Keep Your Mouth Shut

Keep your mouth shut. Okay, I know that sounds kind of mean, and a little harsh. But, I’ll explain what it means and it actually does sort of make a little bit of sense. And also, for full disclosure, I know a lot of these videos are things I’ve learned while I was in the Army. This is not something I learned necessarily while I was in the Army, it was something I kind of learned while I was doing some research and a little preparation for a different talk that I was doing. But, it’s still good advice and I think you could probably take something away from it. So, did you know that when you announce your intentions, or announce what your goals are, or something like that to people, it actually makes your less inclined to achieve those goals. The reason why, is because it sort of satisfies the reward center in your brain. It kind of gives you that sense of accomplishment already. Especially if you’re announcing some sort of goal and people are like, “Congratulations, that’s such a great thing, congratulations. That’s a great goal to achieve.” Whatever they may say. You sort of get that internal pat on the back already, like it’s already done. Like it’s a done deal. And, you sort of no longer feel the need to actually strive to achieve that goal. Because your brains already satisfied. It already has been rewarded. And, you don’t really feel the need to accomplish whatever that goal is, or really work hard towards it, anyways. So, now that’s not to say don’t announce any goals to any body ever, like keep it all a secret, that’s more to say, the way you announce your goals or intentions, do it more in a way that will make you accountable. Or, so that the other person who you’re telling it to will hold you accountable. So that way you’re not actually satisfying that reward center of your brain until you’ve achieved that goal. So for example, if you say, “I want to start a content marketing strategy on my website,” right? Well, congratulations. That’s great. That’s wonderful. That sounds like a great idea, you should definitely do that, right? Bing! Now, the reward center in the back of your brain is going to be sort of satisfied because you’ve already gotten that positive feedback from someone. Like, oh yeah that’s a great idea, you should do that. Instead, if you phrased it as, “I feel like I need more content on my website, and so I’m going to start writing three blog posts per week, to start getting more search engine traffic on whatever the topic happens to be.” And you tell someone this, now they have a tangible goal in mind. Now, they have something they can hold you accountable to. And even ask them, you know, would you mind holding me accountable to this, right? So, after the first week you might be able to knock out those three blog posts, the second week maybe you get the three out again, and week after week you keep getting those blog posts out, and that person can go back to your website, they’re all time and date stamped, and they can check to see, okay yep this week they got three, three, three. And then one week, maybe you only write one. They can go back to you and say, “Well, what’s going on with this? You’re not meeting your goal. You were doing fine for a few weeks, and now you’re not meeting your goal.” Now, that reward center in your brain is kind of like hey, gimme something. I’m craving this, you know, positive pat on the back kind of feel. And so, that’s going to be more motivating to you to go out and actually achieve whatever that goal is that you’ve set. So, instead of just saying, “I’m going to do this wonderful thing, I’m going to start this new business, I’m going to launch this new product, I’m going to write more blog posts,” whatever it is. Instead of doing all that, come up with a tangible goal. A more tangible goal that someone can actually hold you accountable for. Accountable to. And that will help you achieve your actual goals.