Setting your mind on a goal may be counterproductive.

Instead think of the future as an open

question

By Wray Herbert—Scientific American Mind, July 2010

Willingness is a core concept of addiction recovery programs—and a paradoxical one. Twelve-

step programs emphasize that addicts cannot will themselves into healthy sobriety—indeed, that
ego and self-reliance are often a root cause of their problem. Yet recovering addicts must be
willing. That is, they must be open to the possibility that the group and its principles are powerful
enough to trump a compulsive disease.
It’s a tricky concept for many and must be taken on faith. But now there may be science to
back it up. Psychologist Ibrahim Senay of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign figured
out an intriguing way to create a laboratory version of both willfulness and willingness—and to
explore possible connections to intention, motivation and goal-directed actions. In short, he
identified some key traits needed not only for long-term abstinence but for any personal
objective, from losing weight to learning to play guitar.

Ask, Don’t Tell

Senay did this by exploring self-talk. Self-talk is just what it sounds like—that voice in your
head that articulates what you are thinking, spelling out your options and intentions and hopes
and fears, and so forth. It is the ongoing conversation you have with yourself. Senay thought that
the form and texture of self-talk—right down to the sentence structure—might be important in
shaping plans and actions. What’s more, self-talk might be a tool for exerting the will—or being
willing.
Here is how Senay tested this notion. He had a group of volunteers work on a series of
anagrams—changing the word “sauce” to “cause,” for example, or “when” to “hewn.” But before
starting this task, half the volunteers were told to contemplate whether they would work on
anagrams, while the others simply thought about the fact that they would be doing anagrams in a
few minutes. The difference is subtle, but the former were basically putting their mind into
wondering mode, while the latter were asserting themselves and their will. It is the difference
between “Will I do this?” and “I will do this.”
The results were provocative. People with wondering minds completed significantly more
anagrams than did those with willful minds. In other words, the people who kept their minds
open were more goal-directed and more motivated than those who declared their objective to
themselves.
 These findings are counterintuitive. Think about it. Why would asserting one’s intentions
undermine rather than advance a stated goal? Perhaps, Senay hypothesized, it is because
questions by their nature speak to possibility and freedom of choice. Meditating on them might
enhance feelings of autonomy and intrinsic motivation, creating a mind-set that promotes
success.

Keeping an Open Mind

Senay designed another experiment to look at the question differently. In this study, he
recruited volunteers on the pretense that they were needed for a handwriting study. Some wrote
the words “I will” over and over; others wrote “Will I?”
After priming the volunteers with this fake handwriting task, Senay had them work on the
anagrams. And just as before, the determined volunteers -performed worse than the open-minded
ones.
Next, Senay ran still another version of this experiment, one more obviously related to healthy
living. Instead of anagrams, he changed the goal to exercise; that is, he measured the volunteers’
intentions to start and stick to a fitness regimen. And in this real-world scenario, he got the same
basic result: those primed with the interrogative phrase “Will I?” expressed a much greater
commitment to exercise regularly than did those primed with the declarative phrase “I will.”
What’s more, when the volunteers were questioned about why they felt they would be newly
motivated to get to the gym more often, those primed with the question said things like: “Because
I want to take more responsibility for my own health.” Those primed with “I will” offered
strikingly
This last finding is crucial. It indicates that those with questioning minds were more
intrinsically motivated to change. They were looking for a positive inspiration from within, rather
than attempting to hold themselves to a rigid standard. Those asserting will lacked this internal
inspiration, which explains in part their weak commitment to future change. Put in terms of
addiction recovery and self-improvement in general, those who were asserting their willpower
were in effect closing their minds and narrowing their view of their future. Those who were
questioning and wondering were open-minded—and therefore willing to see new possibilities for
the days ahead.