It’s easy to create goals but what do we do when we encounter major obstacles? In PART 3 of our four-part exploration of Dr. Gabrielle Oetingen’s WOOP goal setting methodology we explore how to clearly prepare for the obstacles and challenges that will come our way on the journey.
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Transcript
Well, Hey everybody, Jonathan Doyle with you.
Speaker:Once again, welcome back to the daily podcast.
Speaker:Great to have the pleasure of your company.
Speaker:We are about to do.
Speaker:Day three of the four-part woop goal setting master class.
Speaker:Now, if you have been listening to the other two episodes so far, you're
Speaker:going to notice a big difference today.
Speaker:Of course, you will notice that the audio quality over the last few episodes.
Speaker:Probably about the last three or four has been somewhere south of a Bismal.
Speaker:We recorded them.
Speaker:Uh, in the studio using, uh, you know, we, we were recording video at the same time
Speaker:and we'd been splitting out the audio.
Speaker:And, uh, we had everything set up correctly and the mikes
Speaker:went working the right way.
Speaker:So you'll notice if you've been listening the last couple of days,
Speaker:the audio was, uh, was terrible.
Speaker:I do apologize.
Speaker:So we're back today.
Speaker:On my favorite microphone, regular listeners know I've got
Speaker:a thing for good microphones.
Speaker:I'm back on the shore.
Speaker:Running through a persona studio, 68 pre-amp everyone goes, we did not.
Speaker:Listening.
Speaker:To hear about your microphone choices, but the good news is hopefully
Speaker:this audio quality is heaps better.
Speaker:And it's a more full podcast version.
Speaker:Uh, I've made the decision that I'll keep putting all the content
Speaker:out on YouTube, but I'm going to do dedicated podcast versions now.
Speaker:It's an easier platform for me to work with.
Speaker:I just tend to go a bit deeper on the podcast version.
Speaker:So I hope today's going to be really useful for you.
Speaker:As we go on to day three of this masterclass, a housekeeping,
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Speaker:because there is a link there to get free access to my book, bridging the gap.
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Speaker:coaching, all sorts of other things.
Speaker:So please check out those show notes.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Let's do a quick review.
Speaker:We're on day three day one in this woop goal setting master class from Dr.
Speaker:Gabrielle engine.
Speaker:Who simply somebody that has thought deeply about goals, um, goal efficacy.
Speaker:And choosing systems, you know, goals sitting that actually
Speaker:help us and don't hinder us.
Speaker:So it's easy enough.
Speaker:Isn't it to identify when there are things in life we want to change, but my gosh, it
Speaker:can be hard sometimes to really execute.
Speaker:I'm always interested in that question.
Speaker:Why is it that sometimes we just don't execute.
Speaker:Quite the way we want to.
Speaker:So on day one of the master class, we started with the w of the whoop.
Speaker:Uh, acronym.
Speaker:The w standing of course, for wish for the identification of what we want to
Speaker:change, what we want to have in our lives, what we want to remove from our lives.
Speaker:But for most of us, it will be.
Speaker:Uh, an articulation of something that's important to us, something that we
Speaker:want to improve or add into our lives.
Speaker:The second day we looked at the outcome.
Speaker:So I've got the w is wish the first O is outcome, which is a crucial
Speaker:step because it helps us realize that it's rarely, the actual wish itself.
Speaker:That's truly what we desire.
Speaker:The wish is often a kind of.
Speaker:What's the word, I guess like an icon or a representation of a deeper value
Speaker:underneath that we're trying to pursue.
Speaker:So today or yesterday, we talked about outcome being clear on whether
Speaker:whatever that wish is, what is the underlying driving force behind it?
Speaker:When you achieve the X in your life, what will it give you when you experience more
Speaker:freedom, more peace, more connection, more intimacy, more joy, more excitement.
Speaker:Because all of those things, you know, For the people who
Speaker:go and buy a brand new Ferrari.
Speaker:Their wish wasn't to have a bunch of metal and electronic and mechanical componentry
Speaker:arranged in a particular format.
Speaker:You know, that's ultimately what a Ferrari is, isn't it?
Speaker:It's, it's, it's metal, it's electrical engineering, it's mechanical engineering.
Speaker:All these things put together in a particular form.
Speaker:Nobody has a wish that says that's what I want.
Speaker:I want, I want all these components arranged in a particular way.
Speaker:As they drive out of the showroom and they're heading down the freeway.
Speaker:There's a feeling attached to it all.
Speaker:Isn't there.
Speaker:All of a sudden there's a feeling I'm driving my brand new Ferrari.
Speaker:What is that?
Speaker:It's it might be a feeling of, um, of achievement or attainment or, or.
Speaker:You know, or blessing or, you know, joy who knows if it's going
Speaker:to be different for everybody.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:And this Ferrari is just one example.
Speaker:It could be anything.
Speaker:But always remember that behind what it is you're chasing is a much
Speaker:deeper motivation, some experience, some human emotion or psychological
Speaker:state that we're pursuing.
Speaker:So the second part which we did yesterday was really getting clear.
Speaker:On what those underlying drivers are for you, because you want to
Speaker:be really in touch with those.
Speaker:You want to honor them.
Speaker:You want to recognize them.
Speaker:You want to leverage them and use them as a kind of fuel.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So we are on to day three, which is the second.
Speaker:Oh.
Speaker:In the woop methodology WW.
Speaker:Oh, the second I was all the second.
Speaker:Oh, when the third day.
Speaker:Is obstacles.
Speaker:Obstacles obstacles obstacles.
Speaker:You look at the famous book from Ryan holiday, where he
Speaker:said the obstacle is the way.
Speaker:A couple of thoughts first.
Speaker:Well, Dr.
Speaker:And realized is that people are good.
Speaker:At articulating the wish people can even get good at articulating the
Speaker:underlying drivers and motivations.
Speaker:But she realized that in most goal setting methodologies and in the way
Speaker:that most people go about goal setting, The problem is that we pay very little
Speaker:attention to thinking about the potential obstacles that will come our way.
Speaker:So we get excited about goals.
Speaker:We get motivated, we get going and write them down.
Speaker:We.
Speaker:We start to put some effort into them.
Speaker:And then all of a sudden, a whole bunch of things start to go wrong
Speaker:and we get problems and setbacks and difficulties and delays.
Speaker:And at that point, it can be very hard for a lot of people to continue.
Speaker:A lot of people sort of give up and think, well, you know, this
Speaker:is too hard or often we don't even articulate that to ourselves.
Speaker:We don't even tell ourselves we're quitting.
Speaker:We just kind of slowly stopped trying.
Speaker:And then the goal drifts away and more time passes and
Speaker:life just goes on the same.
Speaker:So the third Owen, our masterclass this third day.
Speaker:Input is really around taking the time to recognize all of the potential
Speaker:obstacles that are going to come your way.
Speaker:When you begin to pursue something meaningful, you want to lose 10 kilos,
Speaker:then you can easily identify the wish you can easily identify the outcome.
Speaker:When I lose that 10 kilos, I'll feel happy.
Speaker:I'll feel beautiful.
Speaker:I'll feel handsome.
Speaker:I'll feel athletic, whatever it is, we can find the outcomes.
Speaker:But very little of, very, sort of very infrequently do we also
Speaker:go well, when I start this.
Speaker:You know, I'm going to be going to business lunches, or I'm going to be
Speaker:seeing my family every weekend and we always eat all this amazing stuff.
Speaker:So we don't recognize the potential obstacles they're going to come.
Speaker:And then we don't develop a response plan or response pattern of how
Speaker:we're actually going to deal with those things when they come up.
Speaker:So, what I want to do with you today is I want to ask you to
Speaker:think about what is your wish.
Speaker:Identify the driving outcomes underneath it.
Speaker:And then let's begin to think about what are all the potential obstacles
Speaker:that are going to come your way.
Speaker:And this sounds like work.
Speaker:Doesn't it.
Speaker:Then.
Speaker:Often in the journey of personal development and success, people
Speaker:just find it hard to do this work.
Speaker:It's actually easier to kind of go man, blah, blah.
Speaker:I can write the goal.
Speaker:I can write a couple outcomes, but you know, This stuff, you
Speaker:know, maybe things will happen.
Speaker:Maybe they won't, or I really need to do this.
Speaker:Well, the research makes it pretty clear that we do.
Speaker:That we do need to identify all the possible things that can go wrong and
Speaker:that are going to stretch us and test us when we pursue anything meaningful.
Speaker:So the first thing is to identify the obstacles.
Speaker:The other thing to realize always about obstacles.
Speaker:And this is what I think Ryan holiday was getting at in his book.
Speaker:The obstacle is the way.
Speaker:Is that.
Speaker:When obstacles come into our lives, we often resist them.
Speaker:Don't worry.
Speaker:I mean, we don't want them.
Speaker:There's something that we don't want in our life.
Speaker:We don't want obstacles.
Speaker:We don't want problems.
Speaker:But they come.
Speaker:And what I want to suggest to you as I have for many, many years is.
Speaker:The obstacles we face tend to force us to quit or to blame.
Speaker:Ought to be a victim.
Speaker:Or they force us to grow and to change.
Speaker:Uh, they force us to grow and to change.
Speaker:So one of the great things about personal development and goal setting
Speaker:is not just that we bring into our lives, things that are meaningful for
Speaker:us, but that it also forces us to grow.
Speaker:I mean goals by their very nature have to force us to grow because if
Speaker:they didn't, they wouldn't be goals.
Speaker:We would have everything we want right now, and we wouldn't really
Speaker:want to pursue anything else.
Speaker:But that's not a human experience is that we all.
Speaker:Experience things encounter things that we would love to have in our lives,
Speaker:but these obstacles force you to grow.
Speaker:Yes, but they're not pleasant.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:We don't want them, but they will force you to become
Speaker:creative, adaptive, resilient.
Speaker:To be tougher physically, mentally, spiritually.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:Please take some time today.
Speaker:If you haven't done it already, as we work through this process.
Speaker:Identify your wish.
Speaker:What is it that you want?
Speaker:Identify the outcome.
Speaker:What are the deeper experiences behind the wish that you're really trying to pursue?
Speaker:And then third, I want you to get that journal or go for walking
Speaker:at least think about, okay.
Speaker:If I'm going to try for X.
Speaker:What are all the reasonable obstacles they're going to come my way?
Speaker:How can I mitigate them?
Speaker:It's basically, what is it?
Speaker:Risk management, you know, like, um, uh, risk planning.
Speaker:What are we, there's all sorts of different fancy names and job titles.
Speaker:These days for organizations that have to.
Speaker:Do all this kind of scenario planning, risk planning, risk management.
Speaker:What if this happens?
Speaker:What if that happens?
Speaker:What is the stock market crashes?
Speaker:You know, locusts, eat our crops, who knows fill in the blank.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:There's always going to be obstacles, but it doesn't mean that we can't think about
Speaker:them in advance and be prepared for them.
Speaker:So my friend, what are the obstacles you are going to face?
Speaker:What are the specific obstacles that you are going to face?
Speaker:When you begin to pursue these meaningful wishes, dreams, and goals in your
Speaker:life, write them down, get, you know, write them down and say, okay, yep.
Speaker:I want to do this, but then this is likely to happen.
Speaker:If this happens, then I'm going to try do this.
Speaker:If this thing happens, then I'm going to make a decision to do this.
Speaker:And this is the kind of effort, energy.
Speaker:You know, focus that is required to really move yourself forward.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:That's all I wanted to cover today.
Speaker:So what have we got?
Speaker:Wish we've got outcomes.
Speaker:We've got obstacles tomorrow.
Speaker:We're going to talk about the P the final step in our four stage masterclass.
Speaker:This is not super complex.
Speaker:This is relatively straightforward stuff.
Speaker:We just got to be reminded of it.
Speaker:We've got to do it regularly.
Speaker:It's the old saying, you know, like, you know, we, we brush
Speaker:our teeth every day, right?
Speaker:We don't brush our teeth once and say, well, I'm glad that's done.
Speaker:I don't have to do it again.
Speaker:We don't have a shower once or a bath and say, well, I'll
Speaker:never have to do that again.
Speaker:There are some things we need to do every day.
Speaker:And with our goal setting, with our wish chasing with our dream
Speaker:building, we often need to do these kinds of steps over and over again.
Speaker:What do I want, why do I want it?
Speaker:What's going to stop me.
Speaker:Let's get clear on these things.
Speaker:Cause this kind of consciousness, this kind of awareness of the
Speaker:mechanisms that drive our success.
Speaker:Or a huge part of the puzzle that are gonna move us forward.
Speaker:So friends, that's it for me?
Speaker:Go and check out those show notes, please make sure you subscribe.
Speaker:Get free access to my book, bridging the gap, book me to speak, whatever else I
Speaker:can do to help move you guys forward.
Speaker:Go check out those show notes.
Speaker:My name's Jonathan Doyle tomorrow.
Speaker:We're going to do the final step and I'm going to be speaking with you tomorrow.
