psychology
3 language habits of people who always achieve their goals
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Many people use the turn of the year as an opportunity to make new resolutions. However, these are often thrown overboard during January. A language expert reveals what people who always achieve their goals do differently – and how you can do it too.
That’s the thing with New Year’s resolutions. Some swear by it, others can’t do anything with it. Tastes are just different. Nevertheless, many people take the turn of the year as an opportunity to create new ones to set goals. If the break between the old and the new year helps you – even if it is artificial – to shed baggage, leave it behind you and manifest the new version of yourself – go for it! If you don’t need the turn of the year to implement new goals – that’s good too!
Now it’s mid-January, so it’s the perfect time to check in on how things are going with your good resolutions. Have you thrown them overboard a long time ago, are you implementing them with less and less enthusiasm, or have they already become second nature to you? The latter is the goal for many. But very few actually manage to stick with it. However, there are people who always achieve their goals – at least they feel like they do. But how? The language expert and “Head of Didactics” Maren Pauli from the language learning platform “Babbel” explained to us what these people do differently – and that it actually has a lot to do with language habits and goal formulation.
Achieve goals? With these 3 language habits it works
- Use strong wording
When we set goals, they often say, “I want to exercise more,” “I want to stop smoking,” or “I want to eat healthier.” In themselves, the resolutions are fine, but you can make sure that you use stronger wording like “I will…” instead of “I want to.” This is how you show yourself that you believe in yourself and that there is no reason to doubt. This leaves as little room for excuses as possible.
- Avoid negatives and negative connotations
This simple rule is important not only when setting goals, but also when it comes to beliefs. Because our brain is designed to simply delete negatives from the sentence. The affirmation “I will no longer doubt myself” quickly becomes “I will doubt myself” because the brain focuses on “doubting”. To get around this, you can simply turn the negative into a positive phrase like “I will believe in myself.” Words like quitting, giving up and omitting can also quickly demotivate you. Try replacing these. It also helps to incorporate an emotional component, to really empathize with the goal and to connect with it. For example, instead of “I want to avoid animal products,” you can easily say “I will consume more vegetarian/vegan products to feel healthy and good in my body.”
- Usemotivating descriptions
A motivating, visual description of your goal is important so that you can always clearly see why you are doing it. Colloquially, double negatives are often used in German, for example “That wasn’t uninteresting.” This usually brings with it a “but” in your head and doesn’t create an enthusiastic atmosphere. It is better to orient yourself towards the American language culture, in which words like amazing, great, stunning and fantastic are often used. You can then easily enhance resolutions with motivating attributes: “I will regularly learn the sonorous language Italian so that I can order delicious pasta on vacation” or “I will regularly take care of my loving relationship and feel grateful and fulfilled.”
Sources used: Babbel, psychologytoday.com, hellobetter.de