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The Best Possible Self exercise

The most researched Positive Psychology Intervention?

The Best Possible Self exercise is a positive psychology intervention that has been shown to boost positive mood, hope and goal achievement.

In this article, I’m going to take you on a tour of the origins of the best possible self exercise and tell you exactly how you can use it to reach your goals and enhance your life.

I’ve included a downloadable audio file of the exercise as I deliver it as part of my positive psychology coaching program, and a script for you to use if you would like to make your own recording rather than listen to my charming Liverpudlian tones.

Research on the Best Possible Self exercise

The “Best Possible Self” exercise invites you to focus on and imagine what your best possible self looks like at some point in the future when you have achieved all of your goals and objectives.

It was initially developed as a written exercise as part of a research study conducted by Laura King (2001).  King was influenced by the earlier work of James W. Pennebaker, who developed Writing therapy as a form of therapy for alleviating distress associated with past trauma.  Pennebaker proposed that actively inhibiting thoughts and feelings about traumatic life events required effort. This effort serves to create stress on the body which is then associated with increased and sustained physiological activity, obsessive thinking and ruminating on the the trauma event and it’s symptoms. These processes, Pennebaker argued, contribute to longer term physical and psychological distress.

According to Pennebaker’s theory, writing about traumatic events reduces the degree of effort we are putting into inhibiting our memories, thoughts and feelings about the event. This leads to a reduction in stress which results in an improvement in overall wellbeing.

Based on these ideas, King tested out what would happen when people wrote not just about past traumatic events but also what happened when they wrote about a purely positive theme, their Best Possible Self.

This is the text used as the best possible self instruction in the original study:

Clip from Journal article regarding best possible self

The findings from the study showed that the Best Possible Self exercise boosted positive feelings, optimism and insight variables as measured by the subjective well-being scale and Life orientation test. 

Graph showing data from best possible self study King 2001

The effect of the Best Possible Self exercise on positive psychology related variables has since been replicated in many subsequent studies making it one of the most researched interventions in positive psychology.

How does the Best Possible Self exercise work?

In terms of why it works, there are several theories.  Some researchers have linked it to Self-determination theory, suggesting that focusing upon a desired personal future and self-defined  goals,  connects to SDT’s basic psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. 

Basic psychological needs for motivation as per self determination theory
Self-determination theory: Basic Psychological Needs

Other researchers suggest that the exercise reduces goal ambivalence, which in turn leads to increases in self-regulation and optimism.  Another explanation invokes the Broaden and Build theory of positive emotion, and suggests simply that the act of reflecting upon an ideal self generates an increase in positive emotion, which in turn unhooks from negative attentional focus, expanding awareness and generative thinking.

Image of the broaden and build theory of positive emotion.
Broaden and Build theory of positive emotion

Best Possible adaptations

Since it was first developed by King in 2001, the best possible self has been modified from being just a written intervention.  It has been used as a guided imagery or meditative practice, it has been delivered as an online intervention with added imagery, music and videos, and as a hand-drawn intervention.  In some cases, where a “Best possible self” might be overwhelming or challenging, it can be adapted to a version that just focuses on a “better possible self”. 

For me, the use of a combination of Best Possible Self and Better possible self is particularly interesting.  In terms of coaching, in which we are routinely linking longer term goals to day to day actions, just imagine the benefits of beginning a guided meditation or imagery practice with the best possible self, and then working backwards to the “better possible self”, even to the better possible self for just that day.  Reflecting on the actions that today’s better possible self would be taking in the service of those larger, long term goals – how we would be doing them, how we would feel once we have done them – is a powerful self-regulatory tool in enhancing goal progression.

Try it yourself

So, that’s the background to the best possible self exercise.  Now I’m going to take you through my own modified version which is partly based on the mindfulness based character strengths guided meditation developed by Ryan Niemiec, and includes aspects of emotional and physiological connection and savouring, which I’ve included based upon my experience in emotional and body focused work as a psychotherapist.

For the meditation, fast forward to 10:16 in the video.

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