From wish to plan

The teaching

As Gabriele Oettingen's WOOP teaches it.

Three ways of facing a wish

Oettingen's teaching starts from how people think about a wish they hold. Some indulge: they dwell on how lovely it will be when it comes, and stop there. Some dwell: they think only of the difficulties of their present situation, and stop there. Neither moves them. A third way, which she calls mental contrasting, sets the two side by side in a fixed order: first the wished-for future, enjoyed in imagination, then at once the reality that stands in its way.

The order matters. Picturing the obstacle first and the wish second, which she calls reverse contrasting, does not do the same work. The wish first gives the obstacle its meaning: it becomes the thing between me and what I want, and not merely a trouble.

What contrasting does

When the wish is within reach, mental contrasting makes a person commit: they gather energy, plan and act. When it is out of reach, it lets them see so, loosen their grip and turn their effort to something they can do. Both are gains. The method does not inflate every wish; it sorts the feasible from the fanciful and puts strength behind the first.

Beneath awareness it does two things. It ties the future and the obstacle together in the mind, so that meeting the obstacle calls up the wish; and it ties the obstacle to the action that overcomes it. A person who has contrasted well finds that when the hard moment comes, they remember what it is for.

Wish

WOOP has four steps, named by their first letters, and is best done in a quiet place in five minutes or so. The first is the wish. Choose something that matters to you, that is challenging and also feasible within a set time, a day, a week or a month, and state it in a few words: finish the first chapter, call my sister, run twice this week.

Outcome

The second is the outcome: the single best thing about having the wish fulfilled, and how it would feel. Name it, then close your eyes and imagine it as fully as you can, letting the mind run on it for a minute. This is the pleasant part of the exercise, and it is given room on purpose. It is the energy the rest will use.

Obstacle

The third is the obstacle, and the question here is precise: what is it in me that holds me back? Not the weather, the manager or the bank, but the inner thing: a habit, a fear, an excuse, a mood, a belief such as 'they will think I am stupid'. Find the main one, the one that has stopped you before, and imagine it fully too, the moment it arrives and how it feels.

Looking for the obstacle within is the heart of the method. Outer obstacles are real, but a plan can only command what the person does, and the inner obstacle is where a plan takes hold.

Plan

The fourth is the plan, made in a fixed form: if the obstacle, then the action. If I feel the urge to check my phone, then I will put it in the other room. If I start to think they will laugh at me, then I will say the first sentence anyway. Say it to yourself once or twice. The plan is a single sentence and names one act or one thought, ready for use.

Why the if-then form works

The if-then sentence is Peter Gollwitzer's implementation intention, and Oettingen joined it to contrasting because each does what the other cannot. A goal intention says what I mean to achieve. An implementation intention says when, where and how I will act, and hands the start of the act to a cue in the world.

Two things happen once such a plan is made. The cue becomes easy to notice: the situation named in the if-part stands out when it arrives. And the response comes almost of itself, without fresh deliberation, as a habit would. Gollwitzer calls this strategic automaticity: a deliberate choice, made once in advance, that then runs on its own.

Writing a good plan

A good plan is specific in both halves: a cue clear enough to recognise, and an act small enough to do at once. It names what to do rather than only what to avoid; 'then I will drink a glass of water' serves better than 'then I will not eat crisps', because a plan that only forbids keeps the forbidden thing in mind. It deals with one obstacle at a time. And it is written in the person's own words, because it has to come to mind unbidden at the moment it is needed.

Letting go well

Sometimes the honest look at the obstacle shows that the wish cannot be had in the time given, or not at the cost it would take. Oettingen counts the letting go that follows as one of the method's gifts, because energy held by an impossible wish is freed for a possible one. A reader who finds that a wish dissolves under contrasting has not failed at manifesting; they have learned what to want next.

Day by day

WOOP is meant to be repeated. Done each morning for the day ahead, or each evening for the next, it becomes a habit of meeting the future clearly. The obstacle often changes once the first has been met, and the plan changes with it. Over time a person learns their own obstacles by heart, and their if-then plans become a small store of tested answers.