This article
nicely summaries the findings of Gabriele Oettingen, professor of psychology at
New York University and the University of Hamburg, in her book Rethinking
Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. Having read many
“positive thinking” books over the years I know that most of these books tell us
that we need to vividly visualize the goals that we want to achieve in order to
attain them. However Oettingen’s research found that doing these visualizations
can actually hamper our motivation!
“Positive thinking can make us feel
better in the short term, but over the long term it saps our motivation,
preventing us from achieving our wishes and goals, and leaving us feeling
frustrated, stymied and stuck.”
In other words if we visualize our goals our mind doesn’t
know the difference between the imagined outcome and the actual results! We end
up having less motivation not more.
Does this mean Oettingen wants us to abandon positive
thinking and become pessimists? No. Her research has shown we achieve more if
we try to anticipate obstacles that stymie us and develop plans to deal with
them using if-then statements. For instance, we might want to exercise first
thing in the morning but we know that we repeatedly hit the snooze button. To
deal with this we create the following implementation intention: “If I feel
like hitting the snooze button, then I will immediately jump out of bed.”
This sounds too good to be true but studies have shown that
this process works. In Oettingen’s studies 80% of those who applied the WOOP
approach achieved their goals while only 30% of the control groups did.
Oettingen calls her approach WOOP, Wish, Outcome, Obstacle,
Plan. You define what you wish to accomplish, determine the outcome, identify
the likely obstacles then design a plan to overcome those obstacles.
Here are some links for additional information on this.
