At least since 1952, when Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking was published, Americans have been inundated with the notion that the path to success can be smoothed by accentuating the positive. In this cult of optimism, one must keep one’s eyes on the prize and not let negative waves interfere, and all forms of positive thinking are cast as inherently helpful. Gabriele Oettingen wasn’t buying it. The psychology professor at New York University and the University of Hamburg spent more than 20 years testing her contention that “starry-eyed dreaming isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
As it turns out, dreamers are not often doers. Oettingen’s new book,Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation(Current), introduces a seemingly more realistic way of visualizing the future. If our wishful thinking is followed by an acute assessment of the obstacles that stand in the way of our dreams, achievement is far more likely, she contends. We spoke with Oettingen about her work and its practical applications. Your studies have led you to conclude that positive thinking by itself does little to advance our goals. In fact, you believe it could be detrimental. How so? My research has confirmed that merely thinking and dreaming about the future makes people less likely to achieve their goals. Just dreaming, detached from an awareness of reality, doesn’t cut it. It seems to let us fulfill our wishes in our minds, but actually it saps the energy we need to perform the hard work of meeting the challenges we face in real life. To think positively about the future is very pleasant. It’s a big temptation to think that doing it is the recipe for achieving success, instead of putting in the effort. In our minds, we’ve already reached a desired future, but there is a long way to go. [When people] pretend they are there, they will not prepare themselves for the obstacles and won’t get motivated to make the difficult climb. We might actually forgo realization of our dreams. What were some of the results of your 20 years of research? We found that students who fantasize about getting together with a romantic partner are less likely to get involved with that person. We found that with overweight women, the more they fantasized about losing weight in a program, the less weight they lost—over three months and over two years.
You’ve come up with an alternative approach that you say leads to more constructive results.
I call this method “mental contrasting.” It instructs us to dream our dreams, but then visualize the personal barriers that prevent us from achieving them. My studies show that when we perform such mental contrasting, we actually gain energy to take action. And when we go further and specify the actions we intend to take as obstacles arise, we energize ourselves even more. Simply put, by adding a bit of realism to people’s positive imaginings of the future, mental contrasting enables them to become dreamers and doers. My work presents a single, surprising idea: The obstacles that we think most impede us from realizing our deepest wishes can actually hasten their fulfillment.
How is mental contrasting useful as a tool to achieve our wishes?
Positive fantasies are great for momentary pleasure, for exploring a possibility a person might have in the future by trying it out mentally. But they seduce people into thinking they are already there. When it comes to actually realizing that possibility, those wishes need to be complemented by a clear sense of reality. You need to juxtapose those fantasies with the realities in you that stand in the way of achieving these wishes. If you also do that, you get the energy to overcome these obstacles. If we combine a positive future with the obstacles of reality, then we get going. If we see the obstacles as insurmountable, we realize those wishes are not feasible, so we let them go. We become more selective in what we are going to pursue. Mental contrasting helps us get less overwhelmed with life.
What did your analysis of the blood pressure and brain images of study participants show?
In one study, we recruited 164 female college students to fantasize about wearing sleek, stylish high heels. We randomly divided them into two groups and had them fill out questionnaires on a computer. For three minutes, a message on the screen asked the women in both groups to imagine themselves all dressed up in high heels. They jotted down their thoughts and daydreams. After three minutes,one group was asked to generate more positive thoughts about wearing their heels; the other group was asked to generate negative thoughts.
Before we began, we took blood pressure readings of both groups. Systolic blood pressure is a cardiovascular measurement that reveals how energized or motivated a person is. The women who had fantasized positively showed lower systolic blood pressure. The second group showed no change in blood pressure. Positive fantasies relax us so much that it shows up in physiological tests. But when your objective is to make your wish a reality, the last thing you want to be is relaxed. We also did work measuring brain responses to mental contrasting. It showed enhanced activity in sections of the brain responsible for willfulness and memory—much different patterns than when people were merely fantasizing about a desired future.
Some of your early work on motivation was rejected for publication. Why?
Reviewers claimed the arguments and results were too far-fetched, that my message was ridiculous. If you come up with data that goes against cultural postulates, it’s always difficult. People were reluctant to acknowledge my message. Some are still reluctant. But it was understandable. You can’t necessarily trust the results of just a few studies. So I spent the next 20 years conducting a number of rigorous, larger studies until my overall findings were supported. The results were the same: Positive fantasies, wishes and dreams—detached from an assessment of past experience—didn’t translate into motivation. They translated into the opposite.
In your book, you take mental contrasting a step further with the introduction of a meditative practice you call WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. It is meant to help people reap the full benefits of mental contrasting.
Yes, WOOP has another step—the forging of explicit intentions about how to achieve a wish. If you break down the process by which people pursue wishes, you can distinguish two phases: an initial phase in which you weigh your options and decide to commit to a goal, and a second phase in which you plan how to take action to attain the wish. There is a large amount of literature that shows this second phase is helpful in attaining goals. It doesn’t work if you don’t have a strong determination to implement your wishes. You must identify likely obstacles to your goal and approve behavior to overcome the obstacle.
This little exercise is a discovery into your wishes—what you really want, not what others want you to do. It will help you find out what you are passionate about and what holds you back. If you’re a professional, you can use it to reach a new milestone in your career, improve your skills—whatever you can think of. It can be used to help with any kind of wish, short-term or long-term, big or small. Source: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241484
Putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, can really pay off.
Whether you put pen to paper or type on a computer, writing about stressful experiences or emotionally charged issues in your life can be good for your health and emotional well-being. In fact, expressive writing, which basically involves pouring your heart and mind into words, without worrying about spelling, punctuation, grammar and other writing conventions, is good medicine: In recent years, research has found that it improves symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome or IBS, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis; helps with recovery from childhood sexual abuse and postpartum depression; and improves the state of mind in those with Parkinson's, cancer and many other health conditions.
It can even promote faster wound healing. In a 2013 study, researchers at the University of Auckland in New Zealand had 49 healthy adults, ages 64 to 97, spend 20 minutes a day for three consecutive days writing about upsetting events in their lives (expressive writing) or their daily activities (time management): Two weeks later, the researchers gave participants small puncture wounds on the inside of their upper arms then monitored their healing. Eleven days after the wound infliction, 80 percent more of those in the expressive writing group had fully healed compared with those in the other group.
The Magic Behind the Act
"Writing about an emotionally charged subject or an unresolved trauma helps you put the event into perspective and give some structure and organization to those anxious feelings, which ultimately helps you get through it," notes James Pennebaker, a professor of psychology at The University of Texas–Austin and co-author of the new book "Opening Up by Writing it Down: How Expressive Writing Improves Health and Eases Emotional Pain." "This can help people sleep better, feel and think better, and have richer social lives, all of which can bolster immune function and improve health."
Not surprisingly, writing about emotionally charged subjects also can improve mental health, including symptoms of depression, anxiety, major depressive disorder and even post-traumatic stress disorder among veterans. What's more, in a 2014 study involving 149 women in a residential treatment program for substance abuse disorders, researchers from the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven, Connecticut, found that those who engaged in four 20-minute writing sessions (about emotional topics) on consecutive days had greater reductions in the severity of their post-traumatic symptoms, depression and anxiety after two weeks than participants who wrote about neutral topics.
The mechanisms behind these emotional benefits aren't entirely understood. One theory is that describing your feelings with words may be somewhat cathartic, releasing pent-up feelings that may be dragging you down. Another is that the act of writing can help you organize disorganized thoughts into more cohesive ones that give meaning to an upsetting or traumatic experience. It also may be that the process of writing enables people to learn to better regulate their emotions because they gain a sense of control over upsetting experiences life throws at them.
Meanwhile, a pair of studies published in the April 2016 journal Emotion found that expressive writing helps people distance themselves from a distressing life experience, which in turn makes them less emotionally reactive to it. "We think the process of creating a coherent story out of disorganized emotional memories facilitates self-distancing because this process requires people to adopt other people's perspectives and focus on broader contexts," explains lead author Jiyoung Park, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst.
Feeling Is Believing
For as long as she can remember, Erin Morris had anxiety that would interfere with her ability to make decisions. In the fall of 2015, she started writing about whatever was on her mind for 15 minutes in the morning. "The important part for me is to not stop and judge myself or my writing but to let it flow and express everything that is in my head," says Morris, 36, a graphic designer who splits her time between Costa Rica and Columbia, South Carolina. Besides easing her anxiety, the writing habit has brought a considerable improvement in her previous sleep troubles, greater energy and "mental clarity when it comes to making decisions and dealing with complicated relationships," Morris reports.
Clint Evans, who spends up to 15 minutes writing in his journal in the morning and the evening, can relate to these perks. "Expressive writing reduces my stress and helps me sleep better," says Evans, 36, a business consultant and content service provider in Austin, Texas. "I feel release when writing in my journal – my mind stops racing and slows to a calm." The writing practice helps him fall asleep faster and sleep more soundly.
Most of the research has explored the benefits of writing about one's deepest thoughts and feelings about a stressful event using the first-person point of view (the "I" voice). A 2013 study from the University of Iowa suggests that assuming a distant, third-person perspective (using "he" or "she") may be even more beneficial because it's associated with less intrusive thinking and fewer physical symptoms. "Taking an observer's vantage may be vital to maintaining composure and making progress when trying to sort through a distressing or angering event or moment in life," explains lead author Matthew Andersson, now an assistant professor of sociology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "It's a short leap from picturing a difficult personal event from an observer's perspective to actually using a third-person pronoun, as if you're looking at a completely different person going through what you did."
Of course, "these potential pathways aren't mutually exclusive," Andersson notes, and there may be cumulative benefits. Whatever the mechanisms may be and whatever voice you choose to use, engaging in expressive writing can yield major benefits. "The beauty of this intervention is that it's cost-effective, low risk and [offers a] high payoff," notes Katherine Krpan, a psychologist who investigated the effects of expressive writing on major depressive disorder while at the University of Michigan. "People seem to like the idea of a non-pharmacological intervention. You can also do it wherever you are."
How to Write Yourself Well
To harness the power of expressive writing, Pennebaker recommends choosing a time and place where you're unlikely to be uninterrupted. Vow to write continuously about something that's upsetting you for at least 15 minutes on four consecutive days. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, punctuation, verb agreement or other writing conventions; simply pour your deepest, most honest feelings onto paper or a computer screen. "It can be related to something you're dreaming, thinking or worrying about a lot, an issue or memory that's affecting your life in an unhealthy way, or a subject you've been avoiding for days, weeks or years," Pennebaker says.
Try it for at least a few weeks and see if it helps. If it does, stick with it. Ultimately, what you do with your expressive writing is entirely up to you: You can save it for future reference, throw it away, burn it or shred it, Pennebaker says. The important thing to remember is that it's meant to be for your personal benefit and your eyes only.
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