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A recent article in the NY Times  addressed the issue of how positive thinking can hinder goal  attainment.  In study after study the author told how those people who focused on “happy thoughts”, eliminated “negative self-talk”,  and  fantasized about their wishes coming true, received negative results.   These populations included graduate students looking for a job and those who wanted to lose weight.

But neither did dwelling on the obstacles to goal attainment produce positive results.  What they did find was that a hybrid approach, spending a few minutes fantasizing about their wishes coming true, and then spending a few more minutes  imagining the obstacles that existed, produced the best results.

They call this mental contrasting.  In experiments where participants performed mental contrasting with reasonable, potentially achievable wishes,  they came away more energized  and achieved better results  than those participants who merely fantasized or merely focused on the obstacles.  The other interesting finding from these experiments  is that  mental contrasting spurs us to action when it makes sense to go after a wish, and allows us to abandon wishes more easily  when it doesn’t, so that we can instead pursue other more reasonable ambitions.

Gabriele Oettingen  is the author of “Rethinking Positive Thinking:  Inside the New Science of Motivation.”