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Available for over a year

To achieve any major life goal, conventional wisdom tells us we must think positively. Picture yourself delivering the perfect presentation and it shall be so; envisage the ideal job interview and it will go well; imagine yourself sprinting first across the finish line and you will romp home as champion. While these strategies sound compelling, they have been shown to backfire. In the first of 5 programmes on The Power of Negative Thinking, psychology writer and proud curmudgeon Oliver Burkeman explores the positivity 'backfire effect', and finds that people are often more successful - as are organisations, armies and governments - when they focus on reasons they are likely to fail.