#098 - Emily Balcetis - How Successful People See The World Differently

Emily Balcetis breaks down how the way we see the world, literally and psychologically, can either pull us toward our goals or push us further from them. We explore how narrowing focus changes motivation, why perception often overrides reality, and how to train your mind to see opportunities instead of obstacles. If you’ve ever felt stuck, scattered, or unsure of the way forward, this conversation reframes how progress really works and how successful people see what others miss.

Timetstamps:
00:00 Orient To The World
01:43 Trusting Our Perceptions vs. Perceptions Holding Us Back
05:13 Backstory Behind Emily's Work
08:54 Role Of Vision In Motivation 
11:24 How The Most Successful People See The World
22:14 Narrowing Focus vs. Widening The Bracket
30:16 More Self Worth Won't Make You Do More
33:36 Importance Of Materializing
45:09 Foreshadow Failure
51:41 Freeing Ourselves From The Linear Path
59:31 Not Liking What Life Looks Like & Not Seeing The Way Forward
1:01:39 How This Work Has Changed Emily
1:02:06 Learn More About Emily Balcetis

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Chapters

• 0:00 Orient To The World
• 1:43 Trusting Our Perceptions vs. Perceptions Holding Us Back
• 5:13 Backstory Behind Emily's Work
• 8:54 Role Of Vision In Motivation
• 11:24 How The Most Successful People See The World
• 22:14 Narrowing Focus vs. Widening The Bracket
• 30:16 More Self Worth Won't Make You Do More
• 33:36 Importance Of Materializing
• 45:09 Foreshadow Failure
• 51:41 Freeing Ourselves From The Linear Path
• 59:31 Not Liking What Life Looks Like & Not Seeing The Way Forward
• 1:01:39 How This Work Has Changed Emily
• 1:02:06 Learn More About Emily Balcetis

Transcript

Emily Balcetis breaks down how the way we see the world, literally and psychologically, can either pull us toward our goals or push us further from them. We explore how narrowing focus changes motivation, why perception often overrides reality, and how to train your mind to see opportunities instead of obstacles. If you’ve ever felt stuck, scattered, or unsure of the way forward, this conversation reframes how progress really works and how successful people see what others miss.

Tim Doyle (00:06.615)

What does it mean to orient to the world?

Emily Balcetis (00:10.818)

Well, we're just starting with a big philosophical question, aren't we? Yeah, it just means understanding our place within it. Where are we? What are we doing? What are we thinking as it relates to all the other people out there in our surroundings?

Tim Doyle (00:27.459)

How do we know when?

where do we draw the line between the reality of that orientation and the perception of it?

Emily Balcetis (00:39.17)

it depends on what the goal is. you know, I think, I think more often we probably want

to believe that we're understanding the world the way that it is, but the degree to which we actually hit or achieve that accurate understanding is really a big unknown. You know, we need to successfully navigate the world. We need to understand where we are relative to somebody else so we don't run into them. We need to understand what we're thinking and what they're thinking so we don't have a fight every time that we're having a conversation with somebody. But whether we're accurately assessing that

is probably a little bit less important than just making sure that we can.

Tim Doyle (01:25.347)

When do we know or what's a game plan that we can create when we understand when we're supposed to trust our perceptions or when our perceptions are working against us?

Emily Balcetis (01:37.56)

can you say it a different way?

Tim Doyle (01:40.461)

I guess.

Within experiences of my life, you know, there were times where my perceptions were spot on and helped me. And then there have been other times where I was like, whoa, I was completely wrong there and I had the wrong perception. And that was really holding me back.

Emily Balcetis (01:57.827)

Can you give an example of where you were right and you know that you were right and how did you know that you were right?

Emily Balcetis (02:08.098)

Because I think that's really what is interesting is how do we know that we're right? So you can think back like several years ago on social media, there was something called like hashtag the dress. And what was that? That was, I mean, the real story is that there was a woman who was going shopping with her daughter or going shopping and her daughter wasn't there. She took a picture of a dress while she was in the dressing room and that she was considering and maybe two of them. And she was like, well, you which one should I wear? Should I, you what do you think about this one?

and she sent that picture, like texted her daughter that picture and she's like, what do think about the blue and black one? And the daughter's like, what are you talking about? It's white and gold. And they're like, no, it's blue and black. I'm looking at it right now. The daughter's like, well, I'm looking at it too and it's white and gold or some version of that. But those are entirely different, but they were each certain that what they were looking at was the truth. And so they posted it to social media and they're like, okay, world, you decide. Is this dress blue and black or is it white and gold? And that thing went viral within the first 25

hours like so much of the world had seen it had weighed in and people were adamant that it was blue and black.

They were just as adamant, others were just as adamant that it was white and gold. They were certain that what they were seeing was the truth. So much so that it caused fights within relationships. It caused friendly disagreements within friendships. And there was lots of scientific publications on that. Like how could people be so certain when they have such different opinions? Vision scientists weighed in to try to analyze exactly the pixels in that photograph. People tried to track down what that

dress actually was and go find it in the store. I mean just because some mom and daughter couldn't agree on which dress to buy or which dress had which colors in it.

Emily Balcetis (03:56.652)

So, and then there's lots of vision science reasons for like, how could that have happened? And it has something to do with our brain trying to input what is the light source and making corrections as we're interpreting the input that we get. And that can lead us to have these different perceptual experiences. But because we're not aware of all that like vision science computation that our brain is doing to try to integrate what infers to be the light source and the direction of the light source and the type of light source, is it natural light? Is it incandescent light? What is that? Because we don't know.

that our brain is doing that.

We can't understand the source of the bias. How can you possibly see that as white and gold? is so obviously blue and black. There's so much that's happening behind the scenes within our brain space that we don't have introspective access to. It can lead to great certainty, but polarized opinions about the way that people are seeing the world. So hashtag the dress, go check it out. I've just been in a little bit of fairly recent social media history.

Tim Doyle (04:52.355)

Haha.

Tim Doyle (04:57.401)

So bringing that landscape now into the world of goal setting and motivation, I'm curious to know the backstory of how you even got into this work and especially within this intersection at Motivation.

Emily Balcetis (05:11.234)

So I'm a social psychologist. That's not a clinical psychologist. I don't know your background with your mother and how much you do or you don't like her. Tim, I'm not sure about that. That's not my area of study. But as a social psychologist, I am a doctor of people. And I find these kinds of examples really fascinating of how can we look at the world around us, be a part of this world, be a part of this same world, and yet understand it in fundamentally different ways and be so certain of that. That can lead to polarization with great societal

consequence. It can lead to rioting in the street because some people see video evidence in one way if we're talking about how police engage with civilians and some people see it in an entirely different way so much so that they're willing to go out and protest to strongly advocate for their position, regardless of what that position is, to go out into the streets and fight about it. It can lead to big disagreements when we're talking about relationships and you're trying to read the emotional expressions on a partner's face as you're having a conversation or you're in

argument and you're like, are you doing that? Like, why is that your reaction? And they're like, what are you talking about? What are you seeing? And like, that's not how, that's not what I'm thinking. That's not how I'm reacting. Yes, it is. I'm looking at it on your face. So those I find really fascinating as a behavioral scientist, trying to understand what leads to people's thoughts and behaviors and how we can be on such different paths. And importantly, when you add that on, that the certainty that people have, they are so certain.

that their understanding of the world is the right understanding of the world. Even if those two understandings are entirely different, the certainty might be matched. And how can that be? If we knew that we were tricking ourselves, if we knew that we were disregarding half of the evidence that's out there, if we knew that we were intentionally not trying to pay attention to half of the relevant information or ignoring our lalalala-

to some of the stuff that would be useful to inform our decision, then we might not be as certain as we are. So that got me interested in trying to figure out, how is that? How can we be so certain that we've got all the facts and those facts by necessity land us on this particular conclusion? And I think if you start to invoke our visual experiences as we're looking at the world around us,

Emily Balcetis (07:34.424)

There are the things that we see, that we know that we see, but then there are things that we aren't seeing. And that's harder to integrate into our cognitive system, the unknown unknowns, the things that we don't even know about because we never took them in in the first place. so that brings in our visual experience. If I'm always looking to the right, it's gonna be harder for me to even be aware of what's on the left to know that I'm not even using that information.

And coupled with that is that people think that their eyes give them a veridical, truthful, accurate, complete understanding of the world that's out there because again, they aren't aware of what they aren't aware of. They don't realize that there's a whole vast world around them that they're not even taking in in the first place. And so when you put all that together, you can get a kind of a better understanding of how could we be so confident yet so polarized? It's because a lot of what's out there we're not even aware of having missed in the first

place.

Tim Doyle (08:38.721)

In tying that into motivation, feel like we can get into the perception of, you know, motivation is just innate within us. It's just something that like, this is naturally like, this is my purpose. But how does vision play into the motivation piece and actually seeing what motivates us?

Emily Balcetis (08:58.702)

Yeah, I mean if you think about New Year's resolutions, lots of people set them, lots of people believe that they're really useful. The content of New Year's resolutions tend to be the same every year. I want to exercise more, I want to be healthier, I want to...

prioritize my mental or physical well-being in some way. So if it's the same basic set of New Year's resolutions every year, why is that? How come we aren't checking it off from the year before? Why is it that we continue to reset it? And a lot of the times it's because the way that people go about trying to maintain their motivation and set their goals maybe isn't the best tool for the job. A lot of people think about willpower. I just need more willpower. I don't have enough willpower to

avoid the temptations. Like I don't have the willpower to avoid chocolate cake or I don't have the willpower to stop smoking. And that, I think that sort of reliance and weight that we give to willpower is part of the problem. Willpower is super hard. If you have to constantly be reminding yourself of what this goal is, constantly be trying to avoid the temptation, constantly say to ourselves, remember what you're trying to do. Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. First of all, that's not fun.

Second of all, it's exhausting. And third, that's a goal in and of itself to maintain that.

effortful sort of self-talk and reminder. And so, of course, by, it makes sense, then like by Valentine's Day, most people have thrown in the towel. Six weeks of doing that, that's a lot of work. That's not sustainable. So are there tactics that we can use instead that doesn't even rely on willpower? So that we're not trying to build up some sort of metaphoric willpower muscle to muscle through the year to hold on to a New Year's resolution that we've set for 2026.

Emily Balcetis (10:45.264)

What if we didn't have to rely on willpower at all? Can we craft or create an environment for ourselves where we have to bypass the idea of willpower in the first place? And if we entertain that possibility, then I think we open ourselves up to a whole host of other tools and possibilities for how to move forward.

Tim Doyle (11:08.259)

How do the most successful people see the world?

Emily Balcetis (11:13.278)

Well, I think they use these kinds of different tools. They have a really rich toolbox available to them so that when one tool isn't working, they can turn to another tool. They can try something else out. If we try to build a house with just a hammer, we're not gonna get very far. But what if you had 35 other tools? Do you think you could get farther in that goal of building a house? Yeah, absolutely. You can make it through some of the other obstacles. So just to be concrete and give an example,

I'll do two. One of them is like, you know, thinking about, want to eat fewer sweets. This is, this is not dry January, but sugar-free January, let's say.

And if you still have treats left from the holidays that are in your house, it's so hard when they're sitting out on the counter every time you walk past, you're at least reminded, if not tempted to just take off a little piece of it. So just throw them out. And now they're like weeks old anyway, so they're not even going to be like worth the caloric intake. It is hard to avoid temptations when those temptations are.

visible. So make them harder to see. Let's say that there's a reason why you can't throw them out. You have some sort of sentimental attachment to this chocolate cake. I keep saying that because I do have a really delicious chocolate torte that I made. It's dark chocolate with like a pistachio pecan crust underneath it. It's so good and I'm not throwing it out. It's too hard to throw it out. It's delicious. It's ganache filled thing. But what I have done is put it at the back of the fridge. It just means that it's getting older, but it means we're not eating it every day.

So when you make it harder to see, you make it easier to keep out of mind. And in fact, there's a couple of big studies that were done of how just changing the visual architecture of the space can lead people to eat different things. Google did it. Massachusetts General Hospital did it in their cafeteria. But in both cases, what they did was take the same options.

Emily Balcetis (13:10.19)

snacks at Google or lunch options in the cafeteria at the hospital and just reorient where they're placed. at Google they put the sugary beverages behind opaque glass, so glass that you can't see through. At the hospital they put those like caution beverages and foods, the ones with more processed ingredients that have higher sugar content and put them lower on the shelves or higher on the shelves and not at eye level. And in both cases they tracked what snacks did people eat. At Google it was by the people who

replenish the snack centers, how frequently were they replenishing the &Ms versus the sugary beverages versus the water. And at the hospital, they were looking at what got scanned through the cash registers. And what they found was that by changing the placement of these things that we all probably know that we should and might be wanting to eat less of, high sugar, high processed foods, they actually were purchased and taken less often by simply

changing how easy it is to see them. When it was harder to see them, people chose them less. We can do that in our own kitchen. We can do that in our own pantry and become conscientious visual architects of our space and nudge ourselves into making fewer of the choices we want to make less of and maybe more of the choices that we want to make more of.

Tim Doyle (14:32.239)

So when we take on that role of being a visual architect of our space, I think it's obviously easier when it's with physical products and you're able to physically manipulate the placement of things. How do we bring that same mindset and that same identity as a visual architect when it's more abstract things like goals or the way that we're trying to position our life?

Emily Balcetis (14:56.366)

One of the problems with goals, goals that really matter to us is that they're not gonna get accomplished in one day and that they're gonna take time. And sometimes time, temporal distance is the problem. It can feel like, oh my God, when is success gonna happen? It's gonna happen so far into the future. It's hard to consistently make the choices today that I need to to reap the benefits of that far off future goal. We can think about that.

We can think about that in terms of saving for retirement. I did a cool study with a group of 60 students that I was working with. They were all on the brink of graduating from college. Most of them had at least part-time jobs that they were using to pay their way through school, if not full-time jobs lined up for when graduation was going to happen. And they're all, you know, 21, 22, maybe 23 years old. And I was asking them how many of you of the 60 save for retirement?

are putting anything aside for retirement. What do you think? What's your guess?

Tim Doyle (15:58.287)

One in eight one in ten of them

Emily Balcetis (16:02.414)

One in 10, 55 out of 60. So yeah, that's about right. Like about 10%, is it 90 % or not? Now, I'm no economist and my ability to understand how retirement works is pretty limited, but I do understand compound interest and the benefits of compound interest. can be far better off.

if we save a little bit starting sooner in our life than trying to play catch-up later in our life because it just keeps like snowballing, right? The return on that investment is going to be much greater even if you're putting in a smaller amount earlier on.

And these are smart students, they're students at New York University. They know what the definition of compound interest is, and yet when I asked them, why are you not doing it, the most often given response to that was like, my God, retirement seems so far away. Like, what I am dealing with right now is far more pressing, and I have no idea what what retired me even looks like. Because of that idea of like,

of them saying, I don't know what retired me even looks like. I took that literally and was reminded of work that Hal Hirschfield at UCLA had done when he was working with retirement company and trying to also look at a larger nationwide issue of that. It's not just NYU students. group of 60 that I was working with that don't save enough for retirement early enough on, it's like all of us, all of us really struggle with that as a whole. Like the majority of people struggle to do the most rational.

thing, which is save a little bit starting much earlier in life. So I took a tactic or took an approach that he had used in his own studies. What I did with this group

Emily Balcetis (17:45.742)

I was asked them to submit a photo of themselves right now and I morphed that with a photograph of a successful person who's much older. Like I took a picture of Maya Angelou, I took a picture of Betty White, I took a picture of famous journalists on television and matched their gender identity but created this montage of where they could see within a few seconds of what aging looked like for them. So now they started to see some wrinkles, they started to see Betty White's quads.

off of hair appear on them, and I showed them that video because what that did then was literally help them see what retired me might look like. Now, for some people, for most of them it was terrifying. They don't have wrinkles, they have no idea what that's gonna look like. For some of them it literally took their breath away. There was one girl in particular that was just like, ugh.

And I thought like, my God, I'm gonna have to do CPR on her. This is so shocking. And she said, that's horrifying. I mean, I it looked pretty good. Like if I aged that way, I would be pretty happy. But it was horrifying for her to see what that looked like. But even though that was such a scary thing, the reason why it was so scary was because it was so different. They had never even taken the time to imagine what they might look like in the future, what they might look like in 50 years time. But it connected the dots between the here and now and that distant far off future.

see what that might look like to them. We also asked them in that moment to think of like what the day in the life of this person now might entail. What are you gonna do with your day? What would a fun day look like? So they put themselves, they transcended time to put themselves into that far-off future and then we had a conversation with their day would look like, what do think your goals are? And one of the questions was like what's your interest in saving for retirement?

That was just another question. After they had put themselves, transcended that temporal distance, and almost all of them were like, I get it, yeah, I think I'm gonna start saving for retirement now. So it changed their motivation. It changed their interests. When before they were laughing in my face, I'd be like, are you kidding me? There's no way I'm doing anything for retirement right now. Even though I understand compound interest, my rent is due, my tuition payments are due.

Emily Balcetis (19:59.65)

Like my current today demands are so important, there's no way I'm giving any of it up. It changed their understanding and their perspective and their interest in doing, making a sacrifice today that would benefit them in the far off future. So to sum all of that up, temporal distance, transcending that space between the here and now and...

and that distant future is oftentimes the problem. So the more that we can do to put ourselves into that space psychologically, to transcend that temporal distance, that psychological distance, the easier it might be for us to make those sacrifices today that are required to set ourselves up for success in the future.

Tim Doyle (20:42.563)

That's a fascinating experiment because I feel like we, when we understand future self, we automatically go to, okay, what is the, what I want my success to look like, or what do I want my work to look like? But like, if you literally see what you physically would look like in the future and understanding that as your future self and like starting there on the ground level, it definitely feels like you're able to have a stronger perception of what life will look like.

when you start with the physical. And that seems like a great example of what you're talking about. You get into this framework of narrowing focus versus widening the bracket. Can you explain more of that relationship between those two things and like knowing how to narrow and when to narrow and when to widen?

Emily Balcetis (21:34.424)

Sure.

Yeah, couple years ago I had a chance to go over to Brooklyn to an old armory building. This old building where they used to train military soldiers. It's been long decommissioned and turned into a family YMCA. Now it's this beautiful old space. It's got a track inside and it's open to, know, moms pushing strollers around to take their kids outside of our small New York City apartments in the wintertime or, you know, people who trying to burn off a few extra calories. But it also hosts

Zenith Velocity, this running club that includes some of the most decorated athletes in the Olympics. There was like the fastest guy out of Trinidad.

you know, people who've won the gold and silver and bronze medals out of Tobago. it's a fascinating backstory about how did all these guys end up, and they are guys, it's men's running club, end up training in Brooklyn at this old armory building. But their physical therapist invited me to come out and talk with these guys about what are you doing? How are you looking at the world around you? Is there anything to way that you look at the world that might relate to your incredible success in your profession and in the Olympic Games?

And I thought going in that they might have superpowers of perception, that somehow when they are competing...

Emily Balcetis (22:53.548)

They're not only aware of like where are they running to? What is their goal? But where's the competition? It's like almost as if they have eyes on the back of their head or 360 vision or something and that they are fully immersed in this competition and know exactly where they are relative to other people. I am no athlete and well, I hope I probably never even get to go to the Olympics as a spectator, let alone as a participant, but I was completely wrong. Most of them said that what they do is that they have like this narrow tunnel vision on a target that they have set, a goal that they've set.

a physical goal that they have set and they are not paying attention to their peripheral vision. They're not distracting themselves with what's going on around them and they're not aware of where the competition is either. And even if they feel like they haven't mastered this like tunnel vision, narrowed focus approach, they think that they should. So it's a strategy that they use or they're working towards using. And when they describe what that's like, know, blinders on the sides, just focused on some target that they've really honed in on that.

I could imagine what that looked like. That wasn't hard for me to envision that as a strategy to use.

and the words that they were using really resonated with me. And so I went out in the years since then, I've taught thousands and thousands of people, professional runners, successful runners, amateur runners, people who are struggling to lose weight, those that have mastered their fitness goals, men and women, low and high BMI, high and low waist to hip ratio, resting metabolic rates all over the place. This is a strategy that everybody understands. They can implement it. And when they do,

their running pace increases, their success increases. When it's a strategy that people hadn't used or hadn't learned before compared to an alternative strategy that some people think might work, paying attention to your surroundings, knowing what's going on in the left, in the right, in front of you, and turning your head around almost like a distraction, a visual distraction technique. Some people think, I should distract myself and I'll be able to push myself a little bit farther, that's gonna help me go faster, I'll get out of my own...

Emily Balcetis (24:58.474)

mind space that maybe is not doing me a service, that more natural distraction sort of attention. Those that had narrowed their focus of attention in a tightly controlled lab setting moved 23 % faster and said that it hurt less, the physical activity hurt the less. We controlled what that physical activity was. They were moving the same distance with the same added weight, doing the same sort of physical movements, and yet their efficiency improved.

by narrowing their focus of attention and doing something that they didn't intuitively think was the right strategy to use. When we've looked at professional runners or those with a lot of experience running competitively, those that run at a faster pace.

meaning they're moving faster, use that narrowed attention strategy more often than the wide attention strategy. And as they move through the course of a race, they ramp up their use of that narrowed focus of attention at a higher rate than people who don't have as fat, who are running at a slower pace. So it seems to be a strategy that is a hallmark of Olympic runners, of sprinters, Olympic sprinters that I first started studying at the armory in Brooklyn, but also across the thousands of runners that we have studied

since then, those that run at a faster pace are using that narrowed attention strategy more often and at a higher clip as their runs go on. But it's something that we can all resonate with, we can make happen, it's just about making it a habit and practicing implementing it. Then that might be one of the tools that we have available to us if we're trying to push ourselves a little bit farther or faster.

Tim Doyle (26:37.295)

And do you see that or do you think that's easily transferable to most other goals rather than simply physical goals, especially with running?

Emily Balcetis (26:47.774)

I don't think it works on a treadmill because what are you focusing on? It's a whole different game, whole different ballpark when you're running on a treadmill. That is so boring and it's so hard to sustain that. Like focusing on the TV in front of you or the wall in front of you. It's not the same thing as moving through the world, moving through the space and finding new goals to set, finding new landmarks that you want to traverse and to pass. So it's not going to work for running on a treadmill. That's an entirely different beast to try to conquer. But it does have some resemblance to

to that saving for the retired self idea that we were talking about. That is about connecting the here and now with a temporal future, a temporally distant goal. It's the same idea here, except we're talking about physical space. It's narrowly focusing on a physical goal that's farther away, much like the temporal space that we're traversing when we're thinking about our self now and our retired self in the future. It's about

focusing on that goal. Now what we have found when it comes to exercise is that narrowed focus on that goal brings an illusion of proximity. That goal

is perceived as closer. That finish line that our athletes have been focused on appears closer to them than when they're assuming a wider bracket, when they're assuming a wider focus of attention. And that perceived proximity has motivational consequences. So now when that goal looks closer than it would otherwise if I was looking with a wider focus of attention, that perceived proximity makes me think, well, this isn't as hard to make it there. I think I have what it takes.

to be able to get there and a little bit more excited to try it. They increase a sense of self-efficacy and ability. And that change in the psychological appraisal of what is this task and require and what do I have available, when that ratio changes, that is what is leading to this energization, to this sort of like ability to harness some sort of inner strength that is needed to move faster and to have the physical feelings change where it doesn't hurt as

Emily Balcetis (28:59.618)

much now. So that narrowed focus of attention is transcending that space. It's bringing it in closer. It's bringing that, it's closing that psychological distance which is having motivational consequences which is fueling our ability to push ourselves harder and faster.

Tim Doyle (29:16.609)

a term that you use there, that sense of self. Can you talk more about the research that you've done about how there's really no correlation between having a positive view of your sense of self and accomplishing more?

Emily Balcetis (29:32.47)

sure that I would summarize it that way. I would instead caution us about feeling like all we need to do is increase our sense of self-worth or self-enhancement and that that is going to translate into better improvements. So it's more of a cautionary tale on an exclusive focus on increasing self-esteem that I think is misguided.

Now, yeah, we do need high self-esteem. We do need to feel good about ourselves. If we don't, that is depression, right? That can be part of what depression, depressive experience is like. So I'm not saying like, totally disregard self-esteem. Like, doesn't matter if somebody has low self-esteem. No, that's self-esteem. The feeling of worth and value and personal belief in your own capacity to get something done, like, that matters. But if that is all

we're working to build, that's not enough because that can be where you have, again, high confidence but low ability and that's a formula for disaster, to be honest. Back in the 80s, the California school system put a lot of eggs in that self-esteem basket, working to praise students for their successes.

at a pretty high ratio. Praise them for their successes. Let's not focus on the failures or the opportunities for improvement because we want to develop kids' self-esteem. What Roy Baumeister, social psychologist, found was that that did not translate into improved grades or greater retention in schools. It didn't correlate with success. Increasing self-esteem didn't predict academic success because, again, we're not

teaching them. It's important for us to be aware of our weaknesses and to grow our ability to push through those weaknesses and improve upon them. That's what learning is. Michelle Obama has a great quote when she's talking to a group of school children and she's standing up there and in her very authoritative

Emily Balcetis (31:43.308)

beautiful tone that says no one is born smart. None of us is born knowing how to read or do math. All of that comes from hard work. And it does, right? None of us are born even knowing how to use a toilet. We have to learn everything, right? So to just think like if we just praised people for when they happen upon the right outcome, we're not actually equipping them with a fishing pole. We're not teaching them to fish. We're just giving them the fish.

So when we just focus exclusively on building self-esteem, we're not actually equipping people with the underlying tools that they need to learn and to grow and to know how to push through obstacles and how to actually get the job done. So you might say that self-esteem is necessary but not sufficient for actually doing the job.

Tim Doyle (32:35.769)

How does materializing play a role in that process and giving people another tool to, I guess, continue down that path?

Emily Balcetis (32:43.65)

What does that term materializing mean to you? How are you reading that?

Tim Doyle (32:47.695)

A follow-up question that I had, feel like materializing to me becomes, means becoming a data collector where I'm constantly collecting data on myself and the inputs that I'm working on on a daily basis. And then the work just becomes, okay, collecting that data, analyzing that data, and then approving upon that data.

Emily Balcetis (33:10.99)

Cool, how do you do that? What do you do that with?

Tim Doyle (33:13.855)

with this podcast, I mean, doing outreach to people, making sure that, you know, I'm doing productive outreach, putting out consistent episodes and then improving upon my questions, the way that I'm interacting with people and then the product that I'm putting out to people.

Emily Balcetis (33:31.736)

Do you track that somehow? Do you track that?

Tim Doyle (33:34.895)

I mean it's tougher to track that I would say on the input side of things but I can you know it can definitely be tracked on just like the growth of the show you know month over month when it comes to downloads I think like on the input side of things like I said I think it can be a little bit tougher and it's more so just being consistent and it's not so much about doing more as it's just like refining the craft of it so I'm becoming better at it

Emily Balcetis (34:05.058)

Cool. Some parts of what you said I would call becoming our own accountant. That for our goals that matter to us, we need to be as diligent in looking at our inputs and outputs, our expenditures, our costs, and our revenue in the way that an accountant would. And we can apply that to all facets of goals, not just those that are financial. There was an app that I learned about from some artists that I was working with, and they use the Reporter app. So there's lots of these kinds

Tim Doyle (34:09.327)

Mm-hmm.

Emily Balcetis (34:35.042)

of apps, but you can set it up on your phone so that it pings you. In this case, I set it up to ping me four times a day and ask me, hey, did you do X? Something that I had decided was important for a goal that I had set, yes or no. If I said yes, it would ask me how did you feel about it? So I could be tracking my emotional responses to my yes or no, I make progress on this goal? Did I put any time since last asked on practicing for this goal that I was trying to achieve? In this case, I was trying to become a rock drummer on one

song to be able to perform it publicly. That was important to me for a period of, for this period of time that I was at in my life where I needed to regain some coolness and I thought being able to play one rock song on drums would be it, even though I've never played drums before in my life. So it was asking me, have you practiced? Did you practice drums since last time I asked you? It was asking me four times a day. Mostly the answer was no, but occasionally it was yes and so I could see how did I feel about my progress and I did that for a month and so I downloaded all my data for a month to see how did I do.

My assessment, when I just like reflected based off of my own memory, because I had set a goal and I had like a show set up, so I had to be able to do it, I just felt like, holy crap, no, I am like no progress. I am nowhere closer in this month period of time to be able to do this, given all the other things that I was juggling. And I just felt like a complete failure and like I was gonna die when the show was gonna come. So that was my memory-based

Appraisal of my progress over time because mostly I was so anxious and so scared and felt like such a stupid fraud that I would set this goal and try to hold myself accountable and hold myself accountable with this public show. But when I actually looked at the data, first of all, I practiced far more than I thought. I practiced eight times in the month, which meant like, you know, two days a week, which meant like each of the weekend days and like, well, that's pretty reasonable. I'm not a full-time musician. And so to think I found some time on each of the days of the week.

like, all right, that's actually better than I thought. That's more than I thought, and that's totally a reasonable goal to have met for myself. And when I look at my emotional responses, at first it was like, I cried. I cried, I cried, I cried practicing, because it sounded terrible.

Emily Balcetis (36:48.494)

I do have a background in music, so I can appraise my own musical abilities, but my background is not in drums, so I could hear myself and realize how terrible I was. But over the course of the month, those emotions actually started to get a little bit more positive. So when I became my own accountant and looked at the actual data on how I was spending my time and how did I self-assess in the moment my progress, it was only slight, but it was more of an uphill trajectory than my memory would allow for. Why is that?

Well, because the overwhelming anxiety was masking my ability to see even the slight amount of progress that was actually there. So when we go just based off of memory, that's how memory is set up to work. It's set up to level and sharpen, to pull out the gist and to leave out some of the details. And in this case, the gist was anxiety and the details that got lost were some progress that I probably should have been giving myself credit for. And that actually might have been a motivational boost. I did the same thing, not about learning to play drums, but with another

group of students, we all use the Reporter app and we wanted to focus on unintended expenses like impulse purchases. Now we all figured that we had impulse purchases, that we impulsively purchased stuff throughout the day and we were going to track that for a two week period of time to see like well how much are we actually spending on our impulse purchases and where are those purchases going? What are we unintentionally spending money on?

Collectively we thought we're probably going to spend collectively about $700 on things that we haven't budgeted for and that are just going to be impulse purchases in the moment.

Again, everybody used this reporter app and had it set up to ping a couple times a day to ask, did you impulsively purchase something since last time I asked that you haven't budgeted for and that's not something that you routinely keep as a part of a line item in your monthly budget. And if yes, then what did you spend it on? And so we thought $700, but really it was about like $1,300. So we were off by $500, which is a significant

Emily Balcetis (38:57.12)

miscalibration collectively as a group and for the most part was on food all of us seem to be like unable to control their impulse purchases on food for me it was baked goods and pecan fig bars really got me those two weeks other people It was you know like whatever chicken salad sandwich on croissant They could not resist chicken salad sandwiches on croissants or something like that other people seem to be able to rationalize Uber rather than subway costs and of course that cost a lot more money

and some ways do. And some people were like so shocked, most of us were shocked that, my God, I spent that much money. When you put that into perspective, like for me, it was like, I could have gone to like three more, I could have paid the babysitter for three more Zumba classes in that two week period of time. And would I have preferred to pay a babysitter to buy some me time or all those stupid pecan fig bars that I had bought? crap, I wish I had spent it on the babysitter instead. For other people, it was like, I could have paid for one night.

in a hotel room in lower Manhattan and gone to a Knicks game with what I spent in that two week period of time. Would I have rather done that than what I had otherwise spent it on? The answer was yes. That guy actually cried when he had that realization. So all of it just to say, our memory is set up in a way that might serve us in some regards, but might make it really hard for us to be able to track our own progress on goals that matter.

And if we want to, if we want to actually track our progress, we might need to become our own accountant in some way and to not just rely on our memory to assess what are we doing, how are we spending our resources and to determine whether that's the way that is in our own best interest.

Tim Doyle (40:41.507)

or that money could have gone to the retirement funds for that other group of people. Do you think we can have a fear of materializing then, or we kind of, you know, try to keep ourselves blind where like, I don't want to look.

Emily Balcetis (40:43.788)

I mean, yeah.

Emily Balcetis (40:54.574)

Absolutely, yeah, of course. mean, first of all, it's hard work to do that unless we can figure out a system of automating, which is why I liked that reporter app because my phone was telling me, time to check in, time to check in, rather than me just having to willpower, will it through, muscle through and whatever, keep a physical journal or something of my expenses that's gonna drop off over time. And if you have any sense that the data might be surprising or disappointing to you, it's gonna be even harder to push

through becoming your own accountant. And like I said, that man had this realization of he had unintentionally spent money where he hadn't wanted to, and that could have translated into an experience that would be even more gratifying for him, and it was so disturbing that he had a negative emotional reaction to it. That can be hard to sustain, that kind of goal.

So what do do then? I mean so that might lead us to put those blinders on, right? That like, I don't want to do this because I don't want to learn that about myself.

Part of that is because of the mindset that we bring to those kinds of anticipated or foreshadowed experiences. If we bring that word failure into the conversation, it's going to make it really hard to want to gather that information about yourself and to continue it. We are quick to use the word failure and especially in America, we hate that word failure. mean, who, like what country loves the word failure? Probably nowhere, but that's a really off-putting word. Failure, failure, fail-

We're such an individualistic, goal-oriented country, people, that the idea of failing at something is really hard to stomach. But what is failure? Failure means opportunity, right? If we can figure out, rather than using the word failure, can we instead think about it as...

Emily Balcetis (42:51.958)

diagnostic, where should I be spending my time? Do you want to be spending on the time where the opportunity for growth is really incremental? If you're already at like 99%, you've only got 1 % left to go for self-improvement. But what if you're hovering around 50 %? What if 50 % of the time there is room to make a better choice?

Well, that's like that opportunity to go up is even greater. The progress can be even greater. That feeling of success when you move from 50 to 75 percent, a 50 percent increase in productivity or success rate. That's huge. So rather than considering diagnosing this situation, this choice, this this opportunity as one where like, God, 50 percent of the time I fail, I'm only batting 500. I'm only batting 300. Right. I'm only batting 100 here.

that means rather than being a failure, it means that's where you can be spending your time to get the biggest return on investment. So let's just take the word failure out of the mix. And when we do that, does it make it a little bit easier to become your own accountant, to find the places where your return on investment might be the greatest, where the time that you spend might give you the biggest bang for your buck?

that might be exciting rather than scary. I don't know, maybe that helps people to reformulate what becoming your own accountant could do for you.

Tim Doyle (44:12.921)

To dive deeper down that failure route though, what does it mean to foreshadow failure and why can that be important for people?

Emily Balcetis (44:20.846)

Yeah, so we can keep that phrase for shadow failure because it's one that I use. Or if that word is too scary, we can think about anticipating obstacles. When we're setting, it's got two F's that stick better. Right, we like alliteration.

Tim Doyle (44:30.413)

I like foreshadow failure. The alliteration is nice.

Emily Balcetis (44:37.016)

So what that means is that when we're setting goals, you know, at the start of a new year or the start of a big like decade of your life or any of these like psychologically meaningful moments where we start to like set goals that we want to try to work on for X amount of time. Sometimes people use vision boards or dream boards or set stretch goals if we're more in entrepreneurial world.

But the idea of like, what do I want for my life? We might have these moments where we do that. What's a big goal that I want to accomplish? Some people then like, you know, create a visual montage. They scrapbook icons of what success will look like when I achieve this fitness goal or when I achieve this financial goal or when I hit this career goal. And they might like put that together and they stick it up in a place where they might see it every day as a reminder of what they're working towards. Maybe they put it on their fridge. Maybe they put a sticky note to self on their bathroom.

through a mirror, or maybe they kick off each business meeting with a reminder of the stretch goals that they're working towards, something of that sort, I think resonates with a lot of people, well, I do something like that, like, here's my reminder about what we're working towards. Most people know that that's not enough, or if you don't take the next steps, perhaps you should, which is to, okay, now I know what in three months, six months time I'm trying to achieve, but what about in one month's time?

do I want to be? These micro sub goals are important to set so that we can track our progress so that we can feel less overwhelmed about trying to traverse that space between now and what success will look like in the future. So we set micro goals. We need to also set concrete steps that I can take today in this week to take me from here to that micro goal to then take me to the vision for my future self. And in those times when we're thinking through all of that and we're concretely planning our actions to separate me

from right now into the future. We need to also be thinking about what's going to get in my way? What's going to get in my way? What might failure look like? What are those obstacles going to be? And a lot of people don't do that because it's not fun, first of all, and they might think that it's demotivating. We just spent all this time and energy, like excitedly thinking about the future together, crafting these goals, if this is in a team meeting or I just want to stay focused on the positive. I just want to be positive focused as I

Emily Balcetis (47:02.64)

at my vision for the future because that's the kind of karma that I want to put out into the world and I don't want to be thinking about failures and obstacles and what's going to get in the way of success. That's just not fun. Here are the six ways that I'm going to fail at this goal. Why would I want to spend my time doing that?

And so rather than thinking about it as listing the failures, foreshadowing all the obstacles, if we think about it as setting ourselves up with a safety net, maybe that's a bit more appealing because we do experience bumps along the road. Just last night to my three-year-old daughter I was reading Dr. Seuss's book that everybody gives out at graduation time.

Tim Doyle (47:44.225)

other places you'll go.

Emily Balcetis (47:45.43)

Yeah, thanks. That's the one. It's right over here on the table, actually. All the places you'll go. And like Dr. Seuss says, because when you get into those dark places, because we always do, like the whole middle of the book actually gets a little bit scary, especially for a three-year-old. The pictures get dark, the language gets dark, because it is so true. We will experience bumps in the road. But when we don't spend the time in advance thinking about what are we going to do to get through that, it's a real challenge. It's a real

you

moment of despair or fear because we're short on time, because we might be in an existential crisis or a moment of fear. And when we're in those states, we think more myopically. It's just about how am going to get out of this? How am going to get out of this? The anxiety, the fear is so overwhelming, it keeps us really narrowly focused. And that might not be good. It's actually not good for doing our most creative thinking. It's going to be hard for us to

think most expansively, most creatively, most innovatively about how am going to get out of this when we are scared. Because that fear focuses us just on the immediate threat that we need to navigate, but it won't give us the creative prowess or creative abilities that we need to think about how am going to pull myself out.

But that's the beauty of doing that when we're most excited, when we're setting this high level vision, when we're working creatively, collectively as a team to think about what do we want to achieve in the next six months time? We're pretty happy and excited. And happiness, positive emotions help us broaden and build. Barbara Fredrickson is a social psychologist who developed this theory of broaden and build of emotions. That when we are in a positive emotional state, we can be our most creative selves. So we can harness that creativity, we can harness those positive emotions to

Emily Balcetis (49:37.252)

prepare backup plans. Should this happen, then I'll do this. Should this happen, then I'll do this. Should this happen, then I'll do this. We've equipped ourselves with a safety net so that when, Dr. Seuss has told us, we do experience those bumps in the road because we always will.

We know how to pivot out of it. We don't need to also try to muster all the psychological and physical energy to think creatively when our brain is not best prepared to do that because we're in that moment of crisis. We can just pivot to if this, then this. And even setting up the framework, the language, if this, then this is a good tool to help us to do that automatic pivot that we might need to pull ourselves out.

Tim Doyle (50:18.465)

Is it safe to say then and tying this into our visual visual perception again, is it safe to say then, okay, you I get hit with a roadblock. This isn't actually a roadblock, but this is part of the process and it's actually a stepping stone and taking me forward.

Emily Balcetis (50:32.28)

Totally, yeah, that cognitive appraisal and that reframing, talking to ourselves in different ways is a really effective tactic. That's cognitive behavioral therapy if we were clinical psychologists in this room.

Tim Doyle (50:44.461)

You talk about the benefit of sometimes freeing ourselves from a linear pursuit of a single objective. And I think that's something that has definitely played a role within my life where I try to tell myself, hey, lead with curiosity rather than ambition, where it's like, I wonder what will come from this rather than this is what I want to come from this. So like if to a certain degree, our most significant outcomes or accomplishments,

We can sometimes be blind to that or we don't know exactly what will come. How do we go about goal setting in the first place?

Emily Balcetis (51:24.366)

Yeah, so two things. One, I'll answer your question, but first I'm go on a tangent because you talked about leading with curiosity and that's something that I am working on. That is probably my, I haven't set my New Year's resolutions. I still have time.

But that's one that I want to work on. example last night was my nine-year-old son. Just this year, we switched him to a new school, super hard to do when you're nine. He left some friends behind. Now he's got a regroup for just a couple years that he has left at this school. And of course, he's struggling to find a friend group that matches the friend group that he had at his last school. He was so excited last night to come home to tell me that he worked on this project. He and a friend figured out a way, a new friend figured out a way to work through some boredom at a moment where

I was kind of like free time and they were bored with what they were doing in the after school program. And so they wrote a rap. And he showed me the lyrics of this rap that they wrote. And he was really excited. I could kick myself. In hindsight, he's excited because he made a friend and they did something together and they got through a moment of boredom. And that's what he was happy about. As a mom, I read the lyrics of this rap and I was like, mm.

And so I was like, I didn't lead with anger. led with, don't do that. Don't write that stuff at school. If somebody sees that, you're gonna get in trouble. And it wasn't terrible, but for nine year old in an elementary school, at a public elementary school in New York City, they might get talked to for the lyrics of their rap.

And that's what I led with. And he had, on the table, had dismantled a Rubik's Cube because whatever, he had dismantled. So he was, when I said like, I think you're gonna get in trouble for that, like don't do that at school. He just, so all these little pieces of the Rubik's Cube went flying across the room. And I was like, my God, like what happened? We're not even fighting here. And hindsight, I realize it's.

Emily Balcetis (53:21.706)

He was excited to share, made a friend, we did this thing, and it was cool. I had a cool moment at school making a friend. I led with, my god, you guys did something stupid, you're gonna get in trouble, which of course he doesn't want to get in trouble at school. He has gotten in trouble at school, he doesn't want to get in trouble at school. And so we were like totally on different pages. What I should have led with is, I'm curious, what did you guys mean by these lyrics? I'm curious, like tell me what you were, like curiosity, right? Should have led with I'm curious. So many facets of my life and hindsight and I was like,

I'm curious. I'm curious, husband, why did you think that stupid thing was like the right thing to say? I'm curious, son. Like, why did you think these words were the right words to write down on a piece of paper at school? So I'm going to work on that. But leading with curiosity can get us, can help us to avoid problems.

that we might want to avoid. And so that's like one of my New Year's resolutions. I'm curious, what does that mean instead? But your bigger question that you were asking is one just about like pulling out, right? Like trying to find a different way forward when your pursuit of the goal maybe isn't working or you just keep bumping up against the same obstacle and you're not making forward progress. How do you get out of that? I'm curious what you might say, Tim. But I can think of other examples where that's the case.

Right, where it's like, man, this thing is important to me. This thing is important to me. And I just can't seem to nail it. I can't seem to move forward. And I think we can all resonate with that of, I'm just not moving forward. It feels like I'm just hitting a brick wall here. We even have that phrase because I think it resonates with so many people. What do we do?

Being able to quit is important for goal pursuit. Being able to quit. Now, we don't like to be quitters, right? Quitters are bad, right? We've probably been told that by whatever traditional fathers or many facets of society. Don't be a quitter. But actually being a quitter is a really good idea when we might have taken a moment of introspective reflection and realized this is not working for me. And just like taking the word failure out of the conversation, taking the word quitting out of the conversation,

Emily Balcetis (55:30.588)

might be really useful, instead thinking about it as pivoting. Diane von Furstenberg is a famous fashion designer. She created the wrap dress. She's like, you know, an iconic fashion designer from when women first really got to enter this market, and she made a huge name for herself. She's still an incredibly prolific and important contributor to fashion, but that is not where she started. She was a professional ice skater. That was her first career. Ice skating, really? She actually made it really big on the international competitive circuit.

until she hit a brick wall and she just couldn't like push over to Becoming one of those names that we would always associate with ice skating So she quit she quit ice skating even though she was incredibly successful and if any one of us had achieved the Accomplishments that she had with ice skating would be like pretty proud of ourselves pretty proud of our kids if they made it that far But she quit so she quit when you're like pretty much at the top of of the game And she

She spent some time at the Sorbonne in Paris and thought about like what do I want in life? What is important to me in life? And that's when she eventually pivoted to fashion and to design. Now some could say, I just did, say she quit ice skating and she recreated herself in fashion. But as she tells her story, she actually says like no, it's not about quitting. It's about pivoting. It's about redirecting and finding that thing that I really love and it's the art of line, of line, cutting lines through the ice.

cutting lines through the fabric, thinking about how lines overlay over the body, how the body can create lines and the ice, and it's the art of line and design that has always been my passion and that I've always been doing. It's just about finding a new way to create that, to create what I love doing. And she found that then in fabrics in the second and most prolific part of her career. So did she quit ice skating?

Or did she pivot from ice skating to something else that just opened up a whole host of other possibilities? Yeah, that is what happened. So we need to be able to take a step back to put ourselves into that positive emotional experience so that we can see a new way forward when that path that we continue to be on might be just continuing to hit us with a brick wall.

Tim Doyle (57:52.079)

I like to look at it from the framework of quitting versus giving up where quitting, like we're saying can be a very positive thing where you're actually taking a step forward. We always think of quitting as, I'm taking a step back or me and me and some going backwards. But it's like, okay, if I need to quit this thing and you could say from a perceptual, you know, visual percept, visual perception, you know, quitting is taking a step back and going backward. But it's like, if I take a step back and it's actually

bringing me into an arena of life where I actually want to be, then that's a massive step forward. And I think quitting can be one of the best things that you can do. I see giving up as, Hey, there's still something for me here, but I'm not actually willing to put in the work to continue it. That's when it can get a little tricky. and so for like the majority of our conversation here, we've been talking about work and goals and motivation. I think it gets into the notion or the assumption of like,

you're in the arena of life that you want to be. For the ones that aren't in that arena, especially when it comes to work, I feel like one of the main things you hear is like, I just don't see myself here. If you're in a relationship, you're like, I just don't see this working out. How does, what is the role of vision playing in environments like that and situations like that? And what would you say to somebody who really can't see the way forward?

Emily Balcetis (59:19.978)

that the fear of the unknown is a real thing that can resonate with all of us. There's, you know, defense of the status quo is something also that many of us get trapped in, that even when this status quo, when the current situation isn't benefiting us, it's at least a situation that we know and that we're figuring out how to navigate, that parts of our, parts of the status quo we might be nailing, we know how to move through it, parts we don't or they aren't working.

but the alternatives are just vague. They're not as concrete and clear as what's in the here and now. And so even though stepping into that void of uncertainty actually is an opportunity for rebirth, for growth, for a fresh start, it's hard. It's hard to step into that space when we don't know what we're stepping into.

Even when the status quo isn't benefiting us to the best of our ability, we have a psychological ease or comfort with at least knowing what it is. So the more that we can do to try to make that unknown void known, concrete, clear, visualized, imagined, more materialized than it would be otherwise, it might help take out that uncertainty and the fear that holds us back from seeing

the unknown as an opportunity rather than as something to be scared of.

Tim Doyle (01:00:49.145)

How has this work changed the way that you've viewed yourself?

Emily Balcetis (01:00:52.908)

Man, just like medical doctors are not immune to the common cold or to the flu, I'm not immune to all of these challenges of the psychological experience that we've talked about. So conversations like this are good reminders for myself. They're moments of reflection, lead with curiosity, I am reminded of because of our conversation. So we're all works in progress and so am I.

Tim Doyle (01:01:16.495)

Emily, it's been great talking with you today. Where can people go to learn more about you, your book, anything else you'd like to share?

Emily Balcetis (01:01:23.502)

Yeah, cool. can find the book anywhere books are sold. Go to Amazon, check out Clearer, Closer, Better, How Successful People See the World or check me up on LinkedIn. try to post content there to be accessible to everybody. Thanks so much.

Tim Doyle (01:01:36.887)

Awesome. Great talking with you today.