Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals, (see book on Amazon here) is about succeeding and reaching your goals, exactly as the title suggests. This book provides an interesting contrast with others on the subject that I have read and reviewed, such as Goals By Brian Tracy (see previous review here).
Tracy is a motivational speaker, writer, business consultant, and sales trainer. When he teaches goal setting, he shares a lot of information about financial success as well as personal success. His approach is purely pragmatic. He tests a certain approach, looks at the results, and if it works in the real world for himself and others, he adopts it and teaches it.
Halvorson’s book Succeed looks at goal setting and goal achieving through the lens of science. Halvorson is a PhD motivational psychologist who actually did much of the research that she writes about. When the weight of the scientific evidence reveals that a certain approach works, she adopts it and teaches it.
Halvorson is the associate director of the Motivation Science Center at Columbia University. She is a frequent guest on national media and her TED talks have as many as 3 million views on You Tube.
The principles she teaches in her book could apply to any goal, but are strongly focused on personal goals like losing weight, exercising, quitting smoking, and learning (education).
Halvorson’s book was published in 2010. I first read it in 2013. Back then the book seemed to me to have flown under the radar. It doesn’t seem to have gotten the reach or rankings that other books in the personal growth and success psychology genre did.
But I thought it could have been right up there with the top books in this category that were NY Times best sellers; books like Grit by Angela Duckworth and Mindset by Carol Dweck. Incidentally, Halvorson studied under Dweck, who also wrote the forward.
There are a number of things I appreciated about this book:
First, Succeed takes a nuanced look at goals. You don’t get black or white answers or solutions about how to set goals. Instead, you hear things like, “If your situation is X, then set your goals this way. But if your situation is Y, then set your goals that way.”
She spends time talking about intrinsic motivation as based on Deci’s self-determination theory. I believe this is one of the most important topics to understand if you want to be motivated to reach your goals long term. Extrinsic motivation is fine, but it’s often temporary. I was very happy to see this material included in the book, primarily in chapter 5: Goals Can Make You Happy.
In chapter 7 she explains the benefits of social support and shares the concept of “goal contagion.” This means that when you hang out with other people pursuing a particular goal, this can motivate you to pursue the same type of goal, sometimes unconsciously – the motivation just rubs off on you.
This reinforces what most people here in our fitness community already believe – your social circle has a huge influence on you in countless ways. This includes whether you persist through difficulty, reach your goals, or even initiate goal pursuit in the first place.
Halvorson also discusses the importance of planning, a topic I am passionate about and that I believe is crucial for execution and action. It’s fine and well to set the goal, but goal setting and goal achieving are two different things. As one type of plan, she explains the power of implementation intentions, a technique we have seen in other books, and which I have written about on the site here in the Burn the Fat Inner Circle.
According to psychology research, the simple act of anticipating potential problems or obstacles, and creating contingency plans for these things that might go wrong (“If X happens, then I will do Y”) can double your rate of goal achievement.
Chapter 10 talks about self control, why it’s so important, and how you can develop more of it. There are many books filled cover to cover with every detail about self-control and willpower. For example, The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal is an excellent read which I have previously reviewed and was an Inner Circle book of the month pick. In Succeed, Halvorson does an excellent job covering the essentials on self-control in the space of one chapter.
In the book she also shares insights on optimism. She says thinking positive and looking on the bright side is generally constructive and leads to more successful outcomes, but there are some caveats. There are times when it makes sense to think about how things might go wrong and be objective about the reality of a situation. There is also such a thing as realistic optimism, and it’s critical for achieving many of our goals.
There are other books that go deeper into all these topics. In fact, if you want to take a deep dive, you could find an entire book on each one of these concepts. But Halvorson does a great job bringing together all the major topics from the psychology of goal setting and goal achieving and summarizing them in a single book.
For a book written by a PhD psychologist, Succeed is an easy read, even when she’s talking about the methods and results of psychology studies. Although this is a science and psychology book, it is also very practical. Halvorson did a great job explaining the science of goals simply, clearly, and comprehensively.
Here’s the link to the paperback on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3MuNDKc
– Tom Venuto,
Author, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle
Founder, Burn The Fat Inner Circle,
All-Natural, No-BS Body Transformation
PS. Succeed is also available as an audiobook. I just recently purchased it but haven’t listened yet, so I can’t comment on the narration and so on yet. I’ll update this review when I’ve finished listening.
About Tom Venuto
Tom Venuto is a natural bodybuilding and fat loss expert. He is also a recipe creator specializing in fat-burning, muscle-building cooking. Tom is a former competitive bodybuilder and today works as a full-time fitness coach, writer, blogger, and author. In his spare time, he is an avid outdoor enthusiast and backpacker. His book, Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle is an international bestseller, first as an ebook and now as a hardcover and audiobook. The Body Fat Solution, Tom’s book about emotional eating and long-term weight maintenance, was an Oprah Magazine and Men’s Fitness Magazine pick. Tom is also the founder of Burn The Fat Inner Circle – a fitness support community with over 52,000 members worldwide since 2006. Click here for membership details
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