WOOP Your Way to Success with your Goals
Through the study of the Psychology of Happiness, we know that working on specific personal goals is one of the keys to happiness. We know this intuitively. Most of us are focused on personal goals and have a good bit of experience with the ups and downs of the process. NYU Psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen has a tool to offer in her book “Rethinking Positive Thinking” that is very helpful to get (and keep) goals moving forward. It’s appealing, simple, user-friendly and streamlined. After all, who has time to mess around?
Dr. Oettingen’s tool is the acronym WOOP and stands for:
WISH
OUTCOME
OBSTACLE
PLAN
More contextually, what is your specific Wish? What do you visualize will be the various benefits of the successful Outcome of that wish coming to fruition? What Obstacles can you imagine would be potential barriers to your success? Finally, what’s your specific “if/then” Plan for each obstacle that offers a concrete, realistic work-around to keep you on track?
To practically test WOOP, I conscripted my reluctant but patient husband, David, into a conversation about his wishes for the weekend which was filled with his own ambitious goals. He’s not one to readily embrace a structured “plan of attack” with boxes neatly sketched at itemized steps to be checked off. He’s more of a “let’s see how it goes” kind of person, so this made him a great partner for practical experiment of WOOP-ing.
David and I went through each of the 4-step process, and while he was a somewhat reluctant spouse/guinea-pig giving cherished morning coffee time to my agenda, he found in just a few minutes that articulating the priority wish, spending a minute visualizing the emotional, intellectual and logistical benefits of successful outcome, anticipating several obstacles that had realistic potential, and then making the “if/then” plan got him focused and motivated. He skirted a couple of likely obstacles just by consciously anticipating them.
Dr. Oettingen’s suggested application of WOOP is to spend 5 minutes each morning to apply a wish for the day. Nota bene and I think this is edifying, Oettingen was raised and educated in Germany and has a very pragmatic, “no-nonsense” persona. She articulates that perceived confidence in one’s ability to be successful with the goal is an important consideration and cautions to “do the O’s in proper order.” Anticipating obstacles before the desired outcomes will be de-motivating. With my N=1 experiment on he-who-is-legally-obligated to humor me being as motivating and directing as it was on the application of a potentially overwhelming weekend goals list, I am motivated to continue WOOPING in various time frames; for the day, for a week, and longer. To me, the crown jewel of the concept is planning around anticipated obstacles that prevent status-quo-loving auto-pilot from grabbing the helm. Try WOOP, and let me know what your experience is!
