How to WOOP your new goals in 2026 - Limerick financial planner

It’s that time of the year again when we start creating or at least looking at what goals we’d like to achieve in the year or years ahead, so I thought I’d put some ideas in front of you which might help you with this process.
And the best advice I’ve heard or read when it comes to setting goals were two things and they were (a) to begin with the end in mind and (b) make your goals meaningful.
I’ll return to these in a moment but before I do, let me tell you about some of the goals people have been telling me they are setting this year and they include:
-Saving for a deposit to buy a home
-Investing more
-Paying off debt
-Saving for kids future education
-Saving for early retirement
-Paying off credit card debt
-Saving to bring their family on a big holiday
-Saving to carry out renovations on their property without having to take on debt
And of course, setting goals are very personal and there are many other areas I’ve haven’t listed that people will look to achieve and that’s fine, but I think regardless of whatever the goal is, big or small, there are some things we have to bear in mind and follow if we want to make them come true.
Which is why I want to first tell you about a science-based goal-setting method, called WOOP, which has proven to be very successful to those who use it.

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And the W in WOOP stands for Wish, the two O’s stand for Outcome and Obstacle and the P is for Plan.
The idea behind WOOP is that you first vividly imagine what goal it is you’d like to achieve and that is where you use the headings of wish and outcome.
The obstacles are the things that stand in your way of achieving your goal.
And the plan is how you are going to overcome those obstacles.
The idea behind WOOP is that rather than just daydreaming about achieving a particular goal and doing nothing about it, you need to follow through and take action, but you’ve got to recognise that there will be obstacles in your way and when they appear you’ve got to have a plan in place to overcome them. This is just you being realistic about what you are going to encounter.
And let’s use becoming mortgage free as a goal someone has and let’s apply WOOP to making this dream come true.
They want to be mortgage free because the outcome it creates could be that they can retire early or they will save thousands in interest payments that would otherwise go to a bank or they can earn and work less because they don’t have that mortgage payment anymore or they’ll feel less stressed because if anything happened them where they couldn’t’ ever work again or for a period of time they won’t have to worry about a mortgage payment or worry that their house can ever be repossessed by a bank.
There could be lots of deliberate outcomes people want to create by becoming mortgage free.
The obstacle to doing this comes at a cost because paying your mortgage off, five or 10 or 15 years early doesn’t happen magically. You have to either make monthly or annual overpayments and this is something you will have to stick with because you can’t dip in and out of doing this, you have to make a commitment to do it every month or year.
Lets’ say you have a mortgage of €400,000 over 25 years at a rate of 4% and you want to reduce the term by five years.
To make this happen you either need to make a monthly overpayment of €315 or an annual overpayment €4,000.
The obstacle could be that you don’t think you have a surplus of €315 that you can use each month or perhaps an annual bonus at work mightn’t be €4,000 and even if it was you may not trust yourself to lodge it against your mortgage.
The plan to overcome these obstacles could be to look at your monthly budget and try and find that extra €315. But you may not have or even follow a monthly budget, but regardless, you’ve now got to look at your spending and see are there areas where you could spend or pay less.
And you’ve got to stick to the plan because it’s easy to fall back into your old habits and start spending the €315 on something you can use and get benefit from now, not on something you won’t see the fruits of for 20 years.
And that’s the obstacle that will come your way and you know it will, but once you know what overcoming that obstacle will create i.e. a mortgage of 20 years not 25, interest savings of €51,900, being able to earn c. €50,000 less because that’s what this mortgage is costing you before tax each year etc. it might make overcoming that obstacle easier.
And the plan to overcome it could be just as easy as setting up a standing order every month and sending that €315 directly to your bank. You’re not going to leave it up to yourself to send the money to your bank each month, it’s going to happen automatically.

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I like this WOOP method because you are motivated by your goal which creates positive action i.e. you have a big meaningful reason why you are doing this. And putting this plan in place will make you feel good as well. It’s been said that people without goals of any sort can stagnate, whereas people who have and no matter how big or small their goal is, have something to aim for and they are better for it.
Okay, let me give you some other things to consider and have in the back of your mind when considering what financial goals or any goals for that matter that you’d like to achieve.
If you want to climb Mount Everest, you’ve first got to reach the South Base Camp, so have shorter term goals to aim towards that will ultimately bring you to your main goal.
So, whatever your big goal is, work backwards from it and establish short or medium-term objectives that you have to reach along the way.
And then there are things we don’t want to happen or things we want to avoid and these are often referred to as anti-goals.
So, if your goal is to run a marathon, the anti-goal is the time you’ll have to spend away from your family training. You want to run the marathon, but you don’t want to spend three or four hours training every other day.
Or your pursuit of advancement in your organisation would mean having to spend a lot of time travelling and you don’t want to be away from your family 15 days every month only to see your kids grow horizontally in their beds or you don’t want your health to suffer from the pressure of a new job and all that travel.
And that’s not to put you off having that big goal of, for example you wanting to become CEO of your company, that’s great, you just have to ask yourself questions like, what outcomes could happen from the pursuit of this goal and what happens if I achieve them and am I okay with them happening?
I remember reading about a study carried out about goals although I can’t recall the exact details or name of it, but I do remember it saying that if people had a visual reminder of what they were aiming towards, they were twice as likely to achieve their end goal than those who didn’t.
So, having that visual of a house, a car, sitting on a beach, your child wearing a cap and gown etc. helps keep your eye on the prize and will keep you motivated to keep going when it might be easier to stop.
And linking, for example saving a certain amount each month to that visual goal provides you with the motivation and drive to put a plan into action and as important to doing this is putting a number against each goal i.e. how much do I need to save each week or month in order to reach my goal in the time I’m setting myself.
Because most money goals come at a cost and it’s easy to figure out how much that cost is. So, if you want to save for let’s say a deposit on a house and you need €30,000 and you want to be ready in three years’ and you are starting from a zero balance, then you need to save €833 each month.
And if you are thinking about setting some money goals this year, I’d say, visualise that goal and imagine what it would be like if you reached it, then work backwards and break it down into manageable chunks and then crunch the numbers so you have a clear understanding of whether it’s possible or not. That €833 might be out of your reach but €750 mightn’t be and that just means it will take a year longer than you had hoped for but that’s okay because you are being realistic and honest with yourself.
And crunching the numbers like this might create another goal and that is to earn more because if you do, you’ll be able to save more. Now that one big goal has created another one and will be the driving force not just to put yourself in a position to buy a house but get you thinking about how you can increase your earning potential, something you may not have seriously thought about before. Now you have a reason other than just earning money.
And maybe for some people this year their goal isn’t to make more or spend more or have more, maybe it’s to slow down and spend more time with their family, walk more, laugh more, appreciate the small ordinary things in their life rather than the big superficial possession things that others crave and I think that’s a really great goal to have as well.
I’ll leave you with this.
Determination and action and consistency are the most important attributes you need for achieving your goals and you don’t need anything other than these characteristics or think you need to be special because you don’t. The most ordinary of people can achieve the most extraordinary things and don’t forget that.

Liam Croke is MD of Harmonics Financial Ltd, based in Plassey. He can be contacted at liam@harmonics.ie