Why does daydreaming about success sometimes leave you less motivated to achieve it? Can harnessing both positive and negative thoughts create a more effective path to reaching your goals?
Positive thinking and motivation have a complicated relationship. In her book Rethinking Positive Thinking, Gabriele Oettingen reveals how pleasant fantasies about future success can actually undermine your drive to accomplish your dreams. She offers a different approach.
Keep reading to discover how you can transform feel-good daydreams into real-world achievements.
Positive Thinking & Motivation
Oettingen explains that positive thinking means dwelling on mental images and daydreams of our desired future. These fantasies—whether about publishing a novel, landing a dream job, or finding true love—give us a momentary taste of what achieving our goals might feel like. This kind of daydreaming can provide temporary comfort, especially during stressful times. But, Oettingen argues there’s a downside to positive thinking: Motivation to make our dreams a reality can actually be undermined by it.
(Shortform note: The popular idea that cultivating a positive mindset can help you achieve success has its roots in the 19th-century “New Thought” movement, a philosophy that claimed that positive and negative emotions determine our material realities. Proponents of this idea believed positive thinking could help people achieve goals such as attracting wealth and overcoming illness. In the early 20th century, these ideas were repackaged for career success. But critics say focusing too much on positive thinking requires people to maintain an unrealistic optimism, even amidst major adversities and suffering—a phenomenon some still see in the “toxic positivity” and “oppressive optimism” of some modern approaches to self-help.)
| What Is Motivation? Oettingen studies an area of psychology known as motivation, which at its most basic is the experience of wanting something. Some psychologists suggest motivation comes from an inner drive that arises from our needs, thoughts, and emotions when we desire change in ourselves or our circumstances. Others say the forces that motivate us can be intrinsic—arising from needs for growth and self-actualization—or extrinsic—prompted by external factors like rewards. Our goals, mindsets, and beliefs influence motivation, as do our emotions. Researchers find that motivation is higher for goals in the near future compared to distant goals, and knowing that can help you set more focused and actionable goals. |
Why Does Positive Thinking Undermine Motivation?
Oettingen explains that positive fantasies give you a mental reward by allowing you to experience your desired future in your mind. But, according to her research, this creates a false sense of accomplishment: Your brain responds to your fantasies as if you’ve already achieved your goal in real life. As a result, your motivation decreases, with measurable physiological effects such as a reduction in blood pressure (which is typically associated with a more relaxed state), and you become less energized to pursue the goal in reality.
(Shortform note: Neuroscientists are studying why the brain sometimes mixes up perception and imagination. The brain distinguishes between real perceptions and imagined mental images by evaluating the strength of the signal from the image against a “reality threshold.” If the signal crosses the reality threshold, the brain perceives the image as real. If it falls below the threshold, the brain interprets it as imagined. Imagined signals are typically weaker than real perceptions. But if an imagined signal is strong enough, the brain can mistake it for reality. This false perception of reality could explain why motivation then decreases, as the brain has been “tricked” into thinking the goal is already accomplished by a vivid mental image.)
Oettingen explains that positive fantasies also detach you from the present and disengage you from the obstacles standing between the reality you have and the reality you want. She notes that, if you fail to mentally connect your dreams to the work required to achieve them, you don’t prepare yourself to take action. Instead, indulging in positive fantasies may even make us less equipped to handle difficult tasks that require sustained effort: The pleasant mental escape puts us in a state of mind where we lack the drive and determination we need to push through challenges. When we’re in this mindset and run into obstacles, we’re more likely to give up or look for shortcuts rather than doing the necessary hard work.
Many of us get stuck in this cycle of dreaming about what we want without making any real progress toward our goals. Over time, this pattern of fantasizing without action leads to frustration and keeps us from reaching our potential. However, the solution isn’t to suppress these thoughts entirely. These forward-looking thoughts and daydreams serve a purpose: They help you identify what you truly want and keep you alert to opportunities. You just need to do something else—in addition to thinking positively about the future—to motivate yourself to do the hard work of achieving your goals. We’ll discuss this next.
(Shortform note: Oettingen points out how positive thinking contradicts the basic principle of mindfulness: being present in the here and now. Yet other experts contend that while focus and presence are valuable, the human capacity for imagination, even when it takes us out of the present moment, is essential for creativity, problem-solving, and progress. Trying to completely suppress daydreaming may deny an aspect of our humanity. In fact, some experts think we don’t have to see daydreaming and mindfulness as opposing states: They can coexist and even complement each other. A balanced approach that accepts the tension between focused presence and imaginative wandering could help us to leverage the benefits of both states.)
