A Scientific Method for Turning Your Dreams into Reality

Dear Friend,

A powerful brand? Financial independence? A fit body? What’s on your vision board?

Most of self-help literature tells us the way to turn these dreams into reality is with the power of positive thinking.

For instance, let’s say you want to lose weight, the advice is to visualize your dream body and imagine everything going oh-so-smoothly as you reach your goal weight.

Popular books such as The Power of Positive Thinking, and the Secret, have sold millions of copies on the basis of this very idea.

There is some merit to this: when you engage in positive thoughts it does help you build the motivation and the confidence you need to go after your goals, but it’s often not enough to simply visualize your goals a-la vision-board style.

What if I told you research shows that engaging in negative thinking could also increase your chances of success?

How could that be? Let me explain.

According to Gabriele Oettingen, a Professor of Psychology at New York University, in addition to getting clear about what it is that you want to achieve, and believing that it’s possible, what is also helpful is to think of all the potential obstacles or challenges that could get in your way.

In other words, yes have that beautiful vision-board, but also stress-test it against reality.

How do you do that? Using a proven process called W.O.O.P.

W is for Wish. What is it that you wish for? A dream body? A thriving business? Your next promotion?

O is for Outcome. What outcomes would you like to experience as a result of getting your wish. This gets to the heart of what is the deeper why behind your goal.

Do you want to lose weight so you then have more energy to play with your children? Do you want to step up as an influential leader to be able to guide and inspire others? Do you want a thriving business so you can enjoy financial independence?

The second O is for Obstacles. What are the obstacles that could get in your way? This is where you get real.

You are on a mission to eat healthy, but everyone is celebrating a colleague’s birthday and there is delicious chocolate cake being passed around. What would you do?

You want to step up as a leader but you don’t get the promotion you want. What then?

The final P is for Plan. This is what is most important; you don’t just stop at thinking about all the things that could go wrong. You also then make a plan for what you would do if and when those pesky obstacles and challenges come along.

You do this by creating “implementation intentions” – where for every obstacle you can imagine you come up with a corresponding “If…then…statement.”

For example, let’s say you want to be consistent with your healthy habits, your statements might be…

“If I am offered cake, then I will enjoy a few bites without any guilt, and get back to eating healthy.”
“If I start to lose motivation, then I will focus on making just one small change in my diet.”
“If I face judgment, then I will remind myself of why I am doing this in the first place.”

When you make these kinds of “pre-decisions” as Oettingen also calls them, it helps you build both the skill and the will power that you need to overcome any obstacle that might get in your way.

This, my friend, is how you turn your dreams into reality with a scientifically-proven method.

The key is to leverage both kinds of thinking – yes, think about what could go right. But, at the same time, also think about what could go wrong so that you are better prepared.