Rethinking Positive Thinking

Outline

Rethinking Positive Thinking (2014) challenges the popular belief that simply imagining success helps people achieve their goals. Drawing on two decades of research, Gabriele Oettingen shows that positive fantasies can drain the energy needed to act, and introduces mental contrasting and the WOOP method, Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan, which pairs optimism with a realistic look at obstacles and a plan to overcome them.

• Simply imagining success does not help people reach their goals, and the book challenges that popular belief.
• Positive fantasies can drain the energy a person needs in order to act on a goal.
• Mental contrasting pairs a hopeful vision of the future with an honest look at what stands in the way.
• WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan, and it turns a goal into a step-by-step approach.
• The author builds her case on two decades of research into how optimism and realism work together.

Gabriele Oettingen is a German-born psychologist and professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg. Her research focuses on how people think about the future and how this affects motivation, goal pursuit, and behaviour change. She developed the self-regulation strategy of mental contrasting and, with her colleagues, the WOOP method, which is used in education, health, and business.