January is the month that folks set New Year’s resolutions. I don’t know how things look statistically speaking, but from January through February my gym (for instance) is full of newcomers. But by April and May the attrition rate is obvious. So how do you stick to your long-term goals? According to scientists, a lot of how we reach our goals in completely unconscious…
Alberta School of Business researcher Sarah Moore and colleagues from Duke and Cornell universities say that unconscious feelings about objects in the environment influence the pursuit of long-term goals. Their study explores how the unconscious mind responds to objects in relation to an individual’s goals — and how the unconscious continues to influence feelings about these objects once the goals are reached — whether or not the outcome has been successful.
In Freud we should trust?
“In the past few years, we recognized that some of [Sigmund] Freud’s ideas on the unconscious mind were, in fact, correct and that a lot of our decision-making and a lot of our feelings are based on things that we’re not really aware of,” said Moore, who is an assistant professor in the Alberta School of Business. “In our study, we looked at how our unconscious feelings about objects in the environment influence how we pursue goals.”
Original article, “When It Comes to Pursuing Your Goals, Let Your Unconscious Be Your Guide,” posted in ScienceDaily, August 26, 2011, writer unknown.
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