Rethink Your Future

In her interactive installation on the wall of the Spiral Lobby, Candy Chang invites you to express your hopes and anxieties here and now. This Monument for the Anxious and Hopeful becomes a barometer of the community’s high and low pressures. But once you have expressed your state of mind, what is next? With the help of WOOP (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan), a methodology created by NYU professor of psychology Gabriele Oettingen, there is a way to make those aspirations for the future a reality, and to overcome the obstacles that you perceive to lie in your path. You will be asked to think through the following four points:

What is your wish?

What is your most favorable outcome?

What are your obstacles?

Make a plan.

The WOOP strategy has been scientifically shown to help us achieve the goals we set for ourselves, rather than giving in to wishful thinking. For two Saturdays during the eleventh season of Brainwave, come discover how to use this strategy to rethink your future and achieve more. Both sessions will be held in the galleries and are guided by Dr. Oettingen. Remember: The Future Is Fluid.

Brainwave is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

About the Speaker

Gabriele Oettingen is a Professor of Psychology at New York University. She is the author of more than a 150 articles and book chapters on thinking about the future and the control of cognition, emotion, and behavior. She received her Ph.D. from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Seewiesen, Germany. Her major contribution to the field is research on the perils of positive thinking and on Mental Contrasting, a self-regulation technique that is effective for mastering one’s everyday life and long-term development.

Her first trade book, RETHINKING POSITIVE THINKING: Inside the New Science of Motivation, was published by Current, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in October 2014 (for more information, see www.woopmylife.org).