How you discuss your past influence memory and behavior

If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions

clipped from www.physorg.com What I was doing vs. what I did: How verb aspect influences memory and behavior If you want to perform at your peak, you should carefully consider how you discuss your past actions the way a statement is phrased (and specifically, how the verbs are used), affects our memory of an event being described and may also influence our behavior. The authors surmise that when we think about our past behavior in the imperfective (e.g. what we were doing), we tend to imagine that behavior as ongoing (and not completed yet). This enables us to easily think about what went into that behavior and may help us improve performance on similar tasks in the future these findings may be relevant to behavioral therapy. They suggest that "decreasing the frequency of unhealthy behaviors might be facilitated by discussing these behaviors in terms of what I did. In contrast, increasing the frequency of healthy behaviors might be facilitated by discussing these behaviors in terms of what I was doing.