Delay gratification

The remarkable power of delaying gratification

Everyone, please think of your biggest personal goal. 　Imagine
deciding right now that you're going to do it. People will
congratulate you.  They will think you are great. It will feel good.

Well, bad news: you should have kept your mouth shut, because that
good feeling now will make you less likely to do it. Researchers have
found that telling someone your goal makes it less likely to happen.
Any time you have a goal, there are some steps that need to be done,
some work that needs to be done in order to achieve it. If you tell
someone, the mind is kind of tricked into feeling that it's already
done. And then because you've felt that satisfaction, you're less
motivated to do the actual hard work necessary.

Researchers tested 163 individuals.  Half of the group were made to
keep their goals a secret, and the other half were told to talk about
their goals.  Then everyone set to work on achieving their goals. The
researchers discovered that the group who had talked about their plans
did not work as hard on achieving their goals.  The group who kept
their goals a secret on the other hand all worked much harder on their
plans.

So if this is true, what can we do? Well, you could not talk about
your goal. You can delay the gratification that the social
acknowledgment brings. But if you do need to talk about something, you
can talk about  it in a way that gives you no satisfaction, such as,
"I really want to run this marathon, so I need to train five times a
week and kick my ass if I don't, okay?"

*Delay gratification means to wait for the pleasure rather than
enjoying the immediate reward


Questions
1.  According to the article, does telling someone your dream make you
feel good?
2. According to the article, why should we keep our mouths shut?
3.  When researchers studied the two  groups, which group worked best
on achieving their goals?
4.  According to the article, is asking for support and telling
someone your goal the same thing?  Explain.

B.   GIVE A TALK - use the following plan to retell the article.
1. most people have goals, many people talk about them. It feels good when others congratulate us
2. Research shows motivation fails after telling someone
3. Researchers tested two groups.
4. There is a difference between asking for support and telling someone your dream


C.  Task - Tell about a time you told someone about a dream and then it
didn't come true.  Reflect on this experience.  Was it because you
lost motivation?  Then, tell about a time you kept your dream a secret
and it came true.

Based on Ted talk on same topic
--
Tim Blankley