I recently read an article titled "The Power of Negative Thinking". I received the link in an email and I didn't immediately pay attention to it since it had such a strange title. Most of us have been told throughout our lives to visualize the end goal. Picture your life with all your ambitions fulfilled and this will help you motivate yourself to achieve those goals. Personally, this is something that my parents and teachers have told me in the past. Look forward to what you want, visualize your perfect end result.
This article disagrees slightly. According to a study done by Gabriele Oettingen's psychology lab at New York University, research has shown that visualizing our aims before they are achieved can backfire. Thinking about this positive, complete picture tricks our brains into thinking all the hard work has already been done. This means that it may cause the brain to relax and for our energy to seep away. See the exerpt from the article below:
"In the study, volunteers felt de-energized after visualizing success in an essay competition. In another, participants who fantasied about their goals for the coming week felt less energetic and achieved fewer of their goals."Interesting. So what are we supposed to do? Give up? Never think about the future ever? Thinking about the perfect future may cause us to gloss over thinking about the obstacles in our path to success. Thinking about this perfect life may be exciting but we shouldn't lose sight of the challenges we have yet to conquer. Simple put, we need to be realistic. Obviously we should have our goals in mind and think about what we want to accomplish but it's just as important to see the hurdles we have yet to face. This is called "mental contrasting", thinking about your end goal while paying attention to where you are now and the difficulties between here and there.
To read the full article go here.
No comments:
Post a Comment