Shift Perspective to Reach Goals

March 31, 2005 --Tweaking your perspective might help you reach personal goals.

You won't need rose-colored glasses. It's not about psyching yourself up or overlooking obstacles. Instead, just change your vantage point, suggests a new study.

Describe your progress as someone else might see it, says Lisa Libby, an Ohio State University assistant professor of psychology.

"When you're looking for change in yourself, picturing your past from a third-person perspective highlights the progress you've made," says Libby, in a news release. "That can give you the strength to keep working, even if you haven't reached your goal yet."

What Story Are You Telling?

Personal goals like getting in shape, going back to school, or mending a damaged relationship usually take time. If a magic wand would have done the trick, you would have waved it long ago. Since that's not possible, progress comes gradually, with plateaus and setbacks as par for the course.

When you're in the trenches every day, it's easy to forget how far you've come. That can be downright discouraging.

But don't throw in the towel. Try telling your story from the third-person perspective, suggest Libby and colleagues.

That means trading the "I" and "me" for "he" and "she." It's the difference between an autobiographical account and the more objective version a reporter might tell. If your path was charted by someone else, might it look different?

The two perspectives were tested by Libby and colleagues. They asked college students to recall past events and describe any changes they'd made since then. Some students were told to use the first-person perspective; others used the third-person approach.

For instance, one group of students was asked to remember a socially awkward event from high school. Others were asked to remember their first psychotherapy treatment.

Those using a third-person perspective reported more progress since those events. They saw more positive changes than the students taking a first-person perspective.

Students using the third-person perspective were also more outgoing, say Libby and colleagues. They secretly taped students to see who struck up conversations with undercover researchers.

Third Person vs. First Person: Why the Difference?

The third-person perspective apparently focuses on an event's meaning. "So if there have been any changes since then, the changes are accentuated in your mind," says Libby, in the news release.

But the first-person perspective basically reruns the past. Your mind takes you right back to that prom disaster or the late-night refrigerator raid, for instance. The emotions of those long-gone moments take center stage, shoving aside improvements made since then, Libby continues.

When asked to recall past positive events, the third-person perspective saw fewer differences between those shining moments and current life.

Give Yourself More Credit

"We think these results could be useful to people who are trying to make changes in their lives," says Libby.

"Using the third-person [perspective] is a good technique to see the positive changes you've made in your life, and that is likely to lead to greater satisfaction with your efforts. That, in turn, should make it easier to continue with your efforts to reach your goals."

The study appeared recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

The researchers say that when describing issues that influence one's stance, people sometimes say "it depends on how you look at it." They conclude that when it comes to assessing personal change there's literal truth in the statement.