Andy Dufresne Mentality

“Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free.”

This is the tagline for one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, which is based on the the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. I’ve seen this movie several times, and it still resonates with a powerful message of hope amid extreme adversity.

The story’s protagonist, Andy Dufresne, is wrongly accused of a double murder and sent to serve a double life sentence in Shawshank State Penitentiary, a rough prison with a corrupt warden. The fate of these prisoners appeared bleak, but Andy always held on to hope. This hope built in him a grit and resilience that seemed to grow stronger and stronger over the years. So in spite of his incarceration, he most definitely had the mindset of a free man.

Spoiler Alert

I’m going to talk about the ending so, if you’ve not seen the movie, stop reading right now and go watch it. I’ll see you in 142 minutes. Hey, welcome back. That was a pretty amazing movie, right?! So Andy held on to hope. How? By making small progress every day toward a goal. His goal was to get out. The obstacle was the 4-foot concrete wall. His plan was to use a small rock hammer to slowly tunnel his way out. So instead of giving up on escape or just dreaming of getting out, he got to work. After the escape, Andy’s friend, Ellis “Red” Redding, was reflecting on what had happened.

In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty.

Cool Story, Big WOOP

I know it’s just a story, but what a great message Stephen King is sending. Instead of just dreaming about something, it’s better to make a plan and start doing something. In her book, Rethinking Positive Thinking, psychologist and researcher Gabriele Oettingen talks about a strategy for achieving goals called WOOP. This stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. The idea is that we imagine our big dream or wish, and we think about what the outcome would actually looks like. But the most important step comes next. We then have to imagine the obstacles that will interfere with us achieving our goals. Knowing the obstacles helps us develop a plan to address those obstacles. This is also called “mental contrasting.” We can think of this as simply rubbing our goals up against reality. Imagine the goals AND the obstacles. Andy’s dream was freedom and the reality was a 4-foot concrete wall. The plan was to build a tunnel one pocketful of concrete at a time. That’s hope. That’s persistence. And that’s a cool story. So live today with an Andy Dufresne mentality. And before you know it, you’ll be restoring an old boat in Mexico with Red.

Make a little progress and enjoy the day!