Never Share Your Goals If You Are Serious About Achieving Them

Don't share your goals, why you should never tell your goals, how to achieve your goals, Never Share Your Goals If You Are Serious About Achieving Them.

Say you’ve decided to set a new goal for yourself; to train yourself to run a marathon, to set up a new business or to learn a new language. You’re optimistic that this target could help you change your life for the better and you’re genuinely serious about making a go of it and hopefully making something happen. Then you tell it to your friends and family so that they can support you. Chances are that upon telling that person you will feel an instant sense of relief, as though you had already accomplished what it was that you were setting out to do. This is what we call the ‘social reality’ – simply having your goal acknowledged makes it a part of your identity and results in a rush of feel-good reward hormones. Unfortunately, this satisfaction then tricks your brain into thinking that the job is already done – and you then feel less motivated to actually go out and really achieve the goal. It’s like it has already happened.
There are other reasons not to tell others goals as well which include practical and psychological arguments. For one, if you tell someone your goal this can then increase pressure in a negative way, which may not be helpful when the goal is something that requires you to remain calm and composed. A perfect example is taking any entrance test: many people choose not to tell their friends and family when taking their G.MAT or S.A.T. tests because they don’t want to risk having to face anyone when they fail.
Another reason not to tell people your goals is that they can then end up judging your actions, which may end up being unhelpful. Tell someone you want to run a marathon for instance and you can find that they end up giving you looks every time you don’t train or relax. This can actually remove your determination to stick to a training as nobody likes being controlled and our natural tendency is to do the opposite of what we feel pressured into doing.