Category: Motivation

This thought made people more confident and boosted their performance.

Imagining a clear picture of a successful future can help motivate people to succeed.

Looking to the future — and focusing on a positive future identity — helps people deal with everyday stressful situations.

For the study, students from vulnerable backgrounds wrote about either their past or future successes.

Those who imagined positive futures were more motivated to take action.

They also displayed more confident body language in a mock interview and achieved better performance in an academic test.

The effects were particularly beneficial for female students.

Dr Mesmin Destin, the study’s first author, said:

“The theory of identity-based motivation proposes that activating a focus on a successful future identity may be especially powerful in motivating students who are vulnerable during challenging academic situations to develop a sense of action readiness.

This involves feeling ready and able to take appropriate action when confronting difficulty.”

For the study, hundreds of students were given a mock interview after writing about their past or future success.

They were then given a difficult academic test.

Researchers looked at body language and the amount of effort students put into the test.

Dr Destin said:

“Activating imagined successful future identities appears to provide a potential pathway to enable vulnerable students to effectively navigate everyday stressors.

The findings therefore suggest that certain students may benefit from strategies that remind them to visualize their successful futures prior to any difficult and important task that they might otherwise be likely to avoid.”

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The study was published in the journal Motivation and Emotion (Destin et al., 2018).

Attendance at fitness classes was 90% higher in the group that used this type of motivation.

Competition is one of the best motivators: it works much better than friendly support, which could actually backfire and reduce motivation, the researchers found.

The research involved college students being encouraged to attend classes at the University fitness centre.

The programme was managed through an internet-based social network.

The researchers tested the effects of four different types of social network interactions, some involving competition, others not.

The results showed that when competition was involved, attendance rates at fitness classes were 90% higher.

Dr Damon Centola, one of the study’s authors, said:

“Most people think that when it comes to social media more is better.

This study shows that isn’t true: When social media is used the wrong way, adding social support to an online health program can backfire and make people less likely to choose healthy behaviors.

However, when done right, we found that social media can increase people’s fitness dramatically.”

Whether it was individual or in groups — competition emerged as critical to motivation.

Dr Jingwen Zhang, the study’s first author, said:

“Framing the social interaction as a competition can create positive social norms for exercising.

Social support can make people more dependent on receiving messages, which can change the focus of the program.”

Dr Centola speculated on why social support may not have worked:

“Supportive groups can backfire because they draw attention to members who are less active, which can create a downward spiral of participation.

Competitive groups frame relationships in terms of goal-setting by the most active members.

These relationships help to motivate exercise because they give people higher expectations for their own levels of performance.”

In comparison, competition kept people pushing for more:

“In a competitive setting, each person’s activity raises the bar for everyone else.

Social support is the opposite: a ratcheting-down can happen.

If people stop exercising, it gives permission for others to stop, too, and the whole thing can unravel fairly quickly.”

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• Effortless Efficiency: 24 Simple Techniques To Maximize Motivation And Productivity (P)
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The study was published in the journal Preventive Medicine Reports (Zhang et al., 2016).

Fewer than 1 in 10 people achieve their resolutions, research finds.

Many people make resolutions to change their lives for the better at this time of year.

While change is hard, the following five tips will help:

1. Establish realistic short-term goals.
2. Discuss the goals with friends and family.
3. Choose a diet that is healthy for heart and brain. This should include more omega fatty acids and less processed meat and lower sugar intake.
4. Avoid rapid weight loss diets.
5. Be flexible: if one thing doesn’t work, try something else.

Dr Carolyn Kaloostian of the Keck School of Medicine at USC, said it can be easy to get distracted from your goals:

“These start-of-the-year priorities unfortunately get sidelined due to competing obligations, responsibilities, and commitments from work or family.”

Doing things with other people can help, said Dr Kaloostian:

“I see some of the best results from patients who join a team and compete with others in obstacles races and runs.

They train together, help each other through injuries, develop great friendships due to similar goals, and have short-term goals to succeed at the upcoming course.”

Start with something easy and do-able, Dr Kaloostian recommends:

“For those who are new to getting moving, our so-called ‘couch potatoes,’

I strongly recommend starting with a short low-intensity fast-paced walk, about 15 minutes daily after stretching of course, to get into the groove and see how good it feels to just get moving.

It would be dangerous to jump into an intense workout regimen which may result in injuries.”

Be realistic about goals, but try to stay optimistic, said Dr Kaloostian:

“Approach each day with gratitude and refresh your commitment to this goal each morning.

Try to avoid adding new projects to your to-do list as this may pull you away from your goal.”

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• Although persistence towards long-term goals is laudable, sometimes quitting is the best thing we can do.
• Setting realistic and modest goals makes people happier in the long-term.