Mental Contrasting - Set and Achieve your Goals
30 min - Individual - Indoor - Outdoor - Onetime
Mental Contrasting - Set and Achieve your Goals
Mental contrasting is a visualization technique involving first thinking of a positive future outcome followed by visualising likely obstacles.
Purpose
The Mental Constrasting technique was developed by psychologist Dr. Gabrielle Oettingen and works by asking you to visualise a positive future outcome and then for you to think about the obstacles. For example, if thinking about losing weight by not eating snacks during the day, you could consider how you will handle the feeling of cravings, or desire for comfort food. Perhaps there are some strategies you can put in place to handle such obstacles. In this manner it differs from Positive Thinking in that it is solution and goal focused and considers both positive and negative aspects of a situation. To assist in using Mental Contrasting, Dr. Oettingen has developed a structured approach called WOOP which stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle and Plan.

How to do it

  1. Visualise your wish
  2. Think about the outcome(s)
  3. Now consider the potential obstacles – those things that might stop you achieving the outcomes
  4. Finally you develop a plan that can deal with the obstacles should they occur.

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