"The science behind (NOT) accomplishing your goals"

Do you ever find yourself setting a goal, running to all of your friends and family and telling them what you plan to do for their "support" but end up not actually accomplish them?

There's scientific claims that perhaps everything you've heard about all of the goal setting claims out there could be dead wrong and perhaps that's the reason why you can't get anything done!

88% of resolutions fail and a lot of people look to find something that will help them accomplish their goals.

There's a lot of humbug out there!

For instance, the Laws of Attraction claims that somehow just your "vibrations" of wanting something will make it happen. Because of this "fact", clearly telling everyone else you know too will only help it become a reality more!

Try telling that to a third world community when they say "I want food." 

I hope you see why this is insulting. There is absolutely no science to back up this claim that somehow your thoughts attract certain events outside of your brain. That's not the case at all and that idea comes from a few "Life Coaches" who listen to Deepak Chopra and his new age pseudoscience of Quantum Mechanics. This new trend is definitely a derivative of those new age ideas, and using these gimmicks actually may produce the opposite effect of what you want.

The fact of the matter is we have advanced quite a lot in the field of neuroscience and we can scientifically study and investigate these human problems and mishaps and understand why they happen and how we can change it.

I saw an interesting TEDTalk on the subject in which Derek Sivers a CEO gives a presentation exhibiting studies that show people that talk about their goals before accomplishing them are less likely to do so and why.

Dopamine acts as your brains motivator, when you desire something it triggers your neurotransmitters and releases dopamine and you begin to feel pleasure from the anticipation of wanting something almost identical to the pleasure of acquiring what you want. 

The difference is that your brain becomes really attached to your possessions and not so attached to goals. 

It may be possible that the more we talk about our goals, the more our brains are convinced we have achieved them and therefore we get less and less dopamine the more we talk about them.

Believing in the false claims made by new age self help media and life coaches is bad for you because it's not a science and the facts actually show that by thinking about what you want over and over again  actually make you feel less motivated and trick your brain into thinking you're closer to your goal than you really are.


Opinion:

A lot of the disappointment that follows by not accomplishing a goal could come from the embarrassment from having told everyone you know and now you feel like it was expected of you and you've made yourself look foolish.

That's motivation enough to keep quiet!

You are probably less likely to accomplish your goals by reading about how other people tell you to accomplish your goals. There are some goals not worth accomplishing, some goals you clearly didn't really want, and some you didn't want for the right reasons.

You will accomplish the goals (most of the time) that assist your needs and some accomplishments that weren't even goals... just accidental awesomeness. There will also be cases in which you actually DID accomplish a goal and found out later it really wasn't what you wanted, so perhaps it's good we fail 88% of the time.

Try to expect a little less from your outcomes and expect more from the process or journey of your actions, it will make your goals worthy of wanting and you will feel even better about accomplishing them. 

(For the evidence of my claims please refer to the Standford study, published in Neuron by Dr. Brian Knutson and site the research conducted by Emily Balcetis and David Dunning, published in the Psychological Science journal)

What is Astrology and why is it nonsense?

Astrology is a belief that astronomical events directly influence human beings. While astrological beliefs have existed for more than 2,000 years in almost every civilization, modern Western cultures have developed the belief that star constellations influence or predict a person's personality and beyond that can predict daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly happenings in that personality type's life due to other cosmic events.

"Okay, but I like to read my horoscope every day... it is sooo me!"

Try an experiment, have a friend buy a newspaper and cut out all of the daily horoscope readings without the signs attached to them. Have your friend keep track of which ones are which and not tell you. Then mix them all up and read them one by one. After reading them, try to pick the one that's yours. You will most likely not pick your own star sign. Let's say you do pick yours, to make sure it's true... you must be able to demonstrate the same results every time. Try the experiment every day for a week. You will not pick yours every time.

(For teachers) Classroom experiment:
Pick any daily horoscope and read it aloud to the class, ask "Raise your hand if you think this is your horoscope." 2/3 of the class will on average raise their hand. If it were a science, 1/12 would raise their hands.

"Astrology is a science!"

Astrology is NOT a science, it perpetuates itself as if it were. Tricking and lying to people about superstition and projecting it to "sound" scientific. If it were a science there would be evidence that astrological claims were true. There is no evidence. In fact there is plenty of evidence that supports that it is false. Making Astrology a very powerful and popular pseudoscience.

"I just read it for fun, how could it be bad?"

It's bad because its a lie. If you know it's not true yet you still "read it for fun", I suppose it cannot hurt you but it is a silly waste of time. If you are interested in space there is a really cool REAL science called Astronomy that can help! Since reality is so much cooler than any make belief crap we've been able to conjure up, you'll be entertained forever.

The reason it is bad for believers is that if you were to be going through an issue in your life and you turn to your horoscope for answers, since it isn't based on fact you might be taking really horrible advice and make poor decisions that can hurt other people.

It is also bad because believing in astrology makes you scientifically illiterate and not very smart. It's always better to be intelligent, otherwise you'll just let yourself be fooled by harmful lies your whole life.

"I usually base my relationships on horoscopes, is that bad?"

It's only as bad as racism. So depending on how you feel about judging other people's personalities by the conditions in which they were born with no control... then... yeah.

 Taking advice that isn't true is pretty unfair to your and your almost loved one. You might just pass up a really awesome relationship with someone whom might actually value you because your sun signs weren't "compatible". 

Hilarious Fact: Your "Sign" is not actually "Your Sign"

If astrology believers spent a little more time learning astronomy (real science), they might learn that all the sun signs you're supposedly born under... is actually not the same anymore. Oh, and there's actually 14, technically. Due to Earth's precession of the equinox, how the Earth actually rotates, the sun sign you were actually born under is off by one sign. So.... I suppose astrologers could fix that easily but that would mean assigning billions of believers new signs... and that would be admitting they made a mistake which if it were a real science you'd probably want to correct a mistake you know is there. Astrologers prefer to ignore those pesky details.

"Why is it important to know the facts?"

The interest in astrology seems to be the psychological or emotional need to feel personally connected with the cosmos. It's important to know real science instead of this pseudoscience because that inherent interest you have that drew you to it in the first place is so essential to the existence of our species. The reality of your connection with the cosmos is by far more complex, exciting, and more significant that any pseudo-scientific explanation could derive.

90% of you is made up of 90% of the stuff in the cosmos. 

You are literally the remnant of a supernova star that exploded. 

See? SCIENCE IS WAY BETTER.

"Why does it matter?"

It matters! In fact it matters to matter so much that you probably wouldn't exist without the existence of black holes.

A Black Hole is a place in space where there is so much gravity caused by matter that is so compact that even light cannot escape.

"How did they get there?" 

Thanks to Einstein's General Relativity we can understand that a sun will distort space time around it more and more the more compact and massive it is.

Once that star begins to die and run out of its nuclear fuel, it gets cold and shrinks, leaving a bottomless hole in space time.

(If you don't understand GR, worry not! There will be a post about it.)

The early universe right after the big bang was probably full of many black holes.

They might help give birth to galaxies! That's cool!

"How does a destructive black hole create stuff?"

The secret is in Quasars;

They are the brightest light in the universe and can outshine entire galaxies!

A black hole at the center of a young galaxy sucks up a lot of gas. Once it fills up too much and all the gas becomes heated due to its fast movement, it lets out a burp (because gas makes you burp) called a "Quasar" and spits out the gas. The quasar will run out of gas to feed on and eventually cool down and turn into a supermassive black hole. Black holes and Quasars are key to understanding how galaxies form! Scientists have recently discovered that black holes that turn into quasars and release huge jets of energy have actually helped create stars. So now we must ask if quasars help create all galaxies or do galaxies create quasars? Right now the answer seems to be yes to both... until further notice. 

In my humble opinion:

(My thought is that all galaxies have black holes at the center, which create quasars, which heat other parts of the universe and help create stars, which may turn into black holes and create new galaxies. Sort of like a space reproductive system!)

"Can they kill us?"

Sure! If you get really close to one and pass through the Event Horizon, the part of your body that's closest would have a huge gravitational pull much larger than the other half of your body... turning you into the literal flying spaghetti monster. Then the pull of gravity would increase as you approach so much that your body would just be ripped into tiny particles. If someone were watching you from afar, they might not be able to see you actually go into a black hole. You would appear to be slowing down and hovering the invisible mass.

But that's not going to happen. Don't worry. 

In fact there is a supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy! 

"How do you know?"

Scientists use powerful telescopes that by using knowledge from discoveries in optics, can detect light and other energy invisible to the naked eye. They can look to the center of our galaxy and see that things are moving really fast around a single point, since black holes are invisible, we have to observe the matter and energy around one in order to notice they are there, unless there is a quasar we can see.

Common Misconception: "Black holes are giant cosmic vacuums!"

False: The truth is actually much weirder than that. You'd have to be within 10km of a black hole before you'd even start spiraling into it.
In fact if our sun was replaced by a black hole of the same mass, the orbits of all the planets would not change.