How to REALLY Achieve Your Goals in 2022

So in 2021, as my New Year's resolution, I set  my mind on learning how to play the guitar.  

It's been a dream of mine to be able to play  an instrument for as long as I can remember.  

So I bought one, I downloaded a popular guitar  learning app and I even learned a couple  

of songs with YouTube tutorials. The first  few weeks were really exciting. I practiced  

every day and even played some simple songs. But  as you can probably guess, as the weeks went by  

my motivation waned as I found myself swamped  with work and life responsibilities. I wasn't  

practicing every day anymore and I couldn't see  the fast progress that I had at the beginning.  

Even though I had it clear to myself that  my goal was to learn to play the guitar,  

I didn't know why, as soon as that  initial excitement disappeared,  

my objective seemed so far away. Without  realizing it, I had set my goal all wrong.

So, happy New Year's. This time of year most of us  are thinking about all the things that we want to  

achieve. My guest today is psychology professor  Gabriele Oettingen. She has more than 20 years  

researching the science of motivation and she'll  walk us through the strategy she created called  

WOOP and why it is one of the most effective  empirical methods to actually achieve your goals  

and desires. We want to help you to go beyond the  classroom, so every week here on RealLife English  

we guide you on your learning journey with  lessons that take you from feeling like a  

lost and insecure English learner to being  a confident and natural English speaker.  

Does that sound like what you want for your  English? Then join our community by hitting  

that subscribe button and the bell down  below. So, Gabriele, why is it that simply  

imagining what you want to accomplish or even  creating a plan is not always the best option?

That prior it helps you to avoid so much  disappointment down the line because  

I think... that tends to be the biggest... the  biggest letdown, right? It is just that you...  

you really think that this year is the year that  you're going to get in shape, or that you're going  

to learn French, or that you're going to become a  better cook or something like that. But you're not  

uh... maybe so realistic about the other demands  you have in life, or the other priorities, so it  

really helps you to prioritize to see "is this  something that right now I can fit in with other  

things that are really important to me or do I  need to leave it for when I have a bit more time?"

So, now that you've seen just how  powerful WOOP can be, you may be wondering  

"how do I do it?" Well, before we  dive into that, I want you to take  

a moment to think about what your next  English language learning goals would be.

Take notes and keep them near, we'll come  back to that at the end of the video.  

So in the beginning, Gabriele mentioned that  the strategy she created WOOP stands for wish,  

outcome, obstacle and plan. Let's  see how each of these parts work.

So it's important to understand that really  concretely what is it that's missing from you, so  

it's interesting. I used to do an exercise with  some of my students where... because in the  

same thing you'll hear from a lot of learners  uh..People learning English, they say "I want  

to be able to speak English fluently." Because  that's kind of something that they've been told  

their whole life is "you need to speak English  fluently." And so that tends to be the wish  

that most people have, but when you dig deeper,  it's generally because of something, you know,  

it might be because they want to be able to get  a better job, they might want to go live in the  

United States or the UK or something like that,  they might just want to be able to travel and,  

you know, be able to interact with people without  having uh... Cultural barriers, without having  

language barriers um-- and so I used to do an  exercise where I would have them ask themselves  

"why" the question "why" at least five times.  So really digging deeper into "okay you want to  

be fluent in English, but let's get into what's  the very specific reason" and people would get  

to all sorts of different things, might be...  I had one student who, you know, it is because  

he wants to get a better job, but it's because  he wants to provide a better life for his kids.  

We had another student that wanted to be able to  connect with other people and want to have friends  

from all over the world, not just be limited  to their local small town that they lived in.  

So it's kind of interesting when you do that and  you might see that what you want is not actually  

what you really want deep down. One of the the  things that's really interesting there too, I  

think, is that oftentimes maybe you think you want  a Ferrari or something like that. Which would be  

for a lot of people very difficult to obtain. It's  very expensive uh... but if you do that digger,  

that deeper digging, then you might find out  that actually you need something simpler,  

it doesn't need to be something, you know, that  grandiose to be able to fill that deeper need.

One of the really fascinating things there too,  is that obstacle it doesn't necessarily need to  

be something tangible like that uh... we talked  earlier about diet plans, for example, that you're  

going to see a piece of cake in your refrigerator  and want to eat it, doesn't need to be just saying  

that's actually like tangible, but it can also  be something that is deeper inside of you,  

that could be emotional reaction to something,  that you can actually use this to in a sense  

reprogram how you might react to something, or  the emotion that you might feel in that moment.

I truly hope that you benefited from today's  lesson, I can't wait to read all of your upcoming  

plans. Take a moment to WOOP them and share  them in the comments down below. Here's mine: 

Now you can use the same model to write yours. Now don't just watch this video and do nothing,  

I highly urge you to take just  five to ten minutes and do it now.  

If you need extra help Gabriele has all sorts of  free resources like an app and her website with  

tutorials and downloads. I've linked both  down in the description below. After that,  

why don't you take a look at this lesson  Andrea made where she shares her favorite  

free resources to learn English, I'm sure it  can help you with your plans for 2022. Aww yeah!