Some years ago, I went on a "positivity" course. My sister had died, my father had died, and I'd had cancer, and a broken heart, and I wasn't, quite frankly, feeling that cheerful. Perhaps, I thought, I could brainwash myself into feeling a bit better.
And so in a central London hotel, with cream walls and a blue carpet, and tables with those pump-top coffee flasks of sour filter coffee, and sad little plates of biscuits, I tried. Paul McKenna did his best. And it's worked for him! It's clearly worked for him. The man who has learnt to "turbo-charge" his brain with "the Power of a Positive Perspective" has, apparently, thought himself into being very successful (or at least very famous) and very, very rich. Assuring us that we could "Master Our Emotions and Run Our Own Brains" and "Design Our Destiny" and unlock "The Secrets to Inner Happiness and Contentment," he had us making pictures in our mind, and taking part in orchestrated laughter, as if laughter can blow the problems of the world away.
Sometimes, it can. Real, spontaneous, cheekbone-aching laughter can blow the problems of the world away, at least for a moment. But forced laughter can't and pictures can't. Or at least, they can't for me. I sat through the weekend, and drank the coffee, and ate the biscuits, and even listened to the CDs, but it didn't make any difference. I still felt sad.
It was, actually, a relief to stop trying. Just as it was a relief, when I told friends the results of the biopsy, and they looked me in the eye and told me it was awful. What wasn't a relief was the handful of people who said, "Don't worry, you'll be fine!" Oh, really? So you're psychic? Or you've secretly retrained as an oncologist? Or are you just trying to make yourself feel better?
There's a lot to be said for negative thinking. Not only because it spares people the tooth-grinding irritation of Pollyannaish predictions of eternal sunshine based on precisely nothing (and usually coupled with the aggressive assertion that they're "good") whose chief aim is to imply that you're rivals in a competition that they're winning, but simply because it makes the world a better place. It makes the world a safer place and a nicer one.
And the experts, apparently, agree. "Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts," says a professor of psychology in this month's Australian Science Journal, "negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world." People "in negative mood," he concludes, can cope with more demanding situations than their sunny neighbours and are "less prone to judgmental errors, more resistant to eyewitness distortions and better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages."
Well, I could have told him that! Who started the Iraq war? A man who told Vanity Fair, after his first "election" to office, that he was "not really the type to go through deep wrestling with [his] soul," and who, in his new incarnation as a motivational speaker, told an audience at Fort Worth last week about the rug he picked out for the Oval Office to reflect his "optimism." And a man who, according to his Rottweiler-in-chief, Alastair Campbell, "had this extraordinary ability whatever was going on around him to put a smile on his face and go into his room and make people feel better about being there." But not, perhaps, the soldiers whose limbs have been blown off in the conflict, or the wives of the soldiers who've been killed, or the people in the country he set out to save, who have watched more than 100,000 of their compatriots die.
And who wrecked the global economy? Men and women (but mostly men) who sold mortgages to people with no credit rating, or savings, or sometimes even income (beyond their welfare check) and then, when it all went a bit pear-shaped, wrapped up the debt in a nice velvet ribbon and sold it on. And thought it would all be fine. It would all be fine because they said it would, and because they said it loudly, everyone believed them.
No wonder "Dr. Doom" is doing rather well, aka Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the global financial meltdown and whose economic forecasting is proving the hottest new thing in town. Bad news is the new good news as the boys who suffered a (mercifully only momentary) blip in their bonuses force themselves to listen to the boring bust stuff so they can quickly boomerang back to boom.
Some of these people, frankly, deserve to be disemboweled. Most people who are, however, don't. Of 71 patients who were, according to a recent study, because they had cancer of the colon, 41 were told that they could have surgery to reconnect their bowels while the others were told that they couldn't. The ones without hope were, apparently, much happier. They just got on with their lives. Perhaps they knew, as the Bible says, that "hope deferred makes the heart grow sick," and perhaps they knew that Dante's exhortation to the entrants of hell, to abandon all hope, was actually the key to a kind of heaven.
Follow Christina Patterson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/queenchristina_
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I believe that by deducting the truth without illusions has helped me deal with my Epilepsy and now the recent developmen
I experience
We can be both, yes? Darkness and Light?
Thank you, Christina, for writing a valuable article that resonates in these difficult times.
And there's a big difference between negative thinking and factual thinking,
The choice between optimism and pessimism is a actually false choice,
We need to embrace the duality of facing facts AND holding onto our faith that everything we be OK in the end.
As someone who was probably born a sunny side upper, people often assume that I'm ignorant of the brutal facts, when in reality I'm often all too aware of them, but the only way I can summon the courage to look awful situations in the face, is by holding onto an unwavering faith that the arc of the universe eventually bends towards the greater good, however long and ugly the process may be.
The people who got us into a war, and bankrupted are economy weren't optimists, they were greedy egotistica
Speaking on behalf of optimists, yes we need reminders to look at the facts, but if you want to change the world, you can't just tell everyone how awful it is, you have to show them how great it can be.
A healthy dose of negative thinking would have saved the lives of those positive thinkers who died in James Arthur Ray's sweat lodge the other week.
While there is some real truth behind the positive thinking message, it is truth with a small "t", and it is balanced by another truth with a small "t" about the virtue of negative thinking.
Unfortunat
All these excesses are just the latest manifestat
I recommend that you read Barbara Ehrenreich
But overall, I want to be "happy"-- and I seem to choose to go to that place, once I acknowledg
Christina.
The "negativit
Bad feeling is a blunt tool at best, generally worthless, and typically harmful.
If you have serious, important, hard work to do it's OK to be serious and focused. You don't have to be positive or negative just present to what's in front of you and take the appropriat
yes, there's a smile behind that !
it's like glamor
it can get a bit much
As a person who is often called negative or pessimisti
It astounds me how many people rely on self-help gurus who quote platitudes at them. Have I had rough times in life - obviously. Do I think 'when god closes a door, he opens a window'? No. I get so sick of the pressure society puts on people to always have a 'happy face' in direct contrast to what might be going on around them.
Admittedly I like codified results. I do believe that 'the plural of anecdote is not data.' When I need assistance through tough times, I go to a cognitive therapist who puts out very reasonable and logical solutions for me. What she never does is expect me to smile winningly in the face of tragedy. She allows me to grieve when I need to & gives me a kick when I wallow.
What isn't said by those who say that positive energy can create positive change is that bad things happen to everyone and there is no way to control life, just ways to manage it. I find rationalit
Irrational people ALWAYS claim, irrational
And how can you argue with THAT, amiright?! (heh)
http://www
I think the way out of this paradox is to avoid over-relia
What counts is acceptance while suspending judgement and evaluation
Once this is completed, it may very well happen that the past ceases to be negative. Which is kinda like what the whole exercise was supposed to bring about.
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The concept of grace finds its roots in Christiani
Anyone who reads the Christian Bible HONESTLY..
One could make the same statements about the Buddha, btw. His teaching was based on a clear-eyed recognitio
So this kind of talk that makes grace and "negative thinking" somehow contradict
Whether we're talking about the Christian version (known as the prosperity gospel), or the new age version (as espoused in the SECRET, and on Oprah), this kind of talk is reflective of a wounded, narcissiti
When people try to deny the darkness, whether they are Christian "ministers
Anyone who has been paying attention for the last 50 years has seen the phenomenon assert itself over and over again.
Those who teach a "light only" message are just wrong, regardless of what their underlying memes might be.
Just so I'm not misunderst
http://www
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
I agree that too much comfort and "false positives" can blind us to the suffering of others, and our own serious problems, and to the genuine feelings (not always happy) within ourselves. Yet without hope and joyfulness
Gandhi could do it; and other writers have written about this theme with great insights: Colin Wilson, Abraham Maslow, Nikos Kazantzaki
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
I believe the truth is is that negative thinking is a result of cognitive distortion
There is much better advice to be taken.
Do not engage in reductioni
Now, what is a mind?