Give Your Goals a Glow-Up

In psychology, there’s no textbook term or definition for a golden hour, which means it sorta gets to be whatever you want it to be. But according to Stephanie Cacioppo, PhD, a neuroscientist, the director of the Brain Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, and a Nike Performance Council member, there are a few guidelines that can help you identify a golden hour versus every other hour:

• It has to be intentional, not just another to-do slotted into your calendar.
• It has to be a safe space (no judgment — ahem, that includes from yourself).
• It has to be spent doing something you love that brings you genuine joy, such as a sport; a hobby (say, cooking, chess or drawing); or a professional pursuit, like writing a novel.
• It has to focus on polishing your skills (this is what will help you really shine when it matters).

When done right (more on that shortly), a golden hour can offer perks you’re unlikely to get from a regular workout, long run, or session with your sketchpad. Like…

The more experience you rack up and the more advanced your skill set becomes, the easier it is to forget about the fundamentals, says Christopher Janelle, PhD, a professor and the director of the Performance Psychology Lab at the University of Florida. “Bringing back fundamentals is often the answer to overcoming challenges that may seem bigger and harder than they actually are,” he says.

If you’re struggling with a certain lift in CrossFit or a complicated dance combo, for instance, revisiting your foundation during your golden hour can reveal an imbalance or misstep. “It’s all about repeating with quality in order to see results,” Hegerberg recently told Nike in an interview, and Janelle and Cacioppo agree.

Because your golden hour is ~your~ thing — and one that generally looks the same time after time — it “gives you a systematic place to mindfully deal with thoughts and emotions, things that are generally squishy or abstract, providing structure to them and how to deal with them rather than just feeling like you’re flailing around,” says Janelle.

In other words, you can rely on this routine to help you work through whatever’s throwing you off, be it a soul-crushing L, a breakup or, uh, a pandemic. The warm familiarity can help you reclaim your energy and peace, says Cacioppo, so you feel better able to deal with any stressors — a little thing called resilience.

“Having a golden hour is also a really great way to work through triggers,” adds Janelle. Say you fall into a self-bashing headspace when you don’t hit the PR you had in mind, you mess up a drawing, or a rival makes an uncool comment. “You can use the safe space of your golden hour to visualize these experiences, tune in to how they feel, then rewrite your response so you can plan for them and succeed when they pop up in the future,” he says.

When you stop enjoying an activity or pursuit of a goal, there’s a greater likelihood you’ll stop the activity altogether, says Janelle. When you have a golden hour focused around play — as in, you enjoy kicking around the ball with your dad, drawing your favorite animal, or going back to the dolma recipe you learned as a kid, and you don’t take any of it too seriously — it helps you stay rooted to the intrinsic reasons that attracted you to your passion in the first place, he says. You also progress faster when you like what you’re doing, adds Cacioppo, as you’ll be more engaged in it.

Sigh of relief: Despite the fancy name, a golden hour is actually incredibly simple to DIY. Just choose the activity that lights up your soul and that you could get better at. Then decide how long your “hour” will be, how frequently you’ll do it, and whether you’ll fly solo or invite a few of your people.

“There are no right or wrong answers,” says Cacioppo, but you want your “hour” to be long enough that you can feel immersed in the activity (so probably 20 minutes or more), and occasional enough that you still look forward to it (that could be every day, once a week, or once a month or season). Throw your phone into Do Not Disturb, block off your calendar — do whatever you need to protect this time, she adds. |

As for what you do during your golden hour? Go through the rudimentary skills that you learned in the very beginning, especially the ones you haven’t practiced in a while, says Cacioppo. And — this is key — notice whether you’re smiling throughout. If you’re not, you’re probably focusing on the wrong thing, so recalibrate until you nail that happy face naturally. Once you do, the light may be just right for snapping that photo, whether you choose to or not.