It is respectful when a person drops negative attitude/habits without prior notification or achieve a thing without prior announcement. You don’t tell anyone “I will break free from this habit or I will get a new stuff”. This makes them watch out for the new habit, thus expect too much from you. Rather, work on it in private and gradually move on to positive habits. Doing this will naturally draw you some respect.
Do not talk about your plan of a change nor own anything. Simply allow the results do all the screaming. Unless of course, you are opening up to someone for accountability purpose.
I once spent some time with a friend who had a roommate. Let’s call my friend Anne, and her roommate- Sarah. Sarah did something that caught my respect. When I first visited them, Sarah was quite rough and cared less about surfaces and stuff in and around the house. You know, not caring if the buckets were soiled, nor if the laundry basket was overflowing; neither will a dirty bathroom bother her and was cool with having dirty plates kept for long. She’ll practically wash the dishes and leave food remnants in the sink. Little things that one would expected a girl at that age to see as a norm was never a norm for her.
My friend, Anne, would complain about it to me but did not know how to draw Sarah’s attention to her being cavalier- she was dying in silence. She told me how long these had continued. Who was I to draw Sarah’s attention to it? I was only a visitor.
Anne became pissed and would make it obvious sometimes, as she would re-do most things Sarah had done already.
Did Sarah ever think she was doing anything out of place? No! It was very normal to her. Until gradually, she probably noticed how much attention Anne and I paid to details and surfaces, then she did something that drew respect to her.
Sarah never told anyone any day that she was gonna turn a new leaf (it probably embarrassed her each time she noticed the difference in the sink she washed in and the one Anne did)
Well, I left and when I returned after sometime, was shocked at how much detail Sarah paid to every little thing. I was amazed that I had drawn my friend’s attention to it and all she said was “We went home and she returned with the new leaf you see now”
From that moment, I began to see Sarah differently. How she noticed what she lacked and how she worked on it in private and then allowed the result scream at me. She never spoke a word about change, all she did was simply changed.
We’ve often heard people ‘speak’ about change. What does this do? It keeps people watching and expecting to see the ‘Change’ they spoke about. It’s like, speaking about your plans to people. They watch from a distance, expect these plans to push through and when it doesn’t go as planned, it sends a different message to them.
Keep your goals to yourself. After hitting on a brilliant new life plan, our first instinct is to tell someone. Thing is, people who talk about their ambitions may be less likely to achieve them.
Derek Sivers explained how people who talk about their goals are very less likely to achieve them. You imagine what beautiful thing you wish to achieve- like losing some extra weight, acquiring something new, and so on. The pictures you created look so beautiful, that it hits on you and the first instinct is to tell your friend about it. Hey! You should’ve kept your mouth shut, because the moment you told that friend about it, that good feeling will make you less likely to do it.
Repeated psychology has proven that telling someone about your goals and plans make them less likely to happen. It’s works this way- when you tell them about it, you feel really good about yourself and feel a lot more closer to the result. Your system kinda have this good feeling that you’re pretty close to getting it done, while in reality, your body automatically ignores the actual work to achieving that goal.
One may ask, “But I have a really close friend whom I share everything with and he/she does same with me. How do I keep these things secret?” This is it, You can tell them, but! You MUST say it in a way that it gives no satisfaction. Say “I really need to win this competition, but I seem a lot far from it, I can only be if I trained 4 times a day“. In this case, this friend could assist you in making sure you train for those number of time.
Next time you’re really tempted to tell someone about your goals, consider keeping it.
I really hope you got something from this. Do leave a comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to not miss a post.
Teens Meet Outreach 