Upsize Your Life 101: Finding Your Purpose

Why are you here and what do you really want?

By Alexander Loyd, PhD, ND

the author of Beyond Willpower

Do you remember the story of Aladdin and his magic lamp? This was one of my favorite stories as a child; I don't know how many times I imagined, while walking around in the backyard, what I would choose with my three wishes, and then what might happen as a result.

Close your eyes and imagine that Aladdin's genie is standing right in front of you, right now. There's no one else around; it's just you and the genie. Here's what he tells you: "I'm going to give you one wish. You can wish for anything you want, with only two limitations: You can't wish for more wishes, and you can't receive a wish that will take away someone else's free will. But wish for basically anything else, and you will get it. If you wish for 10 million dollars—done! An 'incurable' health issue healed—you got it! A big achievement goal accomplished—victory! You get the idea. No one will ever know how you got it; they will think it just happened naturally through the course of life's circumstances. Also, you can never have another wish fulfilled in your lifetime, and if you don't tell me your wish in 10 seconds, you lose it."

Okay, this is it; the moment of truth. Treat this as if it were really happening to you right now. No filtering; you've got 10 seconds. Close your eyes—go.

______________________________

What did you tell the genie your wish was? Write it down.

Guess what? I tricked you. This is the only way I've been able to figure out how to help you identify what you really want most in your life. You see, your answer above is actually the number one goal of your life right now. But if I'd asked it that way, chances are you would have said something different.

So why do I want to know the number one goal of your life? Because it's why you do almost everything that you do. It's why you have the thoughts that you have. It's what you really believe in the most, no matter what you might say. And it betrays your underlying programming. Everything you do, everything you've ever done and everything you will ever do is because of a goal you've set at some point in your life, even if you've long forgotten what it was. You don't get up in the morning unless, at some point, you have that as a goal, consciously or unconsciously. The same is true for brushing your teeth, getting dressed, hailing a cab, getting married, getting divorced, having children, using the restroom—you get the idea. Identifying the number one goal in your life is the first step to making any real change.

Here are the next two important questions:

If you got what you most wanted in question 1, what would that do for you and what would it change in your life?

If you got the things that were your answers to both questions 1 and 2, how would you feel?

Your answer to question 3 is actually the right answer to the original question, "What do you want right now more than anything else?" That's what you really want more than anything, and it is always an inward state; it is never an external material circumstance. This internal state is what we're going to call your ultimate success goal, because that's exactly what it is. But if this inward state is really your ultimate success goal, then why didn't you naturally answer that way to begin with?

Here's why: Almost everyone answers question 1 with an external circumstance because they believe that circumstance will purchase for them the inward state of how they answered question 3. Let me give you an example. A few months ago, I was doing a live event in Los Angeles. I was taking the audience through this exercise to help people find their ultimate goal. A lady volunteered to come up on stage and share her answers. She had had a rough few years, like so many have in the recent economy. Her answer to question 1 was "a million dollars." When she said it, the look in her eyes was the same as if she were talking about the love of her life, her favorite food or a decadent chocolate dessert. Her answer to question 2 was what you would probably expect: "I could pay off my bills, have a little breathing room, go on a much-needed vacation and have less pressure on my life." Her answer to question 3 was "peace." She thought that in order to have peace, she had to have money. In her situation, she thought money would literally purchase peace for her.

I explained how all this works, and then asked her: "Is it possible that what you 'really' want, more than anything, is peace, but you think that money is the only way to get that peace for you internally?" Her jaw dropped, she covered her face and she started weeping right there on the stage in front of many people—gasping-for-air weeping.

So many of us pursue some end result—whether it's a career, a possession, an achievement or a relationship—because we think that this external circumstance will purchase the internal state we really want most in our lives. In fact, we probably believe that achieving the external circumstance is the only way we can have the inward states of love, joy and peace. But this is never true. In fact, it's one of the greatest lies on the planet.

Source: Oprah.com

Using WOOP to reach your goals

Stop Being So Positive

• Gabriele Oettingen
• October 27, 2014

• Harvard Business Review

We’ve all heard a great deal about the power of positive thinking. Organizations encourage it among their employees in an effort to boost performance and engagement, and it’s a key tenet of “managing yourself” well; affirmative messages about perseverance, resilience, and vision adorn many an office wall. In the wake of the Great Recession, some businesses even hired happiness coaches to get their workers looking on the bright side. And an optimistic attitude is expected of leaders; politicians and corporate executives should always have that “think it-do it” spirit on display.

There’s just one problem, however. Research my colleagues and I have performed over the past two decades suggests that positive thinking doesn’t actually help us as much as we suppose. In fact, examining the effects of positive visions of the future on people pursuing various kinds of wishes — from health-related, such as losing weight, quitting smoking, or recovering quickly from surgery, to the improvement of professional or academic performance (for example, mid-level managers wishing to reduce job-related stress, graduate students looking for a job, or school children seeking to get good grades) — we’ve consistently found that people who positively fantasize make either the same or less progress in achieving attainable wishes than those who don’t.

This makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Dreaming about a successful outcome in the future is pleasurable, leaving you with a nice, warm feeling of satisfaction. But in a workplace setting, that’s counterproductive. You’re less motivated to buck up and make the strong, persistent effort that is usually required to realize challenging but feasible wishes. In some of our studies, we found that positive thinking produced measurably lower systolic blood pressure — a key measure of how energized someone is. In others, positive thinkers were as likely as participants in a control group to take easy steps toward a goal, but significantly less likely to take more cumbersome and difficult steps, such as donating meaningful amounts of their time or money.

“Okay,” you might say, “Forget positive thinking. I’m going to dwell on all the daunting challenges I face in my job.” But, unfortunately, dwelling on reality doesn’t help much either.

What does help is mental contrasting, an exercise that brings together our positive fantasy about the future with a visualization of the obstacle standing in the way. Even more beneficial is adding if-then planning that allows you to address the obstacle when it arises.

In our research, we’ve developed a mental contrasting tool called WOOP — Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. Here’s how it works: Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, switch off your devices, and close your eyes. Name a wish that is attainable or realistic for you — say, landing a new client. Then imagine for a few minutes what would happen if that wish came true, letting the images flow freely through your mind. Then change things up. Identify the main obstacle inside you that stands in the way, and imagine it for a few minutes. Now on to your plan: If faced with obstacle X, then you will take effective action Y in response.

WOOP is simple, easy, and inexpensive — so much so that you might not think it would work. After all, behavior change usually requires expensive  coaching or training programs, right? Our results suggest not. In a study of health care providers, we found that those who used WOOP were significantly more engaged with their work and less stressed than members of a control group. In studies of college students enrolled in a vocational business program, we found that it helped them manage their time better. And we’ve also used WOOP to help school children study more for the PSAT, do more homework, and get better grades.

Why does it work? Because the process either helps people understand their wishes are attainable, giving them energy and direction, heightening their engagement and prompting them to act; or it helps them realize their wishes are unrealistic, leading them to disengage  and freeing them up to pursue other, more promising endeavors.

Although positive thinking feels good in the moment,  it often bears a false promise. Only when it’s paired with a clear view of potential obstacles will it consistently produce desirable results.