The Only Way out Guide for Truth Seekers

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THE ONLY WAY OUT
no choice with respect to the impossible, for it sets the
absolute limits of freedom‖ (1) .
In the field of self-development and change management,
experts tell their clients about the 'need to change', thus
underscoring the importance of personal choice in achieving
success. Veterans in the field have emphasized the remarkable
effect of powerful imagery which humans creatively utilize to
sustain their motivation.
I myself conducted a study on the effect of the ability to
visualize one's self at some time in the future. The concept of
possible selves is one that has been thoroughly developed by
psychologist Hazel Markus (2) . I decided to borrow this
intriguing notion and apply to the field of psycholinguistics
(the psychology of language learning). The study's aim was to
investigate the relationship between one's ability to visually
imagine his or her self as a (successful) language learner and
the likelihood of increased motivational behavior.
Interestingly, the correlations turned out significantly high,
even higher than expected. Individuals who were able to
visualize more vivid and detailed possible selves (of
themselves as successful language learners) were more likely
to exhibit increased motivational behavior (3) .
I think these results have important implications for life
and not only language learning. A large portion of our lives is
determined by what we would like to become and that we
really have adequate freedom to account for our responsibility
in becoming that very person we imagine. In short, our
freedom is not always crushed or shushed by deterministic
(1) Ibid. p. 87.
(2)
Markus, H. & Nurius, P. (1986) Possible Selves, American
Psychologist, 41, 954-969.
(3) Al-Shehri, A. (2009) Motivation and Vision: The Realtion between the
Ideal L2Self, Imagination, and Visual Style. In Motivation, Language
Identity and the L2 Self, edited by Dörnyei, Z. & Ushioda, E., Canada,
Multilinguial Matters.