i'm a behavioral scientist and for the
last 20 years i've been trying to
understand why is it so hard for us to
succeed at our goals why is it that
every first of january we set new goals
right those goals for the majority of
people are related to health and fitness
the problem isn't necessarily our
motivation because even when we're
motivated we still struggle we've
discovered is that part of the problem
is the way that we look at the world
around us and we don't realize it we
don't realize that our eyes that we
think
are telling us the truth about the way
the world really is are actually part of
the problem for why we're not walking
enough or we're not running as far as
we'd like or we're letting go of our
goals before we've accomplished them
in the course of trying to understand
what is it about our eyes that are part
of the problem i talked with a bunch of
olympic athletes
i asked these olympic athletes some of
the world's best runners what are you
looking at when you're racing to the
finish line i thought they would be sort
of you know master consumers of their
visual world really paying attention to
the people that they were competing
against looking ahead looking behind i
was wrong what they do is that they stay
focused on the finish line and i
wondered can we teach the rest of us who
are not olympic athletes to do what
these experts do and can that help us
improve the quality of our own exercise
dr emily balderas designed a study in
which two groups had to walk quickly to
a finish line wearing ankle weights
the first was the baseline group
they were told to walk as they normally
would
the second was the intervention group
who had trained to keep their eyes
solely focused on the finish line
we said try not to look around imagine
there's a spotlight shining just on that
finish line as if you have blinders on
and all you can see is where you're
trying to go
before the task both groups were asked
to estimate the distance to the finish
line
the intervention group saw the finish
line to be 30 closer than the baseline
group
and after the task the intervention
group also got there faster
their pace increased by 23
in fact and importantly they said it
didn't hurt as much when we used a
medical scale where people can report
how much exertion did it take out of
your body it hurt 17 less
now we didn't change anything about the
course so we didn't do anything
different to to what the actual exercise
was but it changed their mindset
dr emily borgertis's study suggests that
visual focus and mental focus are
connected
it means that people's perception of
exercise can be changed to make it look
and feel easier
what it does by narrowly focusing their
visual attention people now thought this
exercise won't be as hard i think i have
what it takes to make it to that finish
line really quickly
i believe in myself so that change in
visual focus was having a change in
their mental focus and their self
appraisals of their ability to do this
exercise what's also cool is that this
tactic can work regardless of whether
people were coming in already in shape
you may have already used the tactic of
narrow visual focus without even
noticing it
maybe you practice ballet maybe you
practice yoga and a lot of the
suggestions there for holding balance
being able to maintain positions that
aren't natural is by visually focusing
on a target if you don't and you're in
ballet you're going to get dizzy as
you're spinning around if you're doing
it in yoga and and you don't focus on a
target you're going to fall over so
there actually are a lot of instances
when we do practice this kind of visual
focus and we find that it improves our
performance but holding visual focus for
long periods can be hard this isn't a
strategy that's gonna work for the full
extent of let's say like a five
kilometer run because it also can be
tiring and if you do it from the very
beginning and try to keep that up for
the next hour that you're hoping that
you can exercise you're really going to
burn yourself out in fact what we found
is that there's an optimal point to use
this narrowed focus of attention it's
when you're feeling like you're fatigued
when you're at that choice point are you
going to throw in the towel you're going
to keep going and when you're trying to
find that last push to literally cross
the finish line some of the best
performers those that run the fastest
run the furthest they flexibly switch
between a wide visual focus and a narrow
visual focus and you see them narrowing
in when they need a little extra boost
of energy a narrow focus of attention is
a tool but for this tool to work you
need to want to exercise are people who
have no goal whose motivation is at the
floor this tactic didn't work so it's
not that it's magic if you don't want to
exercise this isn't going to create a
goal for you that you don't already have
it's a tactic that can help you achieve
what it is that maybe you're just
starting out or you're just starting to
become interested in or for something
that you've been working really hard at
for a long time but you need an extra
little nudge to push you to the next
level
when it comes to fitness your mind can
be as important as your muscles
there's lots of work out there in fact
work that's been done by my colleagues
at new york university that shows when
we believe that something is impossible
there's real legitimate changes in our
body in fact systolic blood pressure
goes down why systolic blood pressure
why am i mentioning that it's a
physiological marker of our
psychological mindset when we're gearing
up to do something hard systolic blood
pressure goes up in anticipation of
their performance when we start saying
to ourselves this is impossible systolic
blood pressure is decreasing
that physiological indicator of our
body's readiness to get up and go
is turning off so that mindset that we
bring of positivity hope and excitement
can bring us an energy that translates
into better performance so you just need
to literally see things differently
absolutely it's possible to change the
way that we see the world we can do that
by just conscientiously thinking about
what am i looking at right now you can
teach yourself to do that and it can
have really dramatic outcomes
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