New York Magazine posted this video about a study on pessimism and optimism conducted by German scientist Gabriele Ottingen. Ottingen suggests that when it comes to achieving your goals, a little bit of pessimism can actually prove to be a helpful source of motivation.
While most people would tell you "Think Positive! If you think you can do it then you will!" Ottingen suggests that this type of thinking can actually distract you from addressing the obstacles and challenges involved in achieving your goal, and that pessimistic thinking can actually help to increase motivation and allow you to have a better outcome when addressing these obstacles and challenges. What Ottingen is basically saying is that if your looking at your glass half empty, will provide for a stronger motivation to fill it than it would to look at your glass half full, and Ottingen isn't just making this up; There are decades of scientific research to support this idea!
Ottingen comes up with a process for utilizing pessimism in goal setting which she calls
WOOP". "WOOP" stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, and Plan. Basically step one is to think about what it is that you wish to do, then think about the outcome of that wish, next think about the obstacles that stand in the way of that outcome, and the most important step is to plan for what you will do when those obstacles occur. Ottingens process is essentially about taking positivity and negativity and utilizing logical thinking strategies to make them into reality.
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