Why do we fail to achieve our goals? Why do we lose motivation? Psychologist Dr. Gabriele Oettingen has spent decades researching those two questions. She says there’s an easy trick to help you stay motivated and achieve your goals. We talk creating achievable goals, staying motivated, the dangers of positive thinking and W.O.O.P. Then, we countdown the Top 5 Toms.
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen: 01:38
Pointless: 26:14
Top 5 Toms:: 47:45
Interview with Dr. Gabriele Oettingen
Nick VinZant 0:11
Welcome to Profoundly Pointless. My name is Nick VinZant Coming up in this episode goals, failure, and Tom's
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 0:20
a when it comes to actually implementing these possibilities to fulfilling our wishes, then these positive fantasies and daydreams are a problem, you need to let them come up with the obstacle of reality that stands in the way. And we did so many studies show that this exercise helps people, set priorities, set preferences, and achieve.
Nick VinZant 0:54
I want to thank you so much for joining us. If you get a chance, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, we really appreciate it really helps us out. If you're a new listener, welcome to the show. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for all of your support. So our first guest is a psychologist who specifically studies goals and motivation, why we set goals, why we fail to achieve them, and how we can stay motivated. She's also developed a unique method to help people achieve their goals called whoop, wish, outcome, obstacle plan. This is Dr. Gabrielle Orton yen. I'll jump right into it. Why do I consistently fail at my goals? Actually,
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 1:45
there are many reasons. But one reason is that we tend to positively fantasize about the success of reaching the goal. And that lowers us into feeling already there. And then we don't do anything anymore.
Nick VinZant 2:10
So like if I want to lose weight, I think about like, man, all right, what am I going to look like when I lose 10 pounds. And then I've basically already achieved it in my mind. So my brain gives up?
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 2:20
Well, in our short sentence, that's what sometimes happens, and often happens, because in my brain, in my mind, I already achieved it. Why would
Nick VinZant 2:32
we do that, though? Why would we kind of defeat ourselves? I guess,
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 2:37
first of all, we have all learned that positive thinking is the way to be happy, no. And we saying okay, we just need to think positively and then we might actually be successful. And in a way that might be true. So positive fantasies and daydreams about the future. They're pleasant. So no wonder that our mood improves if we have these positive fantasies and daydreams about achieving our wishes. And also, his positive fantasies and daydreams are good because we can explore all the possibilities of the future. But when it comes to actually implementing these possibilities, to fulfilling our wishes, then these positive fantasies and daydreams are a problem. So we find for example, the more positively people enrolled in a weight reduction program, fantasize about the success in the program, the less pounds they shed, or take university graduates, the more positively they're fantasize about an easy transition into workplace. The fewer dollars they earn two years later, and the fewer job offers they had gotten. Take students, the more positively they think and fantasize about doing well in school, the worst grades. And even in interpersonal relationships. The more positively students fantasize about getting together with their crushy with a person to have a crush on, the less likely it is that they actually get into a romantic relationship. It's yeah, why is that? That's when we asked ourselves to when we got all this data. And what we found is that the people in the positive fantasy will have been induced these positive fantasies about the future that they actually felt already a con Pitch, tell ready, they're in their mind. The fantasies are so strong and vivid, that you already feel accomplished. And what happens then you relax. So the blood pressure goes down. And people report less energy for the wish fulfilled, and that then translates into actual less behavior, less effort and less success.
Nick VinZant 5:33
I feel like kind of exercise, maybe not it, at least in my mind, it's like the easiest one to kind of quantify, right? So let's say my dream is to lose weight, I work out four times a week, but then I start positively thinking about like, Oh, I'm gonna lose weight, then suddenly, oh, I am losing weight. In my mind. Now I'm working out three times a week. Now I'm working out two times a week. But can you still have those positive thoughts about it? And still continue to do what you were doing to get there in the first place? Right? Like, does the positive, this thinking positively in and of itself automatically kind of like crushed the dream so to speak? Or can you think positively about it, but continue to do exactly what you were doing, and then still move forward?
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 6:19
That's exactly what we asked ourselves to. We said, Why do we have these positive fantasies and daydreams may we only need to think negatively, everything's fine. But that's not solution, either. Because these positive sentences and daydreams, they are very important. Why are they're important? Because, as we showed, they are an expression of our needs. They are an expression of what we don't. So these wishes come in our mind as a sign that we don't have certainty. And that gives action the direction. So what do we do in order to show that these positive fantasies and daydreams are an expression of our needs. For example, we did a study where we invited people to come into the lab, and we asked them not to drink any liquids for hours before the experiment. And then we fed them a lot of salty pretzels, so they were really, really thirsty. One group were kept thirsty, the other group, were given a lot of really good fresh water so they could quench their thirst. And then we simply measured the positivity of their fantasies about the future. And surely, the people who were thirsty, had positive thoughts about going to the water fountain, drinking water, and drawing the water. The people in the control group, were not thirsty anymore. They didn't have these kinds of thoughts. They have thoughts, positive fantasies and daydreams about all sorts of things. And you can do the same study with psychological needs. So you deprive people of meaning, they suddenly positively fantasize about getting a more meaningful job. Or think about the pandemic. we deprive people of interpersonal relationships, they positively fantasize about getting together with family and friends. So these positive fantasies and daydreams are very important, they're an expression of our needs. And therefore, as I said before, that gets action that direction. So we cannot just sort of say, you know, relinquish them. But the problem is that they SAP our energy to actually realize this positive fantasies. Now, if they SAP our energy, then the question is, and that's where we are asked, what can you do? So that people with these positive fantasies, get enough energy to follow through to put in the effort and to actually get to wish fulfillment. And then we reasoned, what do we need to do? You need to give them a healthy dose of reality. Meaning, you need to let them come up with the obstacle of reality that stands in the way of fulfilling your wishes and enjoying the wishes outcome and In, by facing the obstacle, looking the obstacle in the eye, you will understand what you need to do in order to surmount. And that's important. You need to mentally contrast the positive desire teacher with the obstacle in myself that might stop me that might impede that I really go and fulfilling my wishes. And this mental contrasting is the way to get the energy to overcome that obstacle. And then you'll have an integrated solution that you can only find, if you really identify what is it, that it is in you in the way
Nick VinZant 11:00
is it is that an easier said, than done thing for a lot of people though.
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 11:05
So it takes mental effort. But it takes only five minutes of mental effort to actually switch from the positive fantasies to the obstacle of reality that is in my way. And that's when we kind of phrased for using it every day, as wish, identify a wish, that is dear to my heart. That is also feasible for me. But challenging outcome, imagine the outcome, imagine the outcomes you imagined the best in the future. And then instead of going ahead and indulging in the positive future, you switch gears. And you say, actually, what is it in me that hinders me of tackling that wish and experiencing that outcome? What is it in me? What stops me very often, you will suddenly discover, oh, this is what I could do to overcome whatever it is my anxiety, my resentment, my tiredness. And by imagining that obstacle and discovering the behavior that you can do in order to overcome that obstacle, you are now much better equipped to actually go for the wish and actually act. So this mental contrasting, or what we call oops, wish, outcome, obstacle. And then the plan I was talking about that exercise will actually help you to set priorities. So to go for some wishes, or to let go from others. So you will leave. And now you imagined ADA to overcome obstacles. And that's then the P. So the whole thing is a whoop, wish, outcome, obstacle plan.
Nick VinZant 13:35
I feel motivated. Where do people go in that method? Where do they generally kind of like, alright, this is where they usually fail. This is where they usually not realize that it's too big, not realize that it's not what they really want. What part of the WOOT method are usually see people kind of get bogged down in
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 14:00
what they are bogged down, is if they don't take these five minutes for themselves,
Nick VinZant 14:08
right? It's amazing when you actually stop and kind of think he realized that like, oh, maybe I'm really not doing this. Maybe I really don't want this thing that I thought that I wanted. When you kind of look at motivation and goal setting and goal achievement and people are there certain types of personalities or people or backgrounds or locations, genders, etc, etc, etc. That seemed to be better at it than others.
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen 14:36
Actually, we never found big differences and wherever you have demographic variables or you know, age doesn't make a difference. So, as long as you fill in your wish and not have other people tell you what your wish is you good?
I think what people sometimes mistakenly do. Parents tell the children what their wishes are. Or bosses, tell the employees what their wishes are. No, ask people listen. And then once people understand how they get in touch with their own wishes, they already have done the first step.
Nick VinZant 15:39
You know, it seems basic, in the sense that right, like control what you can control, be risk, be realistic and set achievable goals, but keep making them harder. But yet, it's so difficult. At the same time,
Unknown Speaker 15:53
yes, because we never really look at the obstacles. And because we have learned that look, negative thinking should go out of the window. And the interesting thing is, if you will look at war, and mental contrasting, if you only think positively. No behavior change, if you only think about the obstacles, no behavior change. If you think about the obstacles first and then about the positive future, no behavior change, it is actually the specific mental exercise with the imagery, because if you don't have the imagery, no. It is this specific exercise of understanding what is my wish, feasible, but challenging? Identifying the outcome and imagining the outcome, and then going for the interest. What is it in me? Because what are the obstacles in me? I can control my boss, I cannot. And we did so many studies show that this exercise helps people set priorities, set preferences, and achieve the wishes by overcoming the obstacles. But on the other side, also letting go from wishes, which just sort of take the energy?
Nick VinZant 17:32
What do you think of those kinds of like society seems to at least to me have shifted more into like, well, let's just think positive about everything. And that's how you get started.
Unknown Speaker 17:42
it saps the energy of actually going on that way. And actually, we find that these positive fantasies and daydreams for the moment. They're linked to lower depression for the moment. But on the long run, you getting more depressed? And why do you get more depressed, because you invested less effort, and then eventually you had less success. So it is dangerous. It is dangerous to be indulging in these positive fantasies and daydreams and just sort of getting disconnected. And then we think for other people, the positive thinking works, but for us, it doesn't. And that's not a good thing. Because then we attribute the failure to only us. And that's dangerous.
Nick VinZant 18:36
Are you ready for some harder slash listeners submitted questions? Sure. So this one just says, Why am I sometimes on the struggle bus and other times on a tear? And I think what they mean by that is like, why are there some days where man I'm just getting stuff done, left and right, knocking stuff out? And then other days, man, I can't get out of bed. You know, like I can, nothing seems to work. Why do we seem to go through phases, we're like, doing everything, doing nothing.
Unknown Speaker 19:08
Sometimes reality is less bumpy. Then, other times that lies in the nature of just randomness. Sometimes, our physiology, our context,
Unknown Speaker 19:25
our lives is influencing us into more energy. So we feel we have more energy, we get things done.
Unknown Speaker 19:42
And these things happen, very often ran. But we're certainly noticing when it's not getting good. We've noticed we tend to notice that more when things go really well. We think we often take it for granted. When things go bad. We often say, but what I would say to the people who sort of suffer from sometimes it doesn't go, well just do a walk for the day, say, what do I really want? Okay? Things didn't work out today. What do I want?
Nick VinZant 20:34
When when you look at kind of procrastination, right? Like, what's the, usually the reason why people are procrastinating about something?
Unknown Speaker 20:45
Procrastination is one of the most interesting phenomena it can be, because they actually get benefits out of it. It can be anxiety, it can be that there have some beliefs that procrastination is linked to being super good. When pressure builds up, it can be that people want to get into flow. Because once you have real high pressure, you don't think anymore. So there are many, many reasons. And what Brooke does, is it helps you to understand what you really want.
Nick VinZant 21:36
Yeah, that's what I would be worried about, right? That you come to some dangerous, not dangerous, but like, crushing self discovery, like, I've wasted my life or something like that?
Unknown Speaker 21:49
No, because it's not evaluated. It's when you understand what the obstacles in the way you accept the reality. But you will always have the possibility of acting within the reality. So it's not evaluated. And that's reason why it is not crashing.
Nick VinZant 22:15
So like when you kind of break down the statistics of how people approach things? Who does what, like what percentage of people hit the obstacle first? How does that all work?
Unknown Speaker 22:27
Right, most people just go on in damaging on the positive future. It's the most pleasant. Some people go on the obstacles only. And some people start with the obstacle and then go to the future. And all these don't do anything in terms of thing that change. Now, if we look at who is doing spontaneous mental contrast, it's only about between 10 and maybe 20 25%, depending on the study. And that's really interesting. Because that means that we need to do interventions, we need to learn it, we need to learn it as a skill if we want to benefit from setting priorities, and fulfilling our wishes. So it seems it's not the default, that we do mental contrasting the default is that people just sort of positively fantasize about the future. Now, when you give people a specific task, then mental contrasting goes a little higher, but not much. So we do it a little or more people do it when they get a very concrete task to solve an exam or math task or things like that. But still, the proportion of people who do mental contrast is
Nick VinZant 24:16
probably where we fail so much goal. Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker 24:20
That's true. That's exactly right. That's the reason.
Nick VinZant 24:25
That's pretty much all the questions that we have, is there anything that you think we missed or what's kind of coming up next for you?
Unknown Speaker 24:34
Practice, practice, practice. Do it every day at a certain point in time, then it will help you to really put the stress down. Because by setting these priorities, you're much less Loden you're much less kind of irritated and busy and play with it, and always think it's not evaluative. You shouldn't have to evaluate yourself. You look out in the world, what is my wish for the world. And that's fun, and enjoy whooping. Because it's not only the process, the imagery process, which is a discovery tour, but the consequences too. And you will see we're discovering new things.