Goals + Mindsets
I’ve often told people I’m an optimist not because I think everything will be fine - but because I am confident that there are solutions when things aren’t fine.
Tiffany here, and I was listening to two podcasts this week that were just so good I have to share them with you.
Before I get to them, a brief backstory.
I wrote a blog post a few years ago called “Don’t Reach for The Stars.” It was about being very realistic about the positive and negative potential of, say, trying to achieve a goal. In the post, I talked about visualizing all the things that could go wrong - and then putting a plan together for how you could overcome them. I learned about the concept initially from Gabriele Oettingen who has a goal-achieving method called WOOP.
Honestly, at first it seemed slightly strange - why would I imagine all the things that could go wrong?! But it made me think about what "being positive" really means, and I've discovered that premeditating solutions has been far more comforting to me than never imagining there will be a problem. It's been an incredible tool in practice, performance and general life.
Really dig into goals and why doing a healthy amount of negative thinking may help you in this podcast: The Science of Setting and Achieving Goals
I was listening to the second episode I'd like to share with you today while I was walking to the BART station in San Francisco. It was a particularly sunny day (huge perk of California in February), and I actually stopped on the sidewalk to type this in a note, because I didn't want to forget it:
“Behaviors matter. And so do mindsets.”
Dr. Alia Crum, Associate Professor of Psychology at Stanford University is a world expert on mindsets and beliefs and how they shape our responses to stress, exercise, and even to the foods we eat. She was the one that said the line above, and a lot of the conversation was about how we shape our reactions to stress based on our preconceived notions about it.
This really hit a nerve, since I was just talking last month about embracing stress in my own performance preparation! And, I often tell my students: not all stress is bad. I will not do nearly as good of a job explaining why we need to revise our mindset about stress (and a lot of other things), so just go listen to the episode!
We hope these podcasts will inspire you on a few drives, walks or while doing the dishes this week.
Do good out there!
