Use Mental Contrasting to Achieve Your Goals

Alright. You’re fired up. You’ve got the goal in mind and you are ready to get after it.

Hold on a minute there, you over-achiever.  Before you pursue your dream, have you imagined all the tough times you’ll encounter along the way? The struggles and setbacks you’ll face?

Hard to think about, I know. Especially in the beginning when you are jazzed about making it to the mountain top, or losing the weight, or making the money. Rather than dashing your dreams, though, research shows that when you identify the obstacles you’ll encounter before you start on your goal, you are actually more likely to achieve it.

The process is called mental contrasting and I’m in the middle of it myself.

What is Mental Contrasting

New York University researcher and psychologist  Gabriele Oettingen’s has studied the process and says “contrasting a desired future with present reality” can help us to pick better goals in the beginning and keep us working toward them until completion.

It works like this: When you consider where you want to go – the goal you want to achieve – and contrast it with your current experience – where you are now — and then realistically identify the obstacles you may encounter between here and there, you’re less likely to be stymied by the struggles and more likely to persist until you overcome them.

Picking a Better Goal

Mental contrasting also helps you pick a better goal to begin with. Failure is often a result of pursuing the wrong goals. We get caught up in the expectations of others, or the anticipated riches or beneficial outcomes of our dream without ever evaluating the process, challenges, and obstacles we’ll encounter along the way.

When we understand the pros and cons of the journey ahead, we can then wisely decide whether we have a shot at accomplishing the goal, or whether we care enough to bother. If the answers are “No” we can pick a new goal, one that may inspire us more and help us prevail despite setbacks.

Without evaluating the challenges that await us, we tend to visualize all rainbows and butterflies on our way to the expected mega success. Feels nice for awhile, that little delusion, until the rain clouds show up, then we freak out, and stuck until we just give up.

Mental contrasting helps you visualize success, after all it involves contemplating the outcome you desire, while keeping you honest about the obstacles you’ll face en route.

And, if you already have an expectation of success, mental contrasting is a motivation booster, Oettingen says.

So, what is your next big goal? What do you want to achieve? Keep it in mind. On Wednesday, we’ll go through the steps of mental contrasting so you can fire up your motivation and get going.

 

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