Everyone who wants to succeed in their chosen career needs a self-improvement guide. One of them is The Psychology of Achievement by Heidi Halvorson. This book is about how to set yourself up for success, how to work with yourself and how to plan your projects.
Many reviews of the book say that it is popular. However, this is literature from the experience of American researchers, and some do not like the overseas view of things. However, the work has many wonderful sides, which we will talk about in this article.
Author of the book - Heidi Halvorson
PhD, NeuroLeadership Institute business consultant and Psychology Today freelance writer Heidi Grant Halvorson is also the author of several popular self-development books around the world.
Psychologist consults businessmen and conducts various researches at the university. Heidi lives with her family in New York.
Book-bestseller "The Psychology of Achievement"
Another work on the psychology of motivation by Heidi Halvorson was released in Russian in 2017. The book has examples from life, tests. There are some exercises on the last pages to help change the way you think.
Motivational book "Psychology of Achievement" written by a social psychologist. The writer builds all the proofs of the statements based on social experiments and the statistical data obtained on their basis.
The book is written in simple language, without the use of scientific terms. Nevertheless, everyone who reads it will be able to clearly understand how to achieve their goals and how to motivate themselves properly. By the way, the book is not only about motivation, but also about goal setting.
How to get what you want?
First you need to honestly admit to yourself in the usual mistakes. What do we do after we set goals? Reaching or dropping?
The social psychologist recommends the following. First, you need to make plans. This is not just a list of individual steps, but planning, where all the subtleties of the path are provided, all the strategies with which you can overcome the obstacles that arise. After all, no important business can do without difficulties. Everything must be taken into account - time, motivation, costs.
You may have to find a consultant on the issue you need or sign up for courses. Then you need to know exactly when you will find the money for these activities.
Goals can have different directions. Alonefocused on prevention, others on promotion. That is, some help us feel "good" by doing our duty, and no more. The second kind of goals forces our whole being to work hard to achieve the best results. However, then we do not regret either he alth or psyche.
Another important note from the author is worth quoting:
Propelling goals increase enthusiasm and motivation in the short term, but the results of achieving them are harder to maintain in the long run.
Key steps to achieve goals
What does it take to see yourself on the podium of winners not in your dreams, but in reality? First, it is important to draw up a specific plan of action. And secondly, think over even those pitfalls that are usually encountered on the way in your business. Does the person know how to solve such problems? Does he have enough wit and willpower to "break through the barriers"?
The second necessary action is daily willpower training. Willpower, explains Heidi Grant, like any muscle in the physical body, needs to be exercised. You need to get up every morning at the same time, do exercises or go to the gym. All these trainings are necessary, otherwise a person ceases to control himself, laziness begins to "eat" him.
And the third rule of success is to avoid the loser mindset. Do not constantly think about what is not working and regret it. You need to calmly, without losing confidence, go to the goal.
These are the three points -the most important thing to learn for someone who does not want to be a gray mouse, but wants to achieve something in life.
Reader reviews of the book
For the most part, readers are satisfied with the book. Their feedback gives feedback to the writer so that he knows in which direction to "dig" further, what else to explore. And is what he wrote even readable?
Reviews of the book "Psychology of Achievement" are different. Those who really work with themselves, pass the tests given in the book, and try to change, get results. But for those who, after starting to read, put down the book on motivation and look for a reason to justify failure, instead of working with attitudes, the book will be useless. As you know, work on yourself must begin with faith in success. If you are already depressed at the beginning of the road, then no book will help.
Can everyone be successful?
According to psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson, anyone can be successful. All he needs is motivation and knowledge about how his psyche works. The psychologist repeatedly insists that strong-willed efforts are not everything.
Of course, they are needed, but only for turning points in life. To move daily towards success and achieve your goals, you need something different. What is needed is an understanding - where and why to go; it is also important to know the methods of dealing with despondency and depression, when you cannot reach the goal even on the 5th attempt.
In the first chapter of the book "Do you know where you are going?" authorreveals some little-known facts. For example, about the fact that you can think from the position of "What exactly am I doing"? And it is possible with another - "Why am I currently busy with this (busy)"? Those people who concentrate more on the concept of "why", better understand their goals, but do not always know how to achieve them. While others, approaching the matter more practically, think about "how", forget the goals and give up. The secret is to master both ways of thinking and know which one to use and when.
Highlight of the book
How is this book about psychology and motivation different from hundreds of other publications on these topics? By the fact that here it is proposed to go some way under the guidance of the author and understand the main reason why a person has failed before.
And also an important feature is the presence of exercises. If a person goes through all of them and honestly answers within himself some questions about the main motivation, then he is on the right track.
Which is more important: to improve your professional qualities and skills or to be recognized for a particular job? Psychologist Heidi Grant invites his reader to think about this question. After all, the deepest goals of the soul are sometimes not realized. But wrong settings are the cause of failure for many thousands of people.
If all the problems within oneself can be sorted out, then we can assume that a person will definitely go through all the bumpy path to the end and get his result.
Other books by Heidi Grant
Except "Psychologyachievements", the author has a number of popular science publications on strategies for achieving success.
- "Nine things successful people do differently"
- Together with Torrey Higgins, the book "The Psychology of Motivation. How Deep Attitudes Affect Our Desires and Actions" was published.
- There is another popular book - "No one understands me". The publication refers more to the psychology of mutual understanding. This work also became a bestseller and made millions of people happier.
Heidi Grant Halvorson is a successful and qualified social psychologist. And all those stories that she cites in her works are real and instructive. Of course, everyone is looking for a book "by itself", one that is easy to read, without violence against oneself. And the works of this psychologist are so successful because they are not written in a dry scientific language, but in an accessible, human language.
How to set goals correctly?
Based on some research, Heidi Grant and Torrey Higgins noted that there are 2 types of people. Some are optimistic all the time and set themselves high goals. Their enthusiasm is justified by the fact that they have been successful before.
Others have experienced more failure in the past, and they are focused on maintaining what they have, rather than conquering new heights. The motivation of the participants of the second group is "not to lose". It comes from pessimism and anxiety. Therefore, before setting goals, you need to distract yourself from worries and become a little optimistic.
The goal should be achievable and feasible if the person is a pessimist. Failure unsettles such a person. You can’t set a sky-high goal for yourself and believe that you can handle it if in the past even not too difficult tasks were given to hard work. Optimists, on the other hand, need even bigger goals, as their motivation is to improve their skills in their chosen field.
Conclusions
So, we discussed some chapters of the book "Psychology of Achievement", reviews about it and to whom it is addressed to a greater extent. The author of the work teaches his readers to correctly set goals, thoughtfully build plans and strategies. It also teaches you to think positively and on a grand scale. If a person is interested in how to achieve their goals, this book will be a good helper.
