by Alan Garner
ORGANIZING YOUR EFFORTS
Like most people, you probably have idealistic goals for the future. You may seek friendship, happiness, romance, a satisfying family life. Or, you may simply have yearnings that you haven't exactly put into words. How do you attain goals like these? Where, for instance, do you go to find happiness? Who do you speak to? What do you say to them? When your goals are vague, it's hard to know just what to do. And since you have no clear end in sight, you can't tell how you're coming along or correct yourself when you get off course. Lots of directions-- or no direction at all-- may look promising, and so you may keep second-guessing yourself and procrastinating. Perhaps most difficult of all, when you follow idealistic goals, you never get the sense of achievement that comes from completing a task. No one is ever totally happy or completely satisfied with every aspect of life, and conflicts soon crop up even in the best of situations. Wendell Johnson, writing in "People in Quandaries", coined the term "IFD Disease" to characterize this problem. I stands for idealization, F for frustration, and D for demoralization. According to Johnson, when you seek idealistic goals without specifying their form, you will necessarily suffer frustration after frustration until you are demoralized and give up. Here, then, is a cure for IFD Disease, a workable plan for improving your social life.
SET CONCRETE GOALS
If you want to make progress in forming and carrying on relationships, you have to first decide how to realize your idealistic goals in real-life, concrete terms. Only when you know where you want to go can you effectively channel your time and energy toward getting there. What exactly is a concrete goal? It is a statement describing a specific performance. A correctly written concrete goal has the following characteristics: / It is Specific: It describes one behavior which cannot be confused with other behaviors. For example, rather than saying you want to act more warmly toward a friend, you might make your goal to give that person a surprise present. / It is Verifiable: If someone is observing your behavior, she will be certain that you have achieved your goal. For this reason, being close to your family isn't an adequate goal, while inviting your family to go on a picnic is. / It is Positive: It requires you to increase the frequency of a desired behavior rather than decrease the frequency of one that isn't desired. For instance, rather than saying, "I want to stop avoiding Jesse, you might say, "I want to invite Jesse to have lunch with me today." / It is Measurable: You can tally up how often you perform your target behavior over a given period of time. Instead of deciding, for example, that you want to get to know more people, you might decide that you want to smile at five people yo don't know each day and talk to one of them for at least two minutes. / It depends solely on you action: Since you can only control your own behavior, it really isn't fiar to base your success or failure on the response of others. So if your goal is to invite your neighbors to a barbecue and you do it, you've met your goal, regardless of whether they say yes or no.
A simple and helpful way of using concrete goal setting is to pick at least one goal to work on each week. I, for example, have a standing goal of playing with some neighborhood children once a week. Whereas before I would all too often hold back, telling myself I have journals to catch up on, classes to prepare, and calls to make, no I consider my playtime a part of my regular schedule, a legitimate activity as important as any other. I enjoy myself immensely, the kids have a good time, and everything manages to get done anyway. In planning your goal for the week, it's often a good idea to specify exactly when you're going to fulfill it, and to show yourself you mean business by recording your goal next to that date on a calendar. For example, let's suppose you decide, "On Tuesday, I'm going to invite George to go camping with me this weekend." With that as your goal, when you wake up Tuesday morning, you'll be oriented toward taking action. You'll make it a point to either see of phone George during the day. Before concluding your conversation, you'll be certain to issue your invitation. And even if you don't you'll still be better off; you'll at least know you've failed to make progress and can then lay plans to do better Wednesday.
BUILD AN ASSERTIVENESS HIERARCHY
If you have several goals you wish to achieve and feel anxious about some or all of them, form an assertiveness hierarchy by ranking them in order of difficulty and proceeding from easiest to hardest as the weeks pass. Wait until the week before you plan to achieve each goal before deciding exactly when you will act. You'll find moving up your list somewhat like climbing a ladder: Just as it's a lot easier to reach the fifth rung after you've climbed steps one through four, so it becomes easier to reach your fifth goal after achieving four easier ones. Add more steps. If a goal you've framed appears very difficult or arouses in you a good deal of anxiety, divide that goal into subgoals. For instance, if inviting a coworker you presently don't know to dinner at your home seems hard, you could divide that goal into these steps:
REHEARSE COVERTLY
Two additional techniques will help you to lessen your anxiety about completing your goal for the week: The first, identifying and disputing any irrational beliefs you hold about working on your goal, has already been discussed. The second, covert rehearsal, is a way of trying out new behaviors mentally before performing them in real life. If possible, before beginning your covert rehearsal, observe someone carrying out a behavior similar to your goal. Models can give you a standard to pattern yourself after or can stimulate you to thinking about how you might prefer to act differently. Then, rehearse covertly by vividly imagining yourself carrying out your goal and receiving a favorable response. Be that person and see through the eyes of that person, rather than simply observing the scene as you would a TV show. Picture the colors, smell the odors, hear the sounds of your scene as clearly as you would in real life. See yourself acting and reacting appropriately and effectively as the other people in your scene respond exactly as you would like them to. You can covertly rehearse while you lie in bed, take a shower, or sit at your desk. Where you do it doesn't matter; all that counts is that you do it consistently. There is no question of the value of covertly rehearsing even for as little as five minutes a day. Behavioral psychologists routinely recommend it, and dozens of studies show that it helps people become more relaxed and skillful in social situations. (It has also, incidentally, been shown that mentally practicing fencing, skiing, tennis, wrestling, and basketball free throws improves performance significantly.)
REWARD YOURSELF
Before you begin working on your new goal, decide upon a reward that you will give yourself when you succeed. This will make success all the more desirable and will ensure that each new behavior will be reinforced, even if others don't at first notice or appreciate it. Your reward must be something that you genuinely want: perhaps clothing, a book or record, sports equipment, camping gear, rich food, a long walk, a scenic drive, a day in the country, a movie, an hour to work on a garden. After you reach your goal, reward yourself immediately and generously. If you're stingy or hold back altogether, you won't take your future promises very seriously. Whenever you give yourself a reward, go on e step further and praise yourself for meeting your goal. THis is vital if you are to become more self-confident and outgoing. One study found that assertive people compliment themselves frequently while nonassertive people often put themselves down. The finding were conclusive and overwhelming: There was not one assertive person in their sample who typically criticized himself and not one passive person who typically praised himself. The researchers observed that it seemed as though the self-reinforcement mechanisms of the nonassertive subjects had broken down. And since behavior is a function of its consequences, it's not hard to understand why people who are continually punishing and rarely praising themselves become passive. So when you achieve your goals, and whenever else you do something that you like, get in the habit of letting yourself know how pleased you are: "You did it! Congratulations! I'm proud of you! I did great right there!" And when you praise yourself, be careful not to sneak criticism into your self-praise: "You did it, but you'll never get anywhere at this rate. She said yes, but that was just out of charity." In fact, even when the other person doesn't respond as you would prefer, praise yourself for meeting your goal and for trying, and look for a better way to handle the situation in the future. Most people dwell on their failures, berating themselves over and over. All that typically does is cause them psychological pain, drain them of energy, and discourage them from trying again. If you want to become a more positive, assertive person, learn from your mistakes and leave them behind, but dwell on your successes.
May 11, 2010