Mental opposition
In her new book, psychologist Gabriel Oettingen says that the way to achieve our goals is to combine positive thinking with visualizing the obstacles that get in our way. This process she calls "mental opposition". Mental opposition debunks one of the greatest deceptions, that personal or social change can be achieved effortlessly.
Psychologists Julie Norem and Nancy Kantor found that pessimists succeeded precisely because of their pessimism, "because negative thinking transformed anxiety into action." By imagining the worst-case scenario, defensive pessimists are motivated to do more preparation and harder effort.
Even the ancient Stoic philosophers advised to practice "mental anticipation of evil", i.e. deliberate visualization of the worst-case scenario. This helps to reduce anxiety about the future: when you soberly imagine the most negative scenario, you usually come to the conclusion that you can handle it. And Kabbalists of the past spent a lot of time preparing for an event, since it is mental preparation and intention that decide its outcome.