A psychologist told me how she successfully navigated her way through a dilemma we've all faced

Carl Court / Getty In May, when I talked to psychologist Gabriele Oettingen at Psychology Congress, she recently had a common dilemma.

At the conference she is keen to discuss her research and participate in lectures by other psychologists. At the same time, she still has plenty of manuscripts to write and comment. She can not concentrate on meetings and papers. She can not do two things at a time

"WOOP" is a strategy developed by Professor Ettingen of New York University and Hamburg University. It stands for wish, result, disability, plan. (A less attractive term is a "psychological contrast".)

When you are in the WOOP, you will consider your final goal, best results, personal barriers to obstacles, and plans to bypass these barriers.

Oettingen opened the WOOP to the public in 2014 and published her book "Rethinking Positive Thinking". She recently developed an application that allows users to achieve health-related, professional and interpersonal goals.

In this book, her research suggests that there is a serious limit to positive thinking - in fact it often hinders our success. Whether you want to lose weight, want to date, or want to take an exam, Oettingen can not get you anywhere fantasy, but WOOP can

For me, the most interesting part of WOOP is that it is usually asked to depart from a specific goal if it conflicts with another goal or if it seems not feasible. In the case of Ettingen, she chose to temporarily abandon the goal of processing these documents. Instead I spent time and effort on the conference.

You really want to get rid of this contradictory idea You really want to know that you can do the same thing and you can do one thing later. But that does not mean you are procrastinating. This means that you can not agree that you can do both because you can not do it.

In other words, in other words, life is always chosen between meaningful pursuit and another pursuit. You will almost never do it all

Regarding Ettingen, she told herself: "Well, this is something that I can enjoy now with my conscience - come here and make the most of the meeting and then I As soon as I return home I do something different.

In this way, Oettingen can necessarily work without interfering in a quiet place, instead of trying to read and write between meetings necessarily during the meeting. Most of us know from experience that what it is and ultimately how it is below the goal. In other words, I hate meeting and it is not productive.

Notwithstanding this process, Mr. Ettingen says, "I can separate wheat from rice husks, and I can find what I can do and what I really want to achieve.

If you are in my twenties like myself, work through invoices, keep on asking about marriage and try to explain to always in an unreadable aspect "This is my choice" And "yes", I will send you this article, even if there are no combinations in my plot, what to do and this. Do not get me wrong, I am very satisfied with my life and that life. Many of our group age group women (talking about unmarried, independent wanderers) have their examples when we suddenly notice where our idea is. In the most innocuous activities, these will go in and out at the most random time. But they make you feel the world is annoying you, so you can fully see that you are beginning to question your reasons. Personally, when I do this, I sometimes hear a ridiculous laugh. I am bothering you a few hours later.

A few months ago, when we caught up again, I asked her what happened, and told her she felt sad, angry, and painful about her way of marrying and how to take away her son. But she is also very excited, nervous, full of enthusiasm, full of hope for the future. She enumerates emotions after emotion. There is no secret that allows her to heal from his wounds, and there is no way she can achieve immediate success in something. However, her emotions brought freedom and made the world and her life feel more energetic and energetic than ever.