“Believe in yourself, and you can achieve whatever you put your mind to.”
Teens regularly hear such sentiments from social media, celebrities, teachers, coaches, and often, their families. But while statements like this are intended to encourage and inspire young people, they often have the unintended opposite effect, resulting in a potentially debilitating sense of confusion, failure, and self-doubt.
We have long been trained by self-help gurus and lifestyle influencers to view positive thinking as a cure-all while, in fact, simply believing in a positive future and dreaming of achievement actually decreases our chances of attaining our goals.
Why? Because dreams and wishes don’t motivate us to act. Instead, they trick our brains into thinking we have already experienced success, relaxing us and keeping us from doing the hard work.
Picture 7th-grade math students from the classes of two different teachers. Three days before their unit test, Teacher A tells his students to visualize themselves getting A’s, while Teacher B tells her students to visualize a negative test outcome.
While we are conditioned to expect positive thinkers to perform better, the reality is the opposite. Because the students in Teacher A’s class have tricked their brains into already experiencing a sense of success before the test, they now feel much less urgency or motivation to study for it. Meanwhile, Teacher B’s students have visualized the uncomfortable feeling of failure, which prompts them to work harder to avoid that failure becoming a reality. As a result, the negative visualization students study harder and subsequently perform better on the test than their positive-thinking counterparts.
Simply thinking positively also sets teens up for failure and disappointment because it can lead them to spend their time focused on unrealistic and unattainable goals.
Take, for example, the most cringe-worthy auditions you can remember from reality competitions like American Idol. Young singers with objectively little talent enter the room convinced they will be the next platinum recording artist because they have been told that positive thought can get them anywhere. And when the judges inevitably tell them their voices are reminiscent of screeching cats, they experience complete shock and confusion at their failure. Many refuse to accept the feedback, insisting that the (highly experienced) judges don’t know talent when they see it, and state that they will continue to pursue their musical dreams.
As caregivers, we don’t want our kids to settle for mediocrity, and it is natural and healthy to dream with them about the possibilities life holds. But if positive thinking and big dreams alone are not the answer to success, how can we as caregivers support our teens to live their best lives without risking intense frustration, repeated failure, and a sense of hopelessness?
We can teach them to dream smarter through the following steps:
- We can help our teens understand that positive thinking is not enough. When your teen tells you they plan to cure cancer when they grow up, it’s okay to allow them to hold that vision of their future. After all, we hope that someone CAN cure cancer, and why not them? However, it is also crucial to do a reality check with them, to discuss how achieving such a lofty goal will require sustained motivation and hard work in order for it to become reality. You could draw a comparison to how even the most naturally talented athletes don’t make it to the pros without the passion and drive to pursue their dreams to the fullest extent.
- Teach your teen to visualize outcomes AND identify obstacles. While positive thinking alone is not productive, positive visualization along with identifying potential obstacles is. Having your teen identify obstacles to their goal will ground them in reality, and allow them to decide whether their goal is attainable. For instance, if your teen decides they’d like to be on the varsity swim team, they might identify obstacles such as, “My fitness level isn’t great right now,” and “I have a lot of other activities that keep me busy already.” Your teen can then decide if they are willing and able to remove these obstacles, or if they’d prefer to choose an alternative to swim team.
- Support your teen in making an if-then plan for overcoming obstacles. If your teen decides to pursue their goal after identifying the obstacles, they will need to determine a plan for removing them. You can help them with this by asking open-ended if-then questions. For the swim team example, you could ask, “If you don’t feel your fitness is good enough, then how can you improve it?” and, “If your schedule is too full for swim team, how will you change it?” By making a specific, achievable plan for overcoming the identified obstacles, your teen will significantly increase their chances of success.
- Remember that dreams CAN be useful, and allow your teens to dream. While dreams alone are not enough to create positive change, they are still an important part of adolescent and adult life. Dreams can relieve tension and relax us, get us through tough times that are beyond our control, and reveal to us what we really want in life. So keep dreaming!
Sources: Gabrielle Oettingen. Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation. New York: Penguin, 2014.
Angie McIntyre, Clear Trails Youth Coaching Angie is a Certified Youth Resilience Coach and Licensed School Psychologist based in the Twin Cities Metro Area. Angie provides virtual and in-person life coaching services to young people ages 13-25, and family coaching to caregivers of children ages 10-13. You can learn more at www.ClearTrails.net email her at angie@ClearTrails.net
