Positive Thinking Day

What the day is

Positive Thinking Day is observed on September 13. The evidence on it is genuinely mixed, and the popular version is the part that holds up worst.

Origin and background

Start with the finding that causes the most trouble. Across a series of studies, people who vividly imagined achieving a goal subsequently put in less effort and achieved less than people who did not. The proposed explanation is that the fantasy delivers some of the satisfaction of the achievement in advance, and a mind that has already enjoyed the outcome is less mobilized to go and get it. Optimism about the future helps; dwelling on the imagined success does not.

Affirmations have a similar problem. A well-known study found that repeating a positive statement about yourself improved mood for people who already had high self-esteem, and made people with low self-esteem feel worse. The likely reason is that a statement too far from what you believe invites your mind to produce counterexamples, so the exercise ends up rehearsing the evidence against itself.

What does have support is more specific and less comfortable. The technique with the best evidence involves holding the positive outcome and the obstacle in mind together: picture what you want, then identify honestly what inside you gets in the way, then make an if-then plan attaching a particular response to a particular trigger. Those plans work because they move the decision out of the moment when motivation is lowest.

There is also a group for whom anxiety is functional. Defensive pessimists deliberately imagine what could go wrong and prepare for it, and performing that way suits them; telling them to cheer up measurably worsens their results.

None of this argues for gloom. It argues that hope is a starting point rather than a method.

How to take part

• Pair the wish with the obstacle instead of picturing only the win.
• Make one if-then plan: if this happens, I will do that.
• Skip affirmations you do not believe. They tend to backfire.
• If preparing for the worst is how you cope, keep doing it.