During the Christmas holiday break of our ESMM class, our teacher introduced a new concept to help us with our SMART goals. The concept is called WOOP (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan). It’s a mental strategy that you can use to find and fulfill your wishes, set preferences and change your habits. It’s a concept that will more likely help you achieve your goal, big or small.
Here’s what you need to do:
WISH: Think about what you want to create or achieve. Really visualize it for a moment. Maybe put it into a few words.
OUTCOME: What are the biggest benefits you could experience as a result of achieving this wish? Again, take a moment to visualize it.
OBSTACLE: What obstacles, internal and external, may keep you from achieving your goal? Identify as many as possible, but really think about your situation and what is most likely.
PLAN: Create concrete plans to overcome or get around your obstacles. You can have a plan for each obstacle or multiple for each. Be specific. Basic format is like an IF-Then statement or a When statement.
WOOP is helpful for creating new habits or sustaining habits by attaching them to current habits. Let’s say you want to drink 2 liters of water in a day. You can do something like, “after I brush my teeth in the morning, I will drink a glass of water”. That’s just something to start with or build it up. Since you brush your teeth daily, you can attach drinking water to it as a start to reach your 2 liters of water a day goal.
It doesn’t have to be too complicated. For every goal you’ve achieve, celebrate! If you want to learn more about this concept, visit http://woopmylife.org
Claudine on the Go 