“Write a goal every day.”
This is the advice of authors Ron Rubin and Stuart Avery Gold in their book on the development of the successful California company, The Republic of Tea (Success@Life, published in 2001 by Newmarket Press.) Writing your goal is already a step toward achieving it, they say. The next step they advise is thinking about it.
This makes sense to me. Psychologist have long studied the self-fulfilling prophecy–the tendency to bring into reality our expectations of ourselves and others. There are many less technical ways of saying it, though. “Believe in yourself.” “Keep your eye on the ball.” “Visualize your goals.” “Eyes on the prize.” All are ways of saying that we are more likely to get where we want to go if we stay focused on the outcome we want instead of the outcome we fear.
I experienced this in a very concrete way a few weeks ago while biking along a trail near McKeesport. Every so often we had to steer through a narrow gate (three posts, really) designed to keep cyclists in their own lanes when approaching crossroads. As a new cyclist I froze each time I approached the posts, certain I was about to run into the one or the right or on the left. I focused on the few inches between my handlebars and the posts, tensed my entire body, and imagined bike wreckage and broken bones. Fortunately the ride was long enough to give me a chance to notice what I was doing, and to notice that focusing on the posts led me to steer toward them. I realized that if I instead focused on the path ahead, where I hoped to be going, then that’s where my bike and I went.
It’s interesting to me that our fears–even small ones–are powerful enough to lead us in directions we don’t want to travel. Self-reassurance doesn’t necessarily diminish the fear, because it maintains focus on the fear. “I won’t hit that post, I won’t wreck my bike, I won’t hurt myself,” only emphasized, even cultivated, the fear. The only thing that helped was to shift my attention to the goal.