Mental Contrasting, a Way of Avoiding Naive Optimism

  Mental contrasting is an exercise and perspective that helps you see things from a more realistic point of view. It can be a great tool to achieve your goals. It also opposes, to a certain extent, naive optimism. Many texts speak of the benefits of optimism without specifying that it occurs under certain conditions. Sometimes, it’s thought that it’s enough to ‘think positively’ for everything to turn out well. This isn’t only naive, but also, in many cases can be counterproductive to achieving your goals. While a positive attitude and hope for good results can help you achieve any…