Why positive thinking is not enough
On Dec. 23, I made a year-end resolution. For the remaining nine days of the year, I won’t be touching a single drop of alcohol. When friends commented that this quest was quite unrealistic given all the upcoming parties, I reasoned that I don’t like alcohol anyway— especially the debilitating headache that I always get from a hangover even if I only had one drink.
I was successful for a grand total of 24 hours. At “noche buena,” one of my cousins brought a bottle of Limoncello—a drink I genuinely love— and my year-end resolution was immediately discarded and demoted to a humorous holiday-related anecdote.
This episode is typical of people’s various resolutions as the year changes. Due to what psychologists call the “fresh start effect,” individuals are more inclined to pursue positive changes following temporal landmarks such as birthdays or, in this case, the end and start of a year. However, as many of us know from personal experience (and confirmed by research), many of these pursuits toward self-betterment often falter and fail.
The self-help industry has often trumpeted positive thinking as the key to achieving our goals. Proponents assert that we will be more motivated and focused if we just take the time to properly visualize our desired outcome while engaging in encouraging self-talk. Positive thinking also includes telling other people about one’s plans. They claim that sharing our resolutions with others enables us to attract support and compels us to be more accountable. While these insights sound good in theory, they often fall short in practice. For instance, a study conducted among hip replacement surgery patients found that the more they imagined themselves having a smooth recovery, the less motivated they were to move their new joints. Another study found that the more overweight individuals imagined a thinner version of themselves, the less success they had in losing weight.
Dr. Gabriele Oettingen, a renowned psychology professor and researcher, argues that our hyperfixation on positive thinking is actually what could be hindering us from reaching our aspirations. After 20 years of researching the impact of positive thinking on people’s lives, Oettingen discovered that when people imagine themselves attaining the future they want, they tend to hold on to the positive feelings that come with that image while neglecting the need to strategize and mobilize. She also highlighted that telling others about our plans could make us less likely to do it consistently. Since we have already received social affirmation for our intention to act, many might no longer feel motivated to put in the actual work.
As an alternative, Oettingen suggests practicing a concept she calls “mental contrasting.” This cognitive strategy focuses on helping an individual visualize their desired goals and imagine how it feels like to attain them while simultaneously acknowledging the obstacles that may hinder their achievement. The strength of the mental contrasting technique lies in its ability to promote a more pragmatic kind of optimism. By envisioning both the positive aspects of achieving a goal and the potential difficulties, one also becomes more proactive in developing actionable plans to overcome them. Mental contrasting also helps people see how their habits contribute to obstacles. This translates into concrete behavioral changes and a stronger sense of responsibility for their progress and challenges.
Oettingen crafted the “Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan” or the WOOP goal-setting strategy to guide individuals on operationalizing mental contrasting in their day-to-day lives. It starts with identifying your Wish or what you want to accomplish, imagining the best Outcome from this goal, reflecting on the Obstacles that could keep you from completing it, and then developing a Plan using if-then statements that outline how one will overcome those barriers.
Subsequent studies have shown that mental contrasting effectively facilitates behavior change across various contexts, from helping students perform better academically and enabling professionals to reach their career objectives to assisting individuals to achieve desired health-related behaviors (e.g., weight loss and smoking cessation).
This approach is particularly relevant in my work with low-income communities. Given that many of our scholars routinely encounter various poverty-related barriers to success, we have always incorporated Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset in our lessons—encouraging students to embrace challenges and setbacks as a necessary component of learning and growth. While this is a good start, teaching them mental contrasting concretely helps them to navigate circumstance-specific barriers better.
The beauty of mental contrasting is that it doesn’t diminish the power of hope or optimism; it grounds them in reality and action. As we prepare to welcome a new year, it is worth reflecting on how we could embrace this approach to guide the success of our goals and for all those we mentor.
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eleanor@shetalksasia.com
