Conventional thinking:  I should think positive in order to achieve my goals.

Contrarian thinking: If you don’t think about the problems that are getting in the way of achieving your goals you won’t overcome them.

According to Greg Helmstetter, CEO of myGoals.com, an online goal-setting site, instead of thinking positive you should do just the opposite:

“If you don’t identify the issues preventing you from reaching your goal, you won’t be able to overcome them.”

Helmstetter suggests listing all the reasons you won’t be able to overcome the issues and tacking them straight up.  For example, if your goal is to take up exercising, make a list of all the obstacles that will prevent you from doing it.  Next, each day tackle one of those obstacles.  Say you don’t have any exercise shoes.  Your goals for Day 1 should be to go shopping for exercise tools.  If you don’t have a place to exercise, on Day 2 your goal should be to find a gym.  Keep doing this until you have run out of excuses for not exercising.

The key to thinking negative is to take action to eliminate all the negatives, until you no longer have any negatives to think about.

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