Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation

UPDATED REVIEW BELOW Original Review, 11/3/14: Since I came upon this book, a week ago, and the "WOOP" technique described within, I have been experimenting with it every day, sometimes more than once. My five star review is based on the power of this idea and how promising it has been so far. Check back in a few months. I will update this review in March, 2015. If I am still using the technique and am still experiencing helpful results, I will write about it here and let the five stars remain. If I am not continuing to use the technique because it has not continued to be personally helpful, I will write about that too (and perhaps lower my star rating.) But, based on the last week, I am very excited. This idea ties together lots of things I've wondered about. It seems to be working, I just want more time to see. Another thought... In my life, I interact with people from many parts of the world. I've always been fascinated with how Americans (like myself) are so relatively optimistic and practice "positive thinking". Other, relatively negative, cultures of the world tend to either admire us, or make fun of us, for our "positive" tendencies. In the past, I wondered about this. My international friends seemed to be on to something, yet they too seemed to be limiting themselves, just in negative ways. I had come to the unhappy conclusion that we were all kind of stuck. Well, now, with this WOOP technique, it kind of brings the value of both sides together, optimism and pessimism, in a powerful way. The best of both worlds. See you in March. UPDATED REVIEW, 3/7/14: For the past four months I have used the technique presented in the book almost every day. Sometimes multiple times a day. It has become a go-to tool for help implementing goals. I am amazed that there are currently only 23 reviews on Amazon for this book. Other new books on rehashed topics have hundreds of reviews in this amount of time. However, I think this is only a symptom of how new and revolutionary the WOOP technique actually is. Most people will not “get it” until enough early adopters have shown the way. For the purposes of this review, I will not describe the technique. You can get a good overview at http://www.woopmylife.org/. Actually, you can get a great start using only resources available at the website. I suggest you do and, if you like it, get the book to learn more. (Alternately, a google search for “mental contrasting” will bring up any number of articles that introduce this technique and book.) When you first try WOOP, you might want to use it for immediate goals so that you have a quick experience of WOOP’s effectiveness. So, what more have I learned from four months of regular practice? What I have found is that the WOOP process channels my negativity into positive action. Often, when doing something challenging, I will feel anxiety. In the past, I would draw upon skills learned in counseling to try, unsuccessfully, to think my way out of these feelings. Other times I tried using relaxation techniques, to help. This often backfired as the repressed feeling bounced back even stronger. The WOOP technique, on the other hand, allows me to prepare a pathway in my mind from negative feelings to positive actions. The energy of of the negative feelings actually fuels the positive actions that I have pre-determined using WOOP. This happens both consciously and unconsciously after using the technique. WOOP worked dramatically and immediately in areas that I have already experienced some success. It increased my productivity and efficiency in these areas. Things became easier and more fun. I have used WOOP for exercise goals, language study, family relationships, to-do items, among other things. I have been "on fire" in these areas since using WOOP regularly. One example of this kind of success using WOOP: I have already been running successfully for more than 5 years. Despite years of success, I still tend to get anxious. Before using WOOP, the anxiety would make me enjoy running less. Nowadays, before and even during a run, I might think through the following: “Wish: I will have a relaxing, meditative, run. Outcome: I will be in "the zone". I will be mindful and relaxed. I will enjoy this run. Obstacles: I may become anxious and worry that I am doing it wrong. I may worry about hurting my knees or whether my heart is healthy. Plan: If I find myself worrying I will remember that I have been running successfully for the last 5 years. I will turn my attention back to my stride and put one foot in front of the other, both literally and metaphorically.” Since using WOOP, I have continued running regularly. I have increased my speed and distance. But, more importantly, I am more relaxed when running and am enjoying it more. Here is a second example in which I used WOOP successfully. I was attending a gathering of several former coworkers, all who were friends, but who I had not seen in many months. Being an introvert, I would have felt at ease with them in very small groups, or one-on-one. But, the large size of the group and the fact that I hadn't seen them in quite awhile was stirring up feelings of anxiety. I used the following WOOP: “Wish: I will have relaxed fun with my friends. Outcome: I will enjoy my time with my friends. I will feel connected with them. We will have a good time together, support each other and laugh frequently. Obstacle: I may feel anxious and self-conscious. I may feel old feelings of fear that people do not like me. Plan: If I find myself feeling anxiety and fear, I will remember that these people are already my friends and that they already like me. They wouldn't have invited me if they didn't. I will just be myself and trust that a good time will result.” It was a good time, and I was sad when it was over. As discussed in the book, WOOP doesn't work for every goal. If you do not actually believe you can succeed with a goal, WOOP may not help. WOOP is more challenging, but also more intriguing when applied to aspirations on that “fault line” between confidence and no confidence. I experienced this several days after first learning WOOP. As I mentioned, I am an introvert, but I tried to use WOOP to help myself enjoy a language exchange group composed mostly of strangers and a few people with whom I only have a superficial acquaintance. In previous meetings, I had felt unable to break into the conversations of extroverts and unable to connect with the group in general. But, this day, on my walk to the meeting, I went through the WOOP process twice. But, once I got there and the group started, I still had a miserable time. However, it was still very important me to use the group to further my Spanish studies. So, before the next meeting, I scaled my expectations way back. I set my “wish” to “just showing up” and “practicing some Spanish” rather than “enjoying” and “connecting”. And, with these more attainable goals, I experienced success! Although I did not enjoy the group as much as the extroverts, I had a more positive experience in general, practiced a lot of Spanish, and I feel that I can continue to benefit from the group in the future. I am looking forward to seeing future developments in the study and practice of WOOP. It will be nice when there are enough people using WOOP that some sense of community forms. I looked to see if any online forums have sprung up and, so far, none have. It would be nice to hear other people's ideas and experiences in using WOOP for complicated, long range goals. It would be good to hear how others incorporate WOOP into different types of professions and activities.

This book is a summary of Gabriele Oettingen's work. For almost 25 years, she has been studying how having positive fantasies about the future affects goal achievement In this book, she introduces MCII (Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intention), now re-branded as WOOP (Wish Outcome Obstacle Plan), to the general public. WOOP is an evidence-based tool for enhancing goal achievement and goal striving. Translated: if you have an attainable wish that you want to turn into reality, use WOOP. It works. Reading this book you will learn a simple yet powerful, easy-to-apply tool to help you achieve your goals in any domains. As some other reviewer noted, authors often describe a problem, but rarely they offer a practical solution. Gabriele Oettingen does. Kudos then to Prof Oettingen for sharing her insights in a book, after publishing dozens of peer-reviewed papers in psychology journals. If the author's scientific credentials are impeccable, not so much the book. Below is a list of reasons why I would rate it a a 3-star piece of work: - It feels too long, and at times it is repetitive. - It reads like a literature review of her papers, with very little added; it is too dry. - There are grammatical errors (e.g., p. 158: "In one study of high school and middle school students lead [sic] by..."). - The references the author uses to make her points are questionable. For example: "The worship of optimism is not of recent vintage, nor is it uniquely American. It's a theme in world literature, from Marcus Aurelius ("dwell on the beauty of life") to...". Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic, an optimist?!?? Another example: "Companies spend millions on executive coaching... with little systematic research that coaching works" (p.90). The reference linked to this statement is from 2003, since then several studies and meta-analyses have been published. - Last but not least, the book is all about Oettingen. In itself that is not bad, but it needs to be balanced by introducing other characters and it needs to avoid a narrative centered on the author vs. the "establishment". a) Regarding the former, even though she acknowledges in the introduction that she is indebted to many, her narrative rarely introduces other researchers and their teams (which would have made for a more engaging story, and it is something common in many pop psych books). E.g., after going on for more than a page describing an experiment she led, the author then says: "a similar experiment with fifth graders from low-income backgrounds in the United States turned up the same results". That is interesting! But who did the experiment? Where? How? B) Regarding the latter, on p.10, after describing her counter-intuitive results in her first published paper, Oettingen writes: "I published that study back in 1991, and no, it didn't suddenly cause people either in psychology or the wider world to take a more nuanced look at optimism. It didn't do much of anything because the prevailing belief in the power of optimism was just too strong". Well, I would say it did not do much of anything because it was just one study with a very small sample (25 subjects overall). And I could go on and on... To sum it all up: - if you never heard of the work of Gabriele Oettingen, or if you believe in the power of positive thinking, do yourself a favor and buy this book. You will learn some very useful life skills. - if, however, you know about her work or if you are looking for an engaging book about psychology, maybe this is not for you.

A few years back, personal development author and speaker James Arthur Ray literally baked three people to death in Sedona Arizona under a plastic tarp that he called a “sweat lodge.” Ray encouraged his followers to stay in the deadly heat, invoking mind-over-matter through the power of positive thinking. Ray’s homicides are a recent and dramatic example of the harm some forms of positive thinking can do. But Americans, ever the optimists, would like to compartmentalize this kind of event as an extreme case and continue along with our belief in our ever-upward march towards Awesomeness. Ray was featured in the popular “movie-mercial” The Secret as one of the teachers of a supposedly esoteric truth that all famous and successful people know: that fantasizing about one’s desired outcomes will bring them about, either by psychological means through directing attention and increasing motivation, or by magickal causes that change the very fabric of Reality through directed intention. These claims are testable and potentially even falsifiable, thus meeting the basic criteria for a scientific claim according to the late philosopher of science Karl Popper. Do positive fantasies about the future truly increase chances of success? One researcher has championed this line of testing for several decades now, despite her research still being fairly unknown. This wonderful book is the first from Professor Oettingen, but hopefully not the last, written for a popular audience but thankfully without dumbing down the science. In this important book, Oettingen begins with multiple examples from her research showing that positive fantasies - either spontaneously or purposely generated - ultimately backfire by feeling like you’ve already achieved the outcome and thus don’t need to get energized to actually DO anything. Personal development authors, bloggers, and gurus will undoubtedly miss the key points of this important research for two reasons: 1. It violates their deeply-held ideology about personal development and change. 2. It is subtle and contextual, not easily packaged into a simplistic motto. To point #1: It is well known from previous research that high positive expectations of future success are correlated with actual success. Oettingen’s research also confirms this. But personal development authors have taken this to mean that we can increase our chances of success by visualizing (fantasizing) about future outcomes as if they are already here, or verbally affirming one’s outcome in the present tense. Professor Oettingen’s research shows however that positive expectations (beliefs about the future) are completely different than positive fantasies (free-floating idealized thoughts about the future). Everybody knows that there is a big difference between thinking a thought and believing that it is true. With regards to desired futures, we can think a thought and either evaluate it for how likely we think it is to come true, or we can fail to do that evaluation. Positive expectations involve our belief that things are likely to turn out well, whereas positive fantasies are just fantasies - we don’t necessarily reality-check them to see if they are true or false. Positive fantasies are just things we’d like to have happen, but we may or may not actually believe they are possible. Often times we haven’t even thought about what it would take to put that into action. Books like The Secret actively dissuade people from engaging in that reality-checking or planning process, claiming that to do so will interfere with either the unconscious mechanisms or magickal forces which are conspiring right now to make your wishes into reality. Yet Oettingen’s research is clear - fantasies backfire when pursuing challenging goals by *reducing* motivation to act and overcome obstacles. To point #2: Oettingen is a careful scientist, not an ideologue. She points out already in chapter 2 that there are relevant contexts in which positive fantasies of the future are a useful resource. (As we say in NLP, “every behavior is useful in some context.”) In particular, when facing a situation you can do nothing actively about, fantasizing can help to generate a patient resolve as well as take some of the sting out of the experience of powerlessness. Fantasizing can also help when the outcome only involves noticing something and not actively working on it, for it can help to direct attention, as in the example of a thirsty person in the desert fantasizing about finding water. There are also many contexts in which positive fantasizing backfires horribly. Ultimately Oettingen's mental contrasting approach involves *utilizing* fantasies by indulging in them as the first step, then contrasting them with “what stops you?” In other words, thinking first about a desired outcome, then obstacles that stand in the way, in order to generate energy to navigate those obstacles. Even then, Oettingen’s “WOOP” formula (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) will only help if the outcome is assessed as highly feasible. If the outcome is seen to be unrealistic, contrasting will *decrease* motivation…which itself can be useful for “goal disengagement” - i.e. giving up on hopeless outcomes in order to free up energy for something more realistic. (The one case in which WOOP probably won’t do much either way is when you assess the likelihood of your outcome to be a 50/50 coin flip.) Personally, I read a number of the journal articles Prof Oettingen so generously posted on her page on the NYU Psych department website before this book was in print. It was a difficult task, but I learned a lot and this research significantly impacted my thinking about goal pursuit and personal development. Usually the popular version of the research is so watered down that I can’t in good conscience recommend the popular book, but in this case this book is both readable and doesn’t cut corners in reporting on the science. I highly recommend this important work, and hope that it can make a small dent in making our world a little more wise when it comes to thinking about thinking. Cut through the “woo woo” of New Age garbage like The Secret and The Success Principles and WOOP up a realistic plan for overcoming the inevitable obstacles in the way of your dreams instead. You’ll be glad you did. Note: I read this book on Kindle, and found it to be a very well-formatted Kindle book with a good Table of Contents, footnotes, sidebars and images.

Book reviews are an odd part of human behavior. Both the writer and reader suppose that there's something about the content that they can determine to be outside their bias. Perhaps this is true of other behaviors too but it just seems prevalent with book reviews. So why not spare you the credentials I may possess to review this book? Why not forego all the background information that would lend credence to this review? The people who will find this book useful would probably read it anyway, those close-minded individuals most likely won't even make this far to order in the first place. "Rethinking Positive Thinking" is probably one of the best self-improvement tools to come about thus far. It's unfortunate that it has to compete with so much non-evidenced based material. And there are some who are trying to confirm this and initially believe that around 80% of all self-help books are not tethered to any evidence and as much as 95% of internet based self-help have no evidence whatsoever to back it up. But then, that's trying provide "credence" for this book isn't it? I could probably bypass the first two-thirds of the book which is support for WOOP, but I'm glad I didn't. For me, it helps to create a knowledge base to draw on once I started using the WOOP method. It solidifies how to use it for the most part by giving examples of what worked and what did not. The last third of the book is the how-to, fortifying the WOOP method and emphasizing not to rearrange the order of doing "wish/outcome/obstacle/plan" (WOOP). Here's my thought - Most people have wasted a LOT of time on trying to find out more about themselves and their place in life. Only to realize a year later, a decade later. . . a lifetime later, that they either dropped the method or it simply fizzled out. WOOP is the real deal. Always allowing you to re-tweak your ideas (wishes/dreams) and then go at it again. I have followed a lot of stuff and this is the first one that I'v used and have had immediate and successful results. And that's about all you have to know.

From time to time we all make resolutions, set goals, tell ourselves that we are going to make positive changes in our lives and more often than not, we fail to carry through. People literally spend billions of dollars each year looking for ways to achieve their goals. One message that has been repeated over and over again is to think positively. We have been bombarded with the idea that if we have a positive mental attitude, we can achieve any reasonable goal. Yet most of us know this is not entirely true. Gabriele Oettingen, a research psychologist and author of Rethinking Positive Thinking – Inside the New Science of Motivation, has spent years researching what we need in addition to a positive mental attitude in order to achieve our goals. Her studies lead her to the understanding that two things are necessary to dramatically improve our chances of taking action towards our goals. The first is mental contrasting – holding our goal and the outcomes in our mind and then thinking about the obstacles to achieving our goals. The second step is being intentional – creating a plan – the what, when and how action steps. This generally takes the form of “if ….then” statements – if X happens, then I will Y. I have to say that I am a bit ambivalent about her book. On the one hand, the science is fascinating. The process – what she calls WOOP – Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan is very simple and based on her extensive research, highly effective. However, I found the book a little too long, there was too much detail about her various studies. I think the book would have been more powerful and impactful had she condensed some of the case studies. This approach has been subject to extensive research and has passed peer review, so the science is proven.

A most practical, credible and useful book in the field of positive psychology that I have read this year. As a professional psychologist I have nothing but compliments for this work of Oettingen! Why? Her research is solid, and extensive. In a very respectful, yet thorough, manner she has tested the reigning concept of optimism and find it is coming short of its promise. Yes, people need it, and for some it gives them reason to continue under dire circumstances, however people stay the same, because "dreamers are not often doers." This highlights the one missing component in optimism: the doing part energised by optimism. In the same way her exploration of positive fantasies is excellent: when do we do them "successfully" and what is needed to go from dreaming to action. She offers practical, sometimes totally counterintuitive, options for being practical and achieving goals from our daydreams. The last sentence in her introduction: "all from a single, counterintuitive question: What holds you back from realizing your dreams?" is the challenge she set herself, and us the reader. The method, called "mental contrasting" is offered clearly and reliably. She has researched this in multiple contexts, so it is not just another "name" not validated by good research. Mental contrasting is the element that completes the formula: optimism-action-results, or realizing the focus of your optimism. Of course, there is her simple and powerful acronym W-O-O-P that makes it just so easy to remember the core of the method, and in itself is a formula for success. A good work, that reads comfortably even though there are solid research and plenty of references for the person hungry for the back-story. The references are placed outside of the scope of the main reading, but of course easily accessible through the electronic link of the kindle version. I plan to use the ideas of Dr. Oettingen not just as a coaching tool for my one-on-one work, but also for group work when I facilitate strategy or optimizing team-functioning.

My perspective is that of a lay person who has no educational or professional background in psychology - just a personal interest in research on success, goal-setting, and motivation. I do think that Prof. Oettingen’s research is important and that the WOOP technique can be powerfully used in a number of goal-setting scenarios. However, I was a bit turned off by the author’s position that positive thinking (performed separately from the WOOP technique) is fairly useless, except as a sort of self-soothing mechanism. I have to disagree. Why are all medical studies set up in a double-blind format, if not to account for the power of positive expectations - on the part of both participants and researchers? And there is a growing body of research in the field of mind-body medicine indicating that positive expectations can provide symptom relief, improve the efficacy of medications, and speed recovery times after surgery. Also, many professional athletes successfully use positive visualization to help sink a critical putt or make a game-winning 3-point shot at the buzzer. I can vouch for the power of visualization as a recreational tennis player. Visualizing the execution of a specific shot is often successful. Not always, but more often than not. On the other hand, if I find myself thinking, “don’t miss, don’t miss”, I’m almost guaranteed to dump the ball in the net or hit it five feet outside the lines. I had another interesting experience that I don’t think is all that unique. My next-to-last year in college, I had a homework assignment to write a bio for myself 10 years in the future. I said that I had been working for a company (one of a fairly large number in the industry I was studying) that was on the other side of the country, where I had no contacts, and had sent no resumes. I completely forgot about the bio until I ran across it several years later while cleaning out a pile of clutter. Guess where I was working? Although this isn’t the kind of experience that lends itself to scientific research, I’ve heard many anecdotal stories along the same lines. (Although I do get the point of the “buy a ticket already” story about the man who fantasizes about winning the lottery - we have to take some initiative in achieving our dreams). The author also seems quick to encourage people to give up on dreams that can’t be readily achieved. I agree that in some cases this is the best approach - someone who spends a lifetime mooching off of family and friends to pursue a dream of becoming a writer/actor/model/whatever would certainly be better served by directing their energies elsewhere. But it’s a good thing that people like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, The Beatles, Mary Kay Ash, J.K. Rowling, FedEx CEO Fred Smith, and Oprah Winfrey weren’t so quick to discard their own dreams. So I’ll admit that I was already feeling a little antagonistic by the time the WOOP technique was described. I might have gotten over this personal hurdle (or obstacle, if you will) if the book had included first-hand accounts from individuals who had successfully used the WOOP technique to achieve their goals. Instead, we read just a small number of examples, paraphrased by the author. All in all, I do see the value in WOOP, particularly the idea of considering potential obstacles to our goals and making plans to overcome them. I actually plan to give WOOP a try for a couple of specific New Year’s Resolutions. But I do think the book could have been re-written to make the practice more enticing for a lay audience — and to recognize that the value of positive thinking goes beyond serving as an emotional band-aid.

I really enjoyed reading Gabriele's book because it is about getting real....a topic very close to my heart and being. In a book that I authored, Illuminate: Harnessing The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, I posit: "we cant solve everything we face, but we cant anything unless we face it." I fully appreciate and respect how Gabriele goes deep into the research and does a splendid job of inspiring the reader to take a much needed look into getting real, realistic and ready to face life as it comes. Read this book. You too will recommend it.

very interesting book

Muchos libros hablan de cómo establecer metas y muchos otros hablan de la visión, disciplina y de cómo superar la postergación. En este libro encontrarás cómo lograr lo que propones con una fórmula muy sencilla y práctica. Altamente recomendable.

Je pense que pour ceux qui se poseraient des questions sur la pensée positive (voire le positivisme) et - de mon point de vue - par extension sur le "développement personnel" trouverons sinon des réponses, au moins des pistes. En revanche, il faut comprendre un minimum l'anglais mais ça reste très abordable même avec un niveau scolaire (il n'y a que pour les mots spécifiques/professionnels qu'on doit se tourner vers un dictionnaire).

Va más allá de "pensar en positivo". Aporta una buena manera manera de enfrentarte a los retos, sean estos los que fueren, fácil lectura. Como siempre se podría haber dicho en muchas menos páginas, pero esto es común a casi todos los autores de este tipo de libros.Aún así es recomendable.

A teoria realmente funciona quando você se compromete a aplica-la no seu dia a dia. Consegui parar de fumar, ver pornografia e comecei a estudar