10 Lessons from ‘Succeed’ by Heidi Grant Halvorson
We all have goals. Even if you have icky connotations with the word goals, chances are you almost certainly have things you want to experience and do during your life (in the interests of brevity, let’s just call them “goals” for now).
Real-talk time: there is a lot of nonsense out there about what it takes to succeed at our goals. Google it and weep.
At one extreme, there’s the uber masculine “Get up at 4am, crush it and keep crushing it until everyone else has given up and you’re the only one left on the playing field because that’s the only one you’re going to succeed” all-caps rant that usually ends in a lot of exclamation points. At the other extreme, there’s the woo-woo “Write yourself a cheque for $1,000,000, put it in your wallet, and watch the magic happen” approach that substitutes wishful thinking and good intentions for actually, you know, doing stuff.
Personally, I opt for something in the middle. I’m not adverse to hard work and I don’t believe thinking your way to success is enough (also, who writes cheques anymore?), but I also value freedom, self-care, and don’t want to end up having a nervous breakdown because I’m in ceaseless competition with everyone around me the whole time. Nope.
Heidi Grant Halvorson is a social psychologist who researches and writes about topics like focus and success. In Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, she outlines key strategies and mindsets we can use to get better at achieving what we want in any area of life, whether we’re focusing on a big work project, running a marathon, or seeking a new relationship.
I’ve read quite a few positive psychology books in the past and have found them to be superficial, overhyped and not particularly helpful (this one and this one were exceptions). What I like about Succeed is it doesn’t contain empty advice like “Just decide to be happy” (um, if that were all it took, wouldn’t we have done that by now?) nor does it delve into the kind of territory a lot of success-related books repeat ad nauseum (see the two extremes mentioned above).
Instead, Heidi translates a ton of research into practical takeaways that we can all use in our daily lives. What’s more, a lot of the findings run counter to conventional wisdom about setting and achieving goals (like the section where she explains how visualising ourselves succeeding at a particular goal is more of a hindrance than a help—and what we should do instead). As a recovering perfectionist, one of my biggest a-ha moments was the idea that we achieve more—and have a better time doing it—when we stop focusing on “being good” and start focusing on “getting better.”
Among other things, she covers topics like how to choose goals that are most likely to motivate you internally, how to think about your goals in order to succeed, and how to know when it’s time to give up on a goal. I picked up a few useful ideas from this book that I’m certainly using going forward. If this topic interests you, I hope you’ll check it out!
Further reading: Are your goals helping or hurting you? & how to balance goals and self-care
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