WOOP is an acronym for Wish-Outcome-Obstacle-Plan.  This sequence is based on the very impressive body of research on how to boost motivation, goal setting & goal achievement assembled over many years by professors Gabrielle Oettingen & Peter Gollwitzer.

Gabrielle Oettingen has recently published her new book "Rethinking positive thinking: inside the new science of motivation".  It's already available in hardback & Kindle, and is due out in paperback later this year.

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was but vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible."    T. E. Lawrence

"Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men."                                                                                                            Confucius

"When I get to heaven, they will not ask me 'Why were you not Moses?'  Instead they will ask 'Why were you not Susya?  Why did you not become what only you could become?'"  Susya, a Hasidic rabbi.

Earlier this year I used Google Analytics to identify the most read pages on this website and I wrote the post "Update on website traffic: the ten most popular blog posts". I then wondered - "What are my own personal favourites?" and I quickly realised that the posts that I've written that have had the most impact on me and my practice as a therapist are nearly always made up of sequences of blog posts rather than just individual items. I said that glancing back over the last year or so, themes that stood out included mindfulness, therapist feedback, self-control, conflict, embodied cognition and positive psychology. Going further back still there are the posts about interpersonal groupwork, relationships, therapeutic writing, walking in nature, compassion, exercise, healthy lifestyle, attachment and goal setting.

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work"   Thomas Edison

In yesterday's post - "Power objects, power postures, power clothes, power prayers: all ways to facilitate change (1st post)" - I introduced recent research highlighting how we can use physical objects and the way we position our bodies to significantly improve our chances of following through on new ways of thinking, feeling & behaving.  In today's post I extend this discussion of ways to help ourselves change to what we wear and what we say to ourselves.

"I will love you like a wind,
like a man stitching a skin
together like a winter coat.

Like a man sitting in meditation
and repairing a cracking spirit.
Like a man in love with a leaf,
a cloud, a flame, a temple.

Like a man on fire
running in the wilderness
shouting for sheer joy."

From the poem "A blessing (the way)" in the book "A shaman's songbook" by Norman Moser 

(This post on purpose in life: clarifying future goals & the challenges we will face in achieving them, and yesterday's on purpose in life: reconnecting to meaning & values, have been combined into a handout that is downloadable both as a Word doc and as a PDF file)

"Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity,
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible."  
T. E. Lawrence