The idea that positive thinking alone can change a person’s circumstances is a seductive thought.  It’s something that we all, at some level, want to believe is true. 

It’s easy to head down this path.  For sure, positive thinking is better than negative thinking, but what happens when this becomes your sole strategy for success?  

According to new research highlighted in the New Yorker Magazine, you’ll probably end up with a good dose of disappointment and failure—exactly opposite of the success you’re thinking about experiencing.

Adam Alter an assistant professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, tracks the renewed growth of the positive thinking movement back to 2006:

Since publishing “The Secret,” in 2006, the Australian author Rhonda Byrne has been writing self-help manifestos based on the idea that people who think positive thoughts are rewarded with happiness, wealth, influence, wisdom, and success….

Byrne’s idea isn’t new—it’s been a mainstay among greeting-card companies, motivational speakers, and schoolteachers for decades—but she’s become one of its most visible prophets.

‘The way to change a lack of belief is very simple,’ Byrne writes. ‘Begin thinking the opposite thoughts to what you’ve been thinking about yourself: that you can do it, and that you have everything within you to do it.’

How does Byrne’s philosophy work out in real life?  Not very well.  

While you can always find a few (what Byrne calls) “heros,” the vast majority of people end up even more frustrated than when they started.  Alter highlights some of the research that debunks this philosophy:

According to a great deal of research, positive fantasies may lessen your chances of succeeding.

In one experiment, the social psychologists Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked eighty-three German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on the subject of transition into work life, graduating from university, looking for and finding a job.”

Two years later, they approached the same students and asked about their post-college job experiences. Those who harbored positive fantasies put in fewer job applications, received fewer job offers, and ultimately earned lower salaries.

The same was true in other contexts, too. Students who fantasized were less likely to ask their romantic crushes on a date and more likely to struggle academically. Hip-surgery patients also recovered more slowly when they dwelled on positive fantasies of walking without pain.

The research documents the dismal results of this philosophy, but it doesn’t offer any information on why this philosophy doesn’t work.   Alter offers two hypotheses on this topic:

1.  Less Preparation.  Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can’t persuade himself to believe are good.

2.  False Feeling of Working Towards Goals.  [Positive] fantasies hamper progress and dull the will to succeed.  Imagining a positive outcome [just] conveys the sense that you’re approaching your goals, which takes the edge off the need to achieve.

So, now that everyone is depressed, what does work?  We’ll cover that in the next WorkPuzzle.  There is a success philosophy that is counterintuitive to positive thinking that researchers have shown to produce much more reliable results. 

For those of you who are high performers already, you’ll instantly connect with these ideas.  

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle.