Heroic Interview: The Science of Making Your Dreams Come True with Gabriele Oettingen

You're listening to the science of making your dreams come true. An Optimal Living interview with Gabriel Odingen and Bryan Johnson.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Gabrielle Oettingen who is one of the world's leading researchers in the new science of motivation. She wrote the phenomenal book Rethinking Positive Thinking. A ton of positive psychologists reference her work. She's written over 100, I believe, articles and book chapters on the effects of future thoughts on cognition, emotion and behavior. She's a professor of psychology at NYU and the University of Hamburg. And I just fell in love with this book and immediately reached out to set up this chat. Gabrielle, I really appreciate you taking the time and I'm excited to explore.

Well, thank you for having me.

Well, you're doing some important work for the last 20 plus years and I'd love for you to describe, just kind of on the highest level, what it means to rethink positive thinking. Then we'll drive into some of the details.

Well, positive thinking has had a very positive connotation, not only in the United States, but probably in the western world. And people had been kind of looking at positive thinking as an anchor of reaching success and putting in the necessary motivation to actually achieve what they want to achieve in their life. And yeah, rethinking positive thinking means maybe we should think twice if we want to reap all the benefits of positive thinking and not just assume that positive thinking has always positive consequences for our well being and long term development.

Which leads us to the downside of positive thinking, specifically the downside of dreaming. And again to preface this, all of Gabrielle's work is empirically based on and research tested. And just one of the reasons why I'm so excited about this and you talk about in your book is that a lot of the popular self help stuff just hasn't been rigorously tested. And as you brought some of the ideas into your lab, you found that not only did they not work, they were actually detrimental in many ways. Right.

They can be detrimental when it comes to fulfilling our wishes and our dreams about the future. When it comes to just having a pleasure in terms of dreaming at the moment and having some good thoughts, then they're fine. And you know, everybody who wants to improve his mood a little bit is allowed to just dream about the future and about the positive things which the future might hold. But if it comes to actually implementing these wishes and actually going the hard way of fulfilling these wishes, then they can be Detrimental. And they are not only not helpful, but they actually can be really hurtful for implementing our goals and fulfilling our wishes.

I love it. So if you just want to feel good, then merely fantasizing about a wonderful future can achieve that end. But if you actually want to achieve your wishes and bring them to fruition, then, as you say, we want to kind of bring in some reality. But can you describe for us some of your research that in particular, I was fascinated by the work on the lower blood pressure and how quickly that occurred and how that led to less motivation and ultimately less action?

Well, we started off with simple studies where we just looked at how positive dreams and fantasies predict effort and success for the future. So, for example, we started off with a study with women who wanted to reduce their weight and who had enrolled in a weight reduction program. And the more positively these women had fantasized about success in the program, the fewer pounds they had lost three months and one year and even two years later. Or university graduates, those who had positively fantasized about an easy transition into work life, they received fewer job offers two years later, and they earned fewer dollars two years later. And they also sent fewer applications out than those who also admitted some negative thoughts about the future. Or for example, people who had surgery on their hips or hip replacement surgery. So people who had dreamt and fantasized before they went into surgery about successfully recovering and having a kind of easy way out of the hospital, they could move their hip joint less well after two weeks and they could walk fewer stairs and they had less good recovery as judged by the physical therapies than the people who, in addition to their positive dreams, also admitted to some problems in reality in their thinking. Or the more students fantasized positively about success in their exams, the less well they did in the exams themselves. So that's what we found. We found or in another study, the more positively students fantasized about the future, the less depressed they were at the moment, but the more depressed they were got over time. So we found as pleasurable as these fantasies are at the moment, they do predict low effort and low well being and low development over time. And that led us then into these experiments. You were talking about the energy.

Yeah. That's fantastic. All of that is astonishing. Tell us more about the experiments with the energy.

Yeah. Then we went on and thought, now if we induce positive fantasies and dreams about the future in people, as compared to negative thoughts about the future, or as compared to factual thoughts, or as compared to no thoughts at all, if we do that if we induce these positive fantasies, would then people just get more relaxed and less energized? Because we reason if these positive fantasies feign already having achieved the desired future, then people should relax because they feel they're already there. And then they can calmly relax and don't need to put in all the effort anymore needed to achieve the positive future. And that's exactly what we found. So people who had been induced to fantasize positively about the future, actually their blood pressure went down, and not only their blood pressure went down, but they also felt less energized than the people in the control groups, those who chanced these positive future or those who were induced to produce factual thoughts or no.

Thoughts at all, which then of course is correlated and led to the lower levels of motivation and ultimately the lower levels of action, then the lower levels of performance and success.

Right, Exactly. So those who had been induced to positively fantasize felt less energized and this little energy then, or less energy mediated the success, for example, success in doing all your work in a kind of week of daily life. So those who had been induced to positively fantasize about success in the upcoming week felt less energized and these feelings of less energization actually mediated or predicted then the lower performance during the week.

Every time, I mean, I read it, thought about it, it's amazing, even as I hear you describe it, it's astonishing. It's so counter to what I think we've been conditioned to think and so powerful. And I want to get to what you discovered you could add to the process to healthfully energize and just make a distinction. One of the things when I shared this, one of the comments I got was that, is she saying that we shouldn't relax and, and kind of take a breath and all that good stuff? And my understanding of the distinction is that of course we want to oscillate and know how to relax and recover and take care of our immune system, induce the relaxation response, whatever. But when we're setting and envisioning our future, then we want to bring reality in which is less relaxing and more catalyzing that necessity to act. Is that accurate?

That's exactly right. And that's actually what we learned from our participants in these early studies. We learned that those who fantasized about the desired future, but at the same time also considered the obstacles and the hindrances and the temptations on the way to implement the positive future, that those were the ones who were more successful. So we actually observed our participants in the prior studies to actually come up with what we call a strategy. And the strategy is called mental contrasting. Mental contrasting of the future and the reality. And what mental contrasting really is is very simple. People imagine fulfilling their wishes and attaining their goals, and they really imagine it. So that is exactly what we just talked about as positive dreams about the desired future. So these positive dreams and positive fantasies. But then after they experience these positive fantasies about the future, then they shift gears and then they say, oh, what holds me back from actually achieving my goals? And what holds me back from actually fulfilling this wish? And the combination of these positive dreams about the future and then saying to yourself, what is it in me that holds me back, that stops me from going all the way to fulfill these wishes? What is my main obstacle? And then imagining that obstacle that will then make me aware whether I should actually go and invest and implement the desired future, or whether I should actually sort of say, oh, these obstacles are too big, they are just not worth actually taking all the effort of overcoming. And then people will kind of let go or they will postpone to a better time or, or they will actually delegate. So mental contrasting of the positive future, of the desired future with the aspects of reality that are in me that stand in the way of actually implementing this future. What it does, what it helps you, is understand whether these obstacles can be overcome. And then I really fully invest, then I go for it, then I'm determined, then I really love it, or whether the obstacles are such that I better let go because striving is futile anyway. And then I can let go without bad conscience and say, okay, I put my energies into the more promising endeavors.

I love that distinction. And so to go back to the beginning, a couple of things that I want to highlight. One, it is really important to start with the positive fantasy and the wish for the future. And your research showed that you can't do it the other way around, right?

Correct.

You don't start with the reality and the challenges and then try to imagine the ideal future. You want to start with the ideal future and then rub it up against reality and the challenges. And I love the way you say, discover the obstacle within us, not in the external environment, but within us that will preclude us from attaining that wish. And, and then again, you just made such the big distinction of then when we're willing to look at reality rather than just stare at our vision board and imagine the ideal outcome and fantasize about it, when we see the potential obstacles, we can either choose to engage or disengage. And that disengagement is really, really important, right?

Yeah, that is important because so many people kind of fantasize for years and sometimes even decades about fulfilling some wishes they have. And these fantasies never really bear out in action. And that's where we actually are, where we started off when we talked about the detrimental effects of positive fantasies. But when you actually consider what it is in you that holds you back from actually fulfilling your wishes, then you understand what. What the obstacle, what the true obstacle, the real obstacle, is in you. And then you will understand whether you can overcome it and whether you want to overcome it, or whether you want to actually say, okay, come on, this is a ridiculous wish I have. Let's bury that, and let's go for something which is actually more feasible or more worthwhile pursuing. So mental contrasting, in a way, is a strategy to clean up your life, to really go for these things which are worthwhile. They belong to you and you belong to them, and they are feasible. And to let go from projects that are either not worth pursuing or just simply not feasible. And then you can rid yourself of these kind of heavy loads of too many goals, of too many wishes, and you can get free for new, but then also very promising projects.

Yeah, I love it. Can we go into a little bit more on the challenging but feasible? So the mental contrasting helps us with that, but can you tell us why it's so important that we have challenging goals at Stracha but that are feasible as well?

Yeah, if I want to implement a goal or if I want to fulfill a wish and I have positive fantasies for the very easy wishes, like just sort of grabbing a donut or, you know, just going and opening the window or something, some kind of routine things, the positive fantasy or the sheer image of that action is enough for doing it. But when it's getting a little bit more complex, and our dear wishes most of the time are complex to fulfill, when it's getting more complex, when it's getting more challenging, then I need these strategies and then I need mental contrasting. So for the easy wishes, I don't need any strategies, I just do it. But for the more complex and more complicated wishes, that really needs kind of thought and effort, then I need the strategy. So that way we say, okay, a wish that is challenging, but then also it needs to be feasible if I want to fulfill that wish, it needs to be feasible in the sense that I need to have the means of actually fulfilling my wish. So if you want to fulfill a wish, then you can Sort of gear up or kind of sort of come up with a wish that is challenging because there you need the strategy and that is feasible, meaning there the strategy will work. So mental contrasting is good for wishes that are challenging and feasible. If you want to fulfill these wishes, if you want to sort out your wishes, if you want to understand what you want to go for and what you want to actually let go, then you can say, okay, any wish should be thought of. I can come up with any wish in my life. And then by doing mental contrasting, I will discover whether it is feasible or whether it is not feasible. And then I can go for the feasible ones and let go of, from the, from the unfeasible ones.

That's great. And even break potentially, if you just have a big goal that you find is actually unfeasible in the near term, well, then break that down, extend it as a possible, maybe. But let's look at it as maybe a discrete chunk that you can meet the standard of challenging and feasible. Right. And then kind of baby step your way to the bigger goal.

You can do that too. I mean, you can use metal contrasting for these large life goals. And if you want to get clarity, just think about a wish which is kind of very dear to you, and then apply mental contrasting to it, and then you will get clarity. Or if you have a kind of funny feeling in your stomach about something, let's say a telephone call or a meeting or some relationship issue or some kind of project in your work or something, apply mental contrasting to it. And then you will understand what you really want to get out of that, and what is your impediment to getting out of it, what you want. And then you will understand, just by understanding what the obstacle is, you will understand whether you really want to overcome that obstacle or whether you want to actually sort of let go of the project and turn to something else.

That's great. So that's the first kind of half. And obviously it evolved. And we'll talk about how it did the MC in the original mci. So let's assume that we've mentally contrasted. We have a wish, we have the obstacle within us, we've mentally contrasted that. And then you're working with your husband, right, and his work on implementation intentions to actually make a plan to achieve that. Can you tell us about that?

Right. Before I, before I go to talk about implementation intentions, let me briefly say something about how mental contrasting works. Mental contrasting is an imagery technique. You imagine the future and you identify and imagine the obstacle and what it does it non consciously connects the future, the wish fulfillment, with the obstacle. And then it connects the obstacle with the means to overcome the obstacle. And it also helps you to interpret the reality as an obstacle. So now the party, for example, on Saturday night is not a fun party anymore, but it's an obstacle to getting a good grade on the exam on Tuesday. So once you imagine achieving a good grade in the exam and then you think about the party, the party is now an obstacle and not a fun event anymore. So it changes the interpretation of the reality, the interpretation of the party. So all that happens non consciously, including changes in energization and blood pressure that happens non consciously as a consequence of of the conscious imagery technique of mental contrasting. And the interesting thing is that these non conscious processes then mediate or then predict the behavior change, meaning the high effort you put into getting a good grade in the exam on Tuesday or whatever wish you just had. So it is a conscious image technique leading to non conscious processes that then will affect behavior change so that you can fulfill your wishes on the one hand or let go from those that are unfeasible. And we know that these non conscious processes are important in behavior change. What we also know is that the mental contrasting exercise links the obstacle of reality to the instrumental means of overcoming the obstacle. But if the obstacle is really kind of difficult to overcome, then Peter Gollwitzer, who is the creator of implementation intentions, and I thought we could actually put in addition to mental contrasting, add to mental contrasting implementation intentions. And implementation intentions are simple. If situation X, then I will behavior goal directed behavior Y plans. So I would say if obstacle, if that obstacle occurs, then I will behavior to overcome obstacle. So that should strengthen that link created parametal contrasting between the obstacle and the means to overcome the obstacle, the behavior to overcome the obstacle even more. And that then led to what we call mental contrasting with implementation intentions or NCII in the scientific literature and in the world it's called whoop because it is a four step process entailing mental contrasting on the one side and implementation intentions on the other side.

I love it. So MCII for feeling businesslike and whoop for having fun with it. So whoop, wish outcome, obstacle. Can you walk us through that?

Sure. Whoop is this four step strategy. And before actually you do whoop, you might want to become a little bit calm and relaxed and you might want to say to yourself, okay, this is a moment which I take for myself. And then you start and ask yourself actually what is a very important wish I would like to realize I would like to fulfill what is a wish I might have not thought about for a while, or a wish which is on my mind all the time, doesn't matter. But it needs to be a wish which is actually very dear to you, can be a wish for your life, can be a wish for the next four weeks, can be a wish for the next week, can be a wish for the next 24 hours, it can be a wish for the upcoming meeting. So the main thing is that you take a wish which is actually dear to you, which is important to you, and then you could say, okay, I take a wish which is challenging, but at the same time it is feasible. So something I actually could do, I could achieve. And then you formulate that wish in three to four words. So that's the W in vub. The next step is that you say, what would be the best thing, the best outcome if I fulfilled myself that wish, what would be the best thing? It can be an emotion, can be a result, can be a consequence, but one best thing. And again you put it in front of your mind in three to four words. And once you did that, you imagine experiencing that best outcome, and you really go into your imagery and you let your mind go. And then you take a few minutes to actually imagine that. So that's the first O in woop. And once you imagined that best outcome, you change gears. And then you say, actually, what is it in me that stops me from fulfilling that wish and experiencing that outcome? What is it in me that holds me back? What is my inner main obstacle? And then again, you formulate that in front of your mind in three to four words. And once you did that, you let your mind go again like before with the outcome. You just imagine that obstacle occurring, and you take a few moments to actually imagine that obstacle. That's the second okay in whoop. And once you did that, when you have imagined that obstacle, then you come to the P for plan. And the first step there is you say, what could I do to overcome that obstacle? What could I think in order to conquer, to master that obstacle? What action could I take to overcome that obstacle? And then you think about that behavior and you formulate it again in three to four words. And then you form a simple if obstacle. Now you put in the obstacle, then I will behavior. And now you put in your behavior plan. And then you repeat that plan once more in front of your mind. You say, if obstacle, imagine that obstacle, then I will behavior. And now you imagine that behavior. And now you can repeat it Once more. If obstacle, then I will behavior. And that's basically it. So that was the P in the whoop. So you had wish, outcome, obstacle, and then plan. And that's all. That's the four step process procedure of whoop.

Wonderfully articulated. I actually walked through that guided imagery as we did it.

This is great.

Oh, it's so good. And as you said, we can apply it to our lives. We can apply it to the next 12 months, to the next month or week, or even day, or even meeting. And I've been doing it on just kind of practicing on all of those fronts. And it's really, really cool just to challenge ourselves to see what do we really want here. Okay. Wow, that would feel great. And then what might get in the way? And then what would I do in that situation? From the very mundane to the more significant. I'm just loving practicing it and playing with it.

Yeah, you can actually practice it. Yeah, you can ritualize it in your life. What I do is I do my whoop in the morning and then I go through the day and sometimes in the evening. I feel this meeting went well today. Or I think, oh, I really don't know, but I just needed to go jogging in the evening. Or I say, we had. My paper is done. I just don't know how I did that. And then when I really think about it, then I did that. I formulated that wish in the morning and I whooped it. But since whoop produces these non conscious consequences, which I've been talking about before, I don't realize that I actually act in line with what I formulated in the whoop exercise. And that's fun because later on you say, oh my, I kind of acted that way, but it was effortless. And that's a nice thing. It's a kind of. At the moment, once you act, it's effortless. It's a little bit. You need mental effort while you're doing it in the imagery technique. Certainly it needs some mental effort to go through the four step process. But then when you're actually acting, it is effortless.

You refer to the non conscious. It reminds me of Heidi Grant Halvorson, who's obviously a big fan and student of your work and references it in Succeed. She compares our non conscious mind to a NASA supercomputer and our conscious mind to a post it note. Essentially, is it almost as if we're programming that non conscious mind to just do what needs to get done and that operates at such a more powerful level than our basic consciousness?

Actually, Heidi Is a student of us who worked with us here at nyu.

Oh, I forgot she was at NYU with you. Okay, I didn't make that connection.

That was fun. No, sure. I mean it is a little bit like at the moment you determine how you will act in the problematic situation and by doing that you conquer the situation in a way which we usually are not. Usually we don't have this help because when we say wish, outcome, obstacle, plan, then we have all these non conscious processes already in place. Once we actually think about this wish once, all this kind of runs off by itself and that helps us a lot. We don't need to decide again whether we want to drink water. Let's say we want to drink a little less wine or a little less alcohol or we want to eat less or we want to jog more. We don't need to think in this situation anymore. We just do it. And in that respect, it is a little bit like we program ourselves to do that what we think is good for us.

Yeah. And is that kind of basically the pre commitment concepts of kind of willpower, preservation, all that good stuff?

Yeah, I mean whatever term you put on it, I prefer to sort of, you know, go and just see what we found in the lab and describe it. You know, we know that the future and the obstacle is linked. We know that the obstacle is linked to the instrumental means to overcome it. So in that way this you can say that is willpower. Yeah, but it's non conscious willpower.

I love it. I love conservative. Let's look at the data. This is what the data can tell us. Let's not go outside of that. When you do just very practically, when you're doing your morning whoops, is it imagining your broader goals, your life goals or more the day goals or a little bit of both.

If I have a kind of life decision to do, then it's a life goal. But very often it's just a day goal. It's, you know, what do I wish for today? What is it that I would be happy to have accomplished in the evening? You know, maybe a nice interaction with some family members or some project I would like to complete or some fitness issue or just having a good time finally or kind of not being rushed or you know, whatever it is, whatever just falls for today. And then in the evening I can say, okay, what did I do? And those things which I completed, great. And those which I had been kind of tackling, but half completed, then that appears as a new wish on the next day. So it's a Companion Woop is a companion which you can take in your life and it will help you to master your life challenges. It's not something a pill which you throw in and then you're suddenly the CEO of Coca Cola or something. That's. That's not what it is. It's a companion you can take in your pocket and you can apply it to yourself. You don't need a coach or a trainer or a therapist or anybody. You can apply it to yourself. You can emancipate yourself. So you have always somebody who is sort of helping you to conquer the challenges in your life.

So good. Well, we covered a lot and I appreciate how articulate and concise and clear your wisdom is. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you'd like to make sure we discuss?

Well, maybe there's one thing. If you visit the whoopmylife.org website, you will be able to kind of follow what we're doing, what the new research is showing. We have a couple of gadgets on there, like an app where you get all the instructions for Whoop. We have a little kind of audio guide where you can actually do whoop while you're jogging. Lots of little things or whoop cards or something. And this is kind of all free, so you can just go there and visit it and enjoy it. And I really do hope that Whoop will help a lot of people to just, you know, lead a better life, a kind of more involved life, involved in the family, involved in the friends, involved in work, involved in nature so that they can use the time they have to a more fulfilling way.

That's fantastic. And was definitely excited to make sure people know about Whoopmylife.org, a bunch of cool things and tools and the apps. I've already had people giving me feedback that they've already downloaded the app and they're loving it. The idea of the card is so cool and then that I didn't know about the audio little thing you can go through while you're going through the jog and other things. Such good work. Again, thank you. I appreciate all the energy and the decades of work that you've put in to help us get more clarity on this and just really happy to be connected.

Thank you, Brian. Thank you a lot for having me.

We hope you enjoyed this optimal living interview. Please visit BrianJohnson me for more.

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