Why You Should Stop Telling People About Your Dreams
It might do more harm than good
I first heard about this from Ted Talk given by Derek Sivers, the author of the book “Anything You Want”. Here is his advice about why we should keep our goals to ourselves:
“resist the temptation to announce your goal. You can delay the gratification that the social acknowledgment brings, and you can understand that your mind mistakes the talking for the doing.”
In the talk, he showed a study by a group of researchers at NYU in 2009 about how intention — behavior gap was affected by people telling others about their goals.
163 people across 4 separate tests were asked to write down their personal goals. Everyone was given 45 minutes to work on it. The tested people were divided into 2 groups. The first group announced their goal to the room. The second group kept their mouth shut. The result showed that the group that kept goals to themselves worked for the entire 45 minutes, on average, and felt that they still had a lot to do before they’d be done. Meanwhile, the people who announced it quit after 33 minutes, on average, and felt much closer to achieving their goals while they still had a long way to go.
This is called “Social Reality”. The mind is tricked into the feeling that you’ve already achieved it. You then have a sense of satisfaction. Therefore, you might be less motivated to do the actual hard work.
In my experience, there are often 3 situations when we share our goals/plans with others:
#1. Other people might support and acknowledge it. It may sound like a good thing that they could keep you accountable for it. But chances are, Social Reality, as mentioned above, might be a problem here. When your goal is acknowledged, it makes you feel like you’ve already taken steps toward that goal and have a sense of achievement. As a result, you are less likely to take the actual steps towards your goal.
2. They might respond negatively and talk you out of it which easily makes you doubt, hesitate, and feel demotivated.
3. They might still support you but also give you their advice and ideas which are based on their own perspectives and stories without considering yours. It will more or less influence you, then you won’t probably stay true to your first, pure decisions coming from your heart.
If you really want to have someone to keep you accountable for it, make sure to choose the person wisely and announce to them your ACTIONS, NOT THE IDENTITY you want to become. For example, instead of saying “I’m going to open my own Art Gallery” which paints you as a cool, professional artist, just say “I’m going to create 2 paintings a week.”
In conclusion, I recommend you write down your dream, review it often, and just quietly work on it. You are already the master of your mind, just follow your gut. Everything you need to succeed is already within you. Because the secret is: “You wouldn’t have the dream if you didn’t already have what it takes to make it happen.” (Marie Forleo)
If you enjoy my writing, buy me a coffee here. I’d be grateful for it.
If you like articles on Medium, come join the community to read limitless articles and get an opportunity to earn money from writing. Sign up for a membership using this referral link. It doesn’t cost you extra and I can get a little commission. It’d really make my day!
