How many friends do you have who are "writing a novel" but years later the novel has failed to materialise? When I was first studying arts in the late 90s, practically all of my fellow students had such a goal!
In Art Markman's recent blog of May 28th he talks about the tendency of people to be less committed to achieving their goals if they tell people about them. The key aspect in the study Markman cites is the role that identity plays in helping us acheive our goals. If you want to be a writer, have visualised yourself there and tell everyone about the budding novel, you've already achieved that identity goal in the eyes of your peers. They begin to think of you as a writer before you've penned the first sentence.
In a previous blog Markman notes another study that shows the powerful link between goal realisation and visualisation. We have to perceive a qualitative difference between our lives now and our lives once our goals have been achieved, and those goals have to be realistic. The achievabilty of the vision is energising. This to me goes further than a shallow identity goal based how others percieve you, leading to a surface perception, and an internalised goal about what one is capable of which the opinions and perceptions of others is not necessarily relevant. It seems to me that based on these two studies, a persons ability to achieve a goal is also relative to how much they depend on the accolades and approval of others. If it is enough for one to be happy being perceived as a writer (without actually writing!) that person has an outward focused locus-of-control.
For my part, I've not studied for anyone's approval but my own. While many young undergrads are studying to please their parents, my working-class family put no stead in an university education and in any case I chose to study philosophy and environmental ethics, fields in which I was unlikely to find outward approval in the form of employment.
No novels in production as yet.... stay tuned.
Who do you credit for your success? Take this Locus of Control test
The locus of control theory is flawed. People lack control of their own lives because of the oppression they experience inside the capitalist system, not because of a "locus of control".
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree. There are somethings that no amount of changing yoruself are going to fix, things that really are out of your control, like the economy or the behaviour of others. It rather about whether you need the approval of others and need their direction to achieve things (ie. you are being directed by the goals of others, or at least what you think other want of you). That's different from not having a choice. We don't have to become lawyers because our parents expect us too, but we do have to lodge our tax returns to get a refund. The system is set up to make rules that don't benefit a lot of us, but often we don't have a choice about whether or not to follow them and even more often, we never have cause to question them if they are not interfering with our lives noticeably. Some ppl would say we do always have that choice, even if it means breaking the law.
ReplyDelete