Loose Lips Sink Ships

“Loose Lips Sink Ships” was a piece of American wartime propaganda that was created during WWII. It was used as an admonition against careless talk. At its core, this phrase contains an assumption that speaking too freely about certain topics is risky.

I believe this phrase is beneficial to keep in mind throughout the year if you make a new year’s resolution for yourself or for your family.

This opinion runs counter to much of the latest self-improvement trends you’ll find in everything from personal finance, to weight loss, to writing a novel.

You can purchase specialized apps, website memberships, electronic wearable gadgets and more; all which claim to improve your results and keep you accountable to whatever goal you set for yourself.

I have tried many of these myself and experienced limited success. I believe these accountability programs can be useful, at least in some capacity.

However, what I’d like to share with you today are some specific pieces of research and behaviors which I have personally found to be effective in setting goals for myself and for my family.

I hope they can be of use to you and your family in 2015 and beyond!

1. Tell No One

When setting a goal for myself and for my family, I have had much more success when I tell absolutely nobody about it.

As a small example, I didn’t announce to anyone that I planned to sit down and write this post today. I made the plan to write this blog post 2 days ago, and I have been thinking about it each day since.

But I haven’t spoken to anybody about it, I haven’t posted any statuses on social media about my thoughts, I haven’t even talked to Sarah about what my post would be about this week.

To give myself the best chance of executing fully on my intentions, I have found that I must delay any and all satisfaction I might receive from achieving the goal until the very end, when the goal is totally complete.

If I allow myself to chat with a friend about an exciting new idea I have for a post, I get a small (but powerful) feeling of satisfaction. If my friend compliments my idea as being valuable or interesting or original, I feel a nice little ego boost.

As a result, some part of my subconscious will lower the priority of executing the goal to full completion. I find that I will feel less motivation and less urgency to actually write the interesting, or original, or valuable post.

I came to this practice by my own intuition and experience after learning which of my behaviors helped me succeed and which undermined my efforts. Since then, I have found research which helps explain why this could be so.

Derek Sivers in his TED talk speaks very persuasively to the proven power of keeping your goals to yourself. Peter Gollwitzer in his research addresses the “premature sense of completeness” we get once we tell others of our intentions.

If you have ever made a new year’s resolution and failed to keep it, as 92% of those who make resolutions have, consider doing the following this year.

Consider writing your resolution down on a piece of paper, stuffing it in an envelope with a stamp and mailing it to yourself. Don’t tell anybody, not even your wife or your kids.

When the letter arrives, store it unopened in a safe place, hidden away. This method costs much less than the latest electronic wrist tracking system or personal coaching session, and you might even get better results from it, as I have.

 

2. Fantasize Carefully

But how, you might wonder, do I achieve my goal with nothing and nobody to keep me accountable when I falter?

It turns out that you can be your own best motivator and coach if you practice fantasizing carefully and with intention.

Visualization has been highly popularized by athletes like Tiger Woods, media personalities like Oprah Winfrey and Arnold Schwarzenegger and self-help gurus like Anthony Robbins.

But research has shown that some forms of visualizing or fantasizing are more effective than others.

Researcher Gabriele Oettingen has produced some valuable research into specific ways we can use our own daydreams and fantasies to bolster our efforts toward reaching our goals.

In fact, her research has found a very specific sequence and method of fantasizing about your goals to be much more effective than any other method for keeping you accountable and producing the maximum amount of positive results.

First, I’ll define a few terms.

Positive fantasies are pleasurable free-floating internal images or self-talk about a desired outcome. An example of a positive fantasy might be me imagining the good feeling of accomplishment I will feel when I finish this post and upload it to our site. Essentially, imagining the benefits.

Negative fantasies are unpleasant free-floating internal images or self-talk about a desired outcome. An example of a negative fantasy might be me imagining how time-consuming the research will be for this post, or how difficult it will be to write and edit this post. Essentially, imagining the obstacles.

Counter to what much our current ‘think positive’ self-help culture would have you believe, Oettingen’s findings were that positive fantasies most often correlate with LOWER goal achievement and negative fantasies most often correlate with HIGHER goal achievement. 

These correlations were found to be true regardless of whether the fantasies are spontaneously generated by the mind, or deliberately generated intentionally.

A possible explanation for this is that positive fantasies can make a goal seem too easy, thus creating a very weak sense of optimism, which falters at the first obstacle. Negative fantasies take obstacles into account, thus creating more preparation when the obstacles are encountered.

Based on these findings, a method called mental contrasting was found to be the most effective way to visualize, fantasize or daydream about your goal.

Mental contrasting involves mentally contrasting an aspect of a desired future with an aspect of the present, which stands in the way.

This can be practiced for any goal using the following sequence:

1. Think about the outcome you want (i.e., “I want this post to be well written, valuable to my readers and posted on time.”)
2. Remind yourself of your realistic expectation that you can achieve this outcome (i.e., “I have posted well-written, valuable posts on time before, so I can do it again with this one.”)
3. Contrast your desired outcome with your present reality, which will highlight the obstacles you must overcome to achieve your desired outcome (i.e., “I need to set aside time on this date to sit down and research my post, then write the first draft and set aside time afterward for proofing and editing.”)

Oettinger also found that the higher your level of realistic expectations of success based on past experience of success with a particular goal (considered during step B), the higher the correlation of actual success in the future.

This finding can actually help you set your goal appropriately in the first place, which will give you a much higher probability of success in the long run!

For example, if you want to set a new year’s resolution to save more of your money in 2015, you will provide yourself with the best chance of success by reflecting on the most money you have ever saved before and only increasing this amount very slightly.

You could expect to have a very low chance of long-term success in this example by deciding to save 50% of your total income, if you have only ever been able to save 1% of your total annual income in the past.

Instead, a much better goal with a high chance of success would be to plan to save 2% of your total annual income in 2015.

In this way, step B is very important in the sequence above. If you can’t honestly remind yourself of past experiences which give you a realistic expectation that your desired outcome will be met, you should redefine your desired outcome along more realistic lines based on your experience.

Where I have failed in the past is in sequencing and in completing the full sequence.

For example, I have fallen into the trap of stopping after step A! I only fantasized about the desired outcome without ever progressing to step B or C.

I have also fallen into the trap of following this sequence out of order. For example, I have thought of a desired outcome (step A) then skipped to imagining all of the obstacles that stand my way (step C) without ever considering which of my past successes and experiences either equip me well or poorly to tackle these obstacles (step B).

In Conclusion

When I keep my goals to myself and follow a very specific sequence of visualization, I find that I have a better chance of achieving the goals I set for myself.

As you consider setting a new year’s resolution for yourself this week, it could be beneficial for you to remember “loose lips sink ships” and to fantasize intentionally.

It won’t help the economy much, since these self-help methods are free, but you might just find that free resources can be the best ones when it comes to achieving your goals in 2015!