy of the crowd. I can see that I am nervous but I can also see that they love me and want more. And man, I gotta say, I look good.
Both of these visualizations are valuable for increasing people’s expectations for success but there are two critical benefits to the third-person perspective that enhances people’s motivation to prepare for and achieve their goals.
1) Increased Importance – The successful completion of the task is deemed more significant when viewed from the third-person perspective. In other words, when people view the event from their own eyes, they focus on what the experience means for them. When people view it from the perspective of an audience member, they focus on what the experience means for other people and how it fits into the bigger picture, (i.e. people go from focusing on giving a speech to focusing on how being a good speaker helps influence others). This increases motivation and emotional involvement which in turn, improves the ability to attain goals.
2) Task-Oriented – The third-person perspective is more objective and thereby causes the client to think more about the actual steps that are required to complete the task. By contrast, the first-person perspective can often focus people’s attention on the emotional experience (i.e. pride, joy, excitement) of the successful outcome at the expense of considering what steps are required to achieve success. The third-person perspective induces more realism, objectivity, and task-oriented thinking which again, improves goal attainment.
This was tested with university students that were asked to visualize success for an upcoming midterm. Results concluded that students that employed the third-person perspective began studying earlier, studied more, and could study for longer periods of time. And of course, in the end, they got higher grades.
Using Third-Person Visualizations to Achieve Goals
Here’s a simple exercise you can perform to put this knowledge into use.
1. Get the coachee to choose a specific goal that they have in the near future – anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months from now would suffice.
2. Ask the coachee to picture the upcoming task going extremely well, just as they would hope it would go. Make sure you ask them to see the events unfolding from the perspective of an outside observer. They should be able to see themselves as well as the surroundings. Please note, this step can be done in-person or in writing.
3. Collect feedback from the coachee. If this task was done in-person and you guided the coachee through the visualization, it helps to give them a few moments to jot down their notes about the visualization. Viewing the notes can help you verify that it was done from the third-person perspective.
4. Ask the coachee the significance of completing the goal. Why is it important? What is the impact of completing the goal?
5. Create a list of tasks. Now that the visualization is complete, ask the coachee what steps they need to take to achieve the goal. Jot them down.
6. And for bonus points, get the coachee to commit to a place and time to complete their tasks.
Have fun with it. Any other ways to use the third-person perspective? Please add your comments below.
Notes
[1] You can read their full research paper here – Seeing Future Success: Does Imagery Perspective Influence Achievement Motivation?
The Single Most Effective Way to Increase Commitment and Accountability
Posted on November 17, 2009 at 10:33 am by: Kurt
In last week’s blog post, Stephan wrote about the how and why of a simple coaching agreement. The idea is that for coaching to work, you need to put a system or process in place to make sure you and your coach (or client) actually meet for your planned sessions. Yet a common problem expressed by coaches is that their clients often miss their sessions or fail to follow through on their commitments.
My question, then, is “What does science have to say about this problem?” As it turns out, quite a lot. And the good news is that almost all of these “problem” behaviors – missing sessions, failing to complete assignments, being late, etc., can be solved by improving just ONE character trait: self-regulation. So important is this one trait that Florida State University psychology professor Roy Baumeister has called self-regulation the “master virtue”, that is, the one that controls your actions in almost all other areas of your life.
The Marshmallow Test
To see why this is so, we need to go back about 40 years, to a very simple experiment by psychologist Walter Mischel. Mischel seated several young children in front of a plate on which a marshmallow was placed. He then left the room, instructing them not to eat the marshmallow until he returned. He then measured how long each child held off eating the marshmallow. The surprising thing about the study didn’t come until several years later, when he found that the amount of time the person waited as a young child correlated highly with personality traits several years later in life. These traits included reliability, perseverance, and school achievement. In fact, the children who held out the longest had SAT scores that averaged 210 points higher than the others. Indeed the “marshmallow test” is better at predicting success later in life than just about any other measurement, including IQ and socio-economic status.
Self-Control in Action
Here’s a TED video that discusses the Marshmallow Test and shows some hilarious footage of children employing a variety of delaying tactics to avoid eating the marshmallow.
The Master Virtue
What, then, does the marshmallow test actually measure, and why is it so powerful at predicting personal achievement? You may have guessed by now that the test is really measuring a personality trait called self control, also known as “willpower”, “self-regulation”, “delayed gratification”, etc. The reason it’s so important across so many domains of life is that it acts as a regulator, holding back our desire to do what we want to do but shouldn’t. People with high degrees of self control succeed because they are able to forego junk food in favor of fruits and vegetables, resist playing video games when they should be studying, and get out of bed instead of hitting the snooze button.
Since Mischel’s famous experiment, researchers have spent a lot of time investigating this powerful trait, trying to figure out how it works, and how it can be improved. Baumeister has found that not only is self-regulation vital to success, but that it can be improved by consistently “working out” your self control system, much like a muscle can be strengthened by pumping iron. Moreover, increasing one’s self-control in one area of life (say, by committing to floss every day for six weeks) will naturally increase your self control in all other areas of your life. This is why he calls it the “master virtue”.
Improving Self-Control
So given its immense importance in life, how do you actually increase your self-control? Here’s a simple yet effective activity that you can start doing today with your coaching clients.
- Take the self-control test. Like anything else, an essential component to increasing any behavior is to measure it. Roy Baumeister has been kind enough to let me post his brief Self Control Scale (SCS) questionnaire. Just click on the box to the right to download it. I recommend taking the test (which only takes a minute to do) before any self control improvement program, so you can measure your progress over time. Keep in mind that the client answers the questions, but the coach needs to calculate the score. The first form (Self-Control Test.pdf) contains the questionnaire, while the second form (Self-Control Test Scoring.pdf) describes how to score it.
- Choose one behavior that requires self control that your client would like to improve. Ask your client to commit to performing the behavior regularly for a period of six weeks. Some good suggestions include flossing every night, running twice a week, committing to show up for all meetings on time, etc. The critical factor is that the target behavior MUST be one that requires some degree of willpower, self-control, etc. Something inherently pleasing like “spend an hour a day reading” won’t have the same effect. Have the client write down the goal and tell them you will be holding them accountable during each of your regular coaching sessions.
- Take the self-control test again. At the end of the six week period, most behaviors will have become automatic if your client has been performing them as required. Have them take the SCS questionnaire to see if there has been an improvement to the clients overall self-control, and then pick a different behavior to tackle for the next 6-week period. Keep repeating this process every six weeks, making sure to record the client’s SCS score each time.
Not only will this exercise help your clients improve on specific behaviors each six-week period, but by focusing on behaviors that require self control you will be increasing their global self-control as well. This can be verified by tracking their SCS scores over time. Good luck, and have fun!
Are you a man that can stare into the eyes of another man? Lunch n Learn with Jayson Gaddis
Posted on August 26, 2009 at 3:21 pm by: Stephan
Picture a team of computer geeks (all males) in an informal meeting sitting in a circle. Now picture them pairing up and looking each other in the eyes for 60 seconds. Can you say awkward?!
Thinking back to our one-hour lunch and learn with Jayson Gaddis last week, I can still feel the awkward tension in the air. But that’s exactly what Jay got us to do because he is on a quest to help dudes in their 20s and 30s step up and be the men they really want to be.
After the first minute of awkwardness, Jay got us to engage in more meaningful conversation. I regard our office of 7 guys and one half-time gal to be pretty fun. We’re all friends and we regularly go out for coffee or grab lunch together. Surprisingly, I found out something new for each of my colleagues that day. And not just a random fact but a deep desire or goal that each of them had.
How did Jayson do that for us? He asked us to stop talking and to listen to our hearts. He came back to the same question several times: “what do you want?” Then he had us ask each other the same question.
The best part was when we had to tell our partners (the person with whom we paired up), on a scale of 1 to 10, how much we believed them when they said they were going to take action on something. We had answers ranging from 3 to 9.5 and it was fun to be so open and honest. This is where the awkwardness was dropped. Suddenly we were getting the real benefit of the earlier work.
We all got to experience the “content” of coaching that day (in spite of the fact that we are constantly fixing our technology of coaching). And for me, I was most impressed by Jayson’s range. He has no problem being a macho guy but he can also address the soft issues of emotions from a position of confidence. Jay would be good to have around whether you are trying to be the heavyweight champion of the world or dealing with the death of a loved one.
About Jayson Gaddis
Jayson Gaddis, LPC, is an expert in male psychology. He’s a life coach and CEO of Revolutionary Man, a company devoted to men in their 20’s and 30’s who are committed to going beyond mainstream, status quo Manhood and men who are committed to reaching fulfillment in ALL areas of their life. Jayson believes guys master their own inner psychology, anything is possible..
