There is a strong belief in the power of failure to teach people — but it is misplaced.
Discover, harness, and sustain your inner drive with the PsyBlog course Spark, which will help empower you to achieve your goals and transform your life.
Discover, harness, and sustain your inner drive with the PsyBlog course Spark, which will help empower you to achieve your goals and transform your life.
Spark is PsyBlog’s second online course, after Activate, both of which are included in the Premium Membership.
The course is designed to help you discover, harness, and sustain your inner drive, empowering you to achieve your goals and transform your life.
With a Premium Membership you can now access the whole of the ‘Spark’ course immediately online.
A Premium Membership also gives you access to all members-only articles, premium content and other courses, as they become available.
Being passionate about a project or goal — no matter how big or small — makes us feel alive.
It is invigorating to think about the changes you could make in yourself or in the world.
This is the excitement that this course tries to spark — and keep alive.
The course’s focus is on practical ways to help you turn vague directions and ideas into consuming passions.
No matter whether you only have an uncertain sense of your goal or are half-way towards it, this course can help.
This course is all about the practical steps you can take to work towards your goals.
All the tips, tricks and procedures are based on studies published in scientific journals.
But the focus is on the process of increasing your motivation, not on the studies themselves.
Each of the 17 steps begins with a short summary and has a clear learning point.
The course is divided into three parts:
The steps include:
The steps include:
The steps include:
This course uses some standard motivational techniques that a therapist or counsellor might use.
Each of the 17 steps is accompanied by a point to stop and think.
These are short pauses for you to reflect on your personal motivation.
They are designed to help you identify specific things like:
Enroll in Spark now and start your motivational journey today!
The simple reason why most people fail to follow through on their plans.
The simple reason why most people fail to follow through on their plans.
The secret to achieving goals is understanding both the psychology of decision-making and the psychology of implementing our plans.
When people make decisions, they tend to focus on rewards beyond all other considerations.
This is a problem.
A simple example: someone might make a plan to get up earlier in order to leave more time for eating a healthy breakfast before going to work.
However, when it comes to actually getting up early, most prefer ten more minutes in bed.
This is why so many plans fail: people focus on rewards when planning, instead of the barriers they will face.
This pattern of human behaviour was demonstrated in a study in which participants were given both physical and mental tests of effort.
They were told they would be paid varying amounts, depending on the task.
The results showed that, unsurprisingly, people chose tasks that paid more.
Oddly, though, they did not put in that much more effort when the job paid more.
It was the effort required that predicted how well people would do on the mental and physical tasks.
In other words, people dislike doing things that require more effort, even when the reward is proportionately greater.
Dr Agata Ludwiczak, the study’s first author, said:
“Common sense suggests the amount of effort we put into a task directly relates to the level of reward we expect in return.
However, building psychological and economic evidence indicates that often high rewards are not enough to ensure people put in the effort they need to achieve their targets.
We have found that there isn’t a direct relationship between the amount of reward that is at stake and the amount of effort people actually put in.
This is because when we make choices about what effort to put in, we are motivated by the rewards we expect to get back.
But at the point at which we come to actually do what we had said we would do, we focus on the level of effort we have to actually put in rather than the rewards we hoped we would get.”
The study found that the same was true for both mental and physical tasks.
Dr Magda Osman, study co-author, said:
“If we aren’t careful our plans can be informed by unrealistic expectations because we pay too much attention to the rewards.
Then when we face the reality of our choices, we realise the effort is too much and give up.
For example, getting up early to exercise for a new healthy lifestyle might seem like a good choice when we decide on our new year’s resolutions, but once your alarm goes off on a cold January morning, the rewards aren’t enough to get you up and out of bed.”
The study was published in the journal Behavioural Brain Research (Ludwiczak et al., 2020).
Discover methods to stop dreaming and start doing, including the importance of sharing your goals with others and utilizing short deadlines.
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Americans are particularly prone to this limiting belief.
Americans are particularly prone to this limiting belief.
The key to more willpower is to believe that it is an infinite resource.
However, when people believe their willpower is limited, and needs recharging periodically, that belief becomes their reality.
The results come from a study which compared beliefs about willpower between Europeans and Americans.
Professor Christopher Napolitano, the study’s first author, said:
“What matters most is what we think about our willpower.
When we view our willpower as limited, it’s similar to a muscle that gets tired and needs rest.
If we believe it is a finite resource, we act that way, feeling exhausted and needing breaks between demanding mental tasks, while people who view their willpower as a limitless resource get energized instead.”
The results showed that Americans were more likely to believe their willpower was limited.
American said they needed more breaks and rest after mentally tiring tasks.
Europeans, though, reported they felt more energy after difficult tasks and ready to start something new.
The study included over 1,100 Americans, and 1,600 Europeans — around half Swiss and half German.
Professor Napolitano said:
“Your feelings about your willpower affect the way you behave — but these feelings are changeable.
Changing your beliefs about the nature of your self-control can have positive effects on development, leading to healthier behaviors and perceptions of others.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Assessment (Napolitano & Job, 2018).
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If you want to run more, use this thought as motivation.
If you want to run more, use this thought as motivation.
Running is socially contagious, research finds.
Data from 1 million runners collected over five years suggests that the running bug spreads from person to person.
Just knowing other people who run is enough to boost your motivation, it seems.
Professor Sinan Aral, a study author, said:
“Knowing the running behaviors of your friends as shared on social networks can cause you to run farther, faster, and longer.”
The study’s authors write:
“On the same day, on average, an additional kilometer run by friends can inspire someone to run an additional three-tenths of a kilometer and an additional ten minutes run by friends can inspire someone to run three minutes longer.”
Comparing yourself with others can motivate you in two ways:
This study suggests that comparing yourself to someone who is doing better has the stronger motivational effect.
Men are particularly susceptible to the competitive instinct.
Both other men and other women can fire them up to greater achievements.
Women, though, tend to be mainly competitive with other women and are not generally motivated by comparing themselves with men.
The study was published in the journal Nature Communications (Aral & Nicolaides, 2017).
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