Say What You Mean and Boost Your Leadership

How to stand fully in your power.

(click image for downloadable PDF)

Why do we fail at achieving goals?

The answer is in your brain—and your blood pressure.

And high blood pressure can help you keep goals on track.

Emily Balcetis, a social psychologist from NYU, recently explained how properly set goals boosts our systolic blood pressure (SBP), which is the measurement of our body being geared up and ready to act. If the goal is easy to achieve we get a nice spike. If it’s moderately hard but seems like a feasible challenge (harder than easy) we get a larger spike and thus more excitement in the body and sympathetic nervous system. But if the goal is seen as impossible our system writes it off, indicated below by SBP decrease.

So what does this mean? As leaders we have an opportunity to create greater neural activation around a goal by ensuring we create systemic support. And when we strike a balance when setting goals the neural activation and systemic support help us to achieve them. Often present in goals, and especially present in stretch goals or “mind blower” needle movers are the following key factors:

• Psychological distance
• Social distance
• Spacial distance

The medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) deals with the here and now. When we light up, or activate, the MPFC it helps us to simulate goal achievement, to envision what it will be like to achieve the goal and what to do. But when goals seem too far away we get far less activation in the MPFC and thus far less simulation or envisioning how to achieve the goal and what it will be like.

Check out our infographic for more on how to achieve your goals. Every. Single. Time.