I’m an NPR WBUR junkie. It’s my “go to” source of news and it’s typically keeping me company in my home office. Mostly it’s a passive experience. And then, every once in a while, a story grabs me to the point where I have to listen to it again.
That’s what happened when I heard this interview, “On Regatta Weekend, a Rower’s Love for the Sport Helps Her Heal”.
Lisa Russel was a competitive rower until a freak car accident shattered her body a year and a half ago. Now she’s finding her way back into a boat while living with a very different body. She’s not competing yet but listening to her, there’s little doubt she’ll get there.
What caught my attention was her description of the mental process that has brought her to where she is now. Rather than retreat, crawling into a safe cocoon to wait for something to change, she set her mind to healing both her body and emotional well being.
Listening and then reading the interview online, I was struck her own account of how she motivates herself. She seems to intuitively follow a motivational model that I use frequently with clients. It’s power lies in its simplicity and clarity. The model, developed by Gabriele Oettingen, is called WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan). In her book, Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation, Oettingen explains in great detail the research methods that she and her team used to develop new insights into what kind of positive thinking is beneficial and actually motivates desirable behavior.
In my work, I’ve distilled the technique into a fairly simple formula. Here’s a simple explanation:
WISH: Think about one thing that you want, that you deeply wish for. It should be challenging but you have to believe it is possible to achieve.
OUTCOME: Identify the best thing that you associate with fulfilling your wish. Now imagine what you’ll experience as vividly as you can.
OBSTACLE: Take a deep breath and, looking inward, ask yourself, what is it in me that holds me back? This internal obstacle could be a behavior, an emotion or an obsessive thought. The thing is that the obstacle matters to you and that’s what makes it hard to put aside.
PLAN: Identify one thought you can hold onto or an action you can take that will allow you to work around the obstacle. Now prepare for this by considering when it will come up and what can you do?
Here’s how Lisa used WOOP:
- She set a WISH for herself that was important, concrete and achievable. “ I want to be able to compete next year. “
- She identified one OUTCOME in fulfilling this Wish. “being in a boat…on water… is a sense of independence … tranquility.”
- She recognized the OBSTACLE. “… my body’s fully different now. …in an effort to try and reclaim pieces of what I was able to do before …. only work on what you can control.”
- She set a PLAN that faced the obstacles using tools she knew from experience that she could rely on. “…to reclaim pieces of what I was able to do before…use the mental training that I learned through rowing… to put ‘it’ in the black box…and leave on the dock…while I’m on the water, that’s all I’ doing.. not spending my time on what used to be…”
Wherever you are in your journey in living with a debilitated and frustrating body, WOOP can give you that push you need to climb over a hurdle.
Can’t wrap your arms around the Wish so you can feel it? Try making it smaller and break it into phases. Concentrate your focus on an outcome that you can feel in your bones. Identify your internal obstacle. Keep your obstacle in mind when you design a simple, manageable and achievable plan.
Try it out and let me know how it goes for you.
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