Evidence-Based Tips for Greater Happiness (Part 2)
Turn empty hopes into fulfilling realities with these four steps
As I mentioned toward the end of my last post, powerful thinking alone happens to be less effective in leading to change than many of us would have thought. In fact, studies have found many examples of positive thinking falling short of having any sort of positive impact. The trick is to take positive thinking and figure out how to put it into action, and social scientist Gabriele Oettingen has come up with an acronym to help us do just that: WOOP stands for wish, outcome, obstacles, plan.
Wish—This step, along with the next one, probably will feel quite natural to us lifetime positive-thinkers. To begin, just think of what it is you’re wishing would happen. It could be anything, but trying to be somewhat realistic tends to be a good idea. So for instance, let’s say my wish is to be able to go on a 50-mile bike ride.
Outcome—We’re probably quite used to finding ourselves dreaming of all the great things that would happen if our wishes would come true. So to return to my example of the 50-mile bike ride, I suppose that if I were able to do such a ride then I’d probably be much fitter, my wife might find me more attractive, I could have more energy to get my work done, and there would be a whole bunch of cool places I could reach on my rides that were previously too far away. Those all sound great! So the important thing is to not stop the positive thinking here but to continue on to the next two steps to help increase the chances of the wish coming true.
Obstacles—Just as the name implies, for this step the task is to come up with a handful of realistic barriers to achieving the goal. In the case of my 50-mile ride example, I might not find the time to get out enough to work up to such a long ride, I might get bored of the rides in my area and lose interest in training, and I may not have anyone to train with (which is safer and much more fun).
Plan—This step requires us to devise a strategy to address the obstacles we’ve come up with. Back to my ride example: I can make sure I have enough time by getting up before work on two weekday mornings and trying to get out on a longer ride each week. To overcome the obstacle of boredom with the local routes, I can do some searching online for new riding areas that are relatively close and ask around at local shops for tips. As for finding a partner, I can talk with my wife and my riding buddies about taking on the challenge, and if none of them are up to it, I can get in touch with a local riding club to try to find people with a similar level of interest and skill to my own. Although I seemed to be able to come up with realistic ways to address the obstacles that I came up with, sometimes you might find that there isn’t a clear way to overcome the obstacles. While this might be demoralizing, the realization will allow you to try to come up with a different goal that has obstacles that you can actually overcome.
In short, positive thinking alone turns out to not be that great at getting us where we want to go. Luckily, adding a couple relatively simple steps to that age-old technique can take it to a whole new level.
Ben Lotstein, MS, MFTC of North Star Therapy, LLC provides individual and couples counseling in Fort Collins, CO and throughout the state.
