In our last +1, we spent some more time with Caroline Adams Miller, mining some wisdom from her great book on the science of Creating Your Best Life.
Today I want to chat about one more idea from her great book.
We’re going to look at how to TRIPLE your success.
Let’s get straight to work.
Caroline tells us: “It is indisputable that attaching if-then statements to goals has a massive impact on follow-through, particularly with hard goals. Regardless of whether the goal was a health screening, dieting, or studying a certain number of hours for an independent study project, subjects who said that they would take a specific action at a certain time or in response to another cue usually enjoyed triple the success of their peers.”
So…
Want to TRIPLE your success?
Use “if-then” statements.
Scientists call these “implementation intentions.”
We talked about them FOREVER ago in +1 #157.
As I typed that out, I realized we forgot to celebrate the fact we crossed the +1 #1800 mark a few days ago. Ooops. So focused on the next +1 that I didn’t even notice.
Perfect.
And…
I LOVE (!) the fact +1 #1800 was on How to Heroically Change the World.
I repeat: YOU are the HERO and the GUIDE we’ve been waiting for.
If we’re going to change the world together, the Hero (that’s YOU!) needs to become the Guide to OTHER Heroes (your loved ones = your family, team, community, etc!) who then become Guides for MORE Heroes who then relentlessly continue the FORCE MULTIPLYING ripples of empowering their loved ones to activate their Heroic potential in the months and years and decades ahead so we can fulfill our mission of creating a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051.
With that extended aside, back to work.
A guy named Peter Gollwitzer came up with the whole idea of “implementation intentions.”
He’s married to my friend Gabriele Oettingen who wrote another one of my favorite positive psychology books called Rethinking Positive Thinking.
Implementation intentions are, essentially, the "P = Plan" in Gabriele’s brilliant WOOP model that has been scientifically shown to help us make our dreams a reality.
To recap WOOP (yet again!)…
We start with a Wish.
(What do you REALLY want?)
Then we think about the Outcome (or benefits).
(Why do you REALLY want it?)
Then we see the potential Obstacles.
(What’s INEVITABLY going to get in the way?)
THEN we create a Plan with “if-then” statements to dominate the obstacles.
(What, SPECIFICALLY, will you do when you face those INEVITABLE obstacles?)
That’s Today’s +1.
Want to TRIPLE your level of success?
Use Implementation Intentions.
TODAY.
P.S. We have an entire class called “Algorithms 101” and we spend a TON (!!!) of time in our 300-day Heroic Coach certification program on helping you master the process of writing these if-then statement-algorithms to help you change your life and... TRIPLE your success.
Learn more and join our next cohort at: http://heroic.us/coach
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