Have you ever wanted something so much it seemed inevitable that you would get it? A recent study conducted by Emily Balcetis and David Dunning and published in a paper called Wishful Seeing analyzed people’s perception in relation to their desires. When estimating distance to something they really want, people general believed the object was closer than it actually was. The paper outlines five different experiments that were run and details the outcomes.
The theory presented is people perceive things they want as being closer so as to encourage them to pursue it. In a pure animal state-of-nature way, this trickery of perception might be a way to making risky things seem less risky. A predator might perceive its prey as being a bit closer than it actually is and thus more willing to make the effort to catch it.
So let’s take this study and analyzed a very specific psychological trait and wildly extrapolate and speculate. I know scientists love it when blowhards like me do this with their carefully crafted work.
As a self diagnosed pessimist, I try not to desire too much because of the obvious disappointment attached to not getting it. That lack of desire means that I am not getting the benefit of the perception bias. That extra boost, that feeling the goal is closer than it actually is might be the difference between expending that extra little bit of energy to reach the goal and giving up. Which leads to the idea that we need passion and desire in our lives to reach our goals, to help drive us to achieve things.
Moping through life as though it is a burden creates a self-fulfilling prophecy since if we are lackluster in our attitude about our goals, then we might not reach out goals, which creates more feelings of failure. We take those feelings of failure as justification for not desiring, not wanting, not having a passion for our goals.
It is okay to want, to have desire for our goals. We should be fired up and eager to achieve the goals we outline for ourselves.
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