“I CAN pass this exam”, “I am a wonderful person and will find love again” and “I am capable and deserve that pay rise” are phrases that students, the broken-hearted and driven employees may repeat to themselves over and over again in the face of adversity. Self-help books through the ages, including Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 classic, “The Power of Positive Thinking”, have encouraged people with low self-esteem to make positive self-statements. New research, however, suggests it may do more harm than good.
Is positive thinking actually negative thinking.
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(23 Responses)
I’ve always thought optomism is a pessamistic way of living and vice-versa. If you’re always expecting the best in a situation you usually end up disappointed. If you take a more realistic/pessamistic approach you usually end up satisfied that you were right, or pleasantly surprised if things go well.
Although I think a greater sample is required to actually prove these findings, I would be inclined to agree with them. I actually have a book called something like \”The Power of Negative Thinking” which argues something very similar. Basically it’s the old adage that the pessimist is never disappointed, something with which I do agree.
But having said all that, these are just my views and this is hardly empirical evidence. Give me a longitudinal study with a much wider sample and I’ll be satisfied
Also, no-one ever won the lottery through positive thinking. Whereas positive thinking may help motivate us to improve our situation, positive thinking alone doesn’t do anything. If you think positively, but do nothing, then that positivity is actually disempowering.
i’m glad someone’s finally said this. pessimism is by far the better way to go, then everything turns out far better than you expected. thinking i’m not gonna do well at things has never had negative ramifications to me, it has only served to relax me. i dont care, i do well, it was far better than being decapitated by a pane of glass with a grudge, rock on
@ Lafayette actually people do win the lottery through positive thinking, people do all sorts of positive things like winning and gaining. They think they will win the lottery, so they do it. and some of them actually win. Sure some have done it for years and not won a farthing, but some thought of winning did it and won, so you are talking bollocks.
Let’s not leave our skepticism behind! The study referenced in the Economist article had only 68 participants, hardly a large enough sample size to suggest any reliable conclusions.
Of COURSE positive thinking does not work. Here’s why in an objective nutshell:
Thoughts exist in your brain in the first place to tell your body what to do in a particular situation based on what it has experienced in the past. If you were to directly control what your brain is saying to you, it would DEFEAT THE PURPOSE OF THOUGHT. They aren’t there for your direct control.
The problem isn’t that we think bad things – the problem is we engage with the thoughts as if they are really important, and as if they really mean something about ourselves.
The best thing we can do when we catch ourselves thinking something we don’t want is to first of all ‘wake up’ and realise that the thought is not true when compared with REAL world reality e.g. ‘I suck at Maths and always will’ is NOT objectively true – anything can be learned and it is probably taking more time to learn the subject (tried everything? never..). Once we see that our thoughts are JUST that, thoughts, then I challenge you to think about that exact same thought in the exact same way, and try to believe that it really is true, just like you were a moment ago…
If, however, we discover a thought that has a nice feeling behind it, choose to make that one important. Try treating it as if it is the most important thing in the world, no matter how mundane the details are e.g. I can take care of myself – I sleep, I drink lots of water, I could work on my fitness but I don’t have to if I don’t want to (bear in mind, these are my thoughts, yours will most probably be different). If you feel like you are ‘kidding yourself’ here, bear in mind that this is an experiment and you don’t HAVE to always engage with the good thoughts – all I’m saying is it helps and it’s up to you how you want to play with it. But don’t kid yourself – if it doesn’t work and feels like you are just lying to yourself, stop lying to yourself and stop doing it. It may be because you don’t like the idea of forcing yourself to feel good, so just let any good thoughts come on their own. Usually, realising that your bad thoughts are just thoughts is enough to cut down your unnecessarily high bad feelings by a loooooong way.
That is what requires more research in my opinion….
99% of self-help books don’t know what they are talking about. I got really, really lucky with the ones I picked up (I wasn’t desperate, feeling bad yes, but curious into the mindset of people…).
I think even Derren was guilty with this fact in the negative suggestion episode of Trick or Treat when he suggested the girl ought to be thinking positively instead of negatively… then again, I don’t know what he really meant when saying that.
Anyway, try experimenting with what I said, see if something catches your interest
I don’t know how good that research is, but it certainly makes sense that trying to tell yourself one thing when you believe something so utterly different isn’t going to make you feel good. I’ve always found my inability to think positively innately depressing, as it means I am a bitter old cynic, I suppose.
It makes sense that positive thinking would only work for people who are already there, much like everything else in life. The people who need help are the ones so far from their goals that they’ll never get there because all the help comes from people who are already there.
I always prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Is that sitting on the fence or the smart way to go?
I agree that trying to tell myself that I’m lovely in the midst of clinical depression didn’t really do much for me. Just the same as the many, many CBT classes I attended taught me the theory behind assertiveness, anger management, increasing self esteem etc etc but without self worth, I was unable to apply it to me in my life.
However, there’s no set formula for helping people feeling better about themselves, and these therapies are routinely offered as the best available help for people with depression. It’s difficult to imagine a time when a more individual approach is adopted by mental health professionals – there isn’t enough money!!
Any attempt at “positive thinking” without action or creative activity conjures up to me an image of a trapped animal frantically chasing its own tail. I find Werner Herzog’s comments in “Herzog on Herzog” on happiness very useful: “[it] has never been a goal of mine; I do not think in those terms. It seems to be a goal in life for many people, but I have no goals in life. I suspect I am after something else. … To give my existence some sort of a meaning. Whether I am happy or not does not count that much. I have always enjoyed my work”.
I personally think it is all down to self perception, if a statement can fit into your general self perception then you can use it to help you achieve an outcome. If you don’t believe a statement is true it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat it, it wont change your self perception. Also I don’t believe that the statement itself can be fully attributed to an outcome instead a person must look at how it can be achieved. For example the mantra ‘I am going to get an A on this test’ wont guarantee an A instead I would tend to think, ‘hard work and understanding of this subject will lead to an A if I choose to put the effort in.’ You are therefore reinforcing belief through personal effort.
There have been some suggestion that buying a lottery ticket can be a positive thing (sorry, can’t be arsed to look for links). People know the odds, so there’s no real expectation of a win, and hence little or no disappointment. But people buying tickets tend to fantasise about what they’d do _if_ they won. How it might change their lives for the better. Dreaming of fancy cars, houses, exotic holidays and never, ever having to do that tedious mundae job again.
Maybe an odd case of positive thoughts framed by realistic/pessimistic expectations is an ideal scenario.
I have to agree with Lafayette. The act of *thinking*, in itself, is not going to produce good or bad results. It is the *actions* following those thoughts that produce the results.
If a person’s thoughts are generally negative (“I can’t possibly do that”) then the person is probably unwilling to try new activities. On the other hand, if the person’s thinking is positive (“Maybe I can do that”), then he or she is more likely to try new things. The pessimistic thinker is less likely to try uncommon or uncomfortable activities than than the optimistic one. Worse still, The negative thinker is more likely to give up in the face of failure (“See, I told you I couldn’t do it”) than the positive thinker (“Maybe I’ll suceed next time”) . As the old saying goes; “You have to be in it to win it”.
Or, to put it another way, the negative thinker who does not step outside their comfort zone and try new things will be disappointed less that the positive thinker who is trying new things (and failing at many of them). But (and its a big but), they will also be less likely to feel the elation or euphoria of sucess. The positive thinker will feel a wider range of emotions as they fail and succeed at each new activity they try.
Or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.
I see what the study is saying but I do find positive affirmations relating to job interviews helpful. Perhaps because I know I can be professional, confident etc and can do the job and so it isn’t really going against my true beliefs. I’m just reminding myself. But on the other hand, as Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway says, it is what your inner self tells you that affects you. If you feel worthless you are constantly telling yourself that you are. I have really found the subconscious message CDs helpful. These work against what you believe (at an audio level that you do not consciously hear) to give your brain the opposite message and with repetition maybe somehow your inner self comes to believe it. At least temporarily. It could be a placebo effect I suppose but I think the logic is there for them to really work.
Whether it is positive, or negative, thinking makes it so.
The key thing is the ‘thinking’. If i think that one day i will win the lottery (positive thinking), then probability dictates that one day (it’s not impossible, just highly improbable!), i will.
The way to avoid this thinking trap (positive / negative conflict), is to just live in the moment, ‘be in the now’. Have essentially ‘no-mind’ or ‘wu-hsin’.
agrees with steve…the key might be living in this moment, not the past or the future(with the thinking head)….but in the now…without thoughts….But, that is only possible for a few seconds, as it is regarded the highest state of meditation…nevertheless, it is the way to ‘just be’ present…
I’ve always been disappointed with postive thinking.
I don’t exactly think negatively.. I just try to be honest with myself, which can be negative sometimes, + I also think negatively ‘cos of anxiety and worrying too much, as with everyone.
But, if I think positively and then fail.. say I’m telling myself ‘I WILL achieve’ something, and then don’t achieve it, if anything it just makes things worse.
Ofcourse .. if you really keep thinking/feeling underneath … but I can’t … The fact that you need to focus comes ofcourse from the opposite …
Lot of blabla about something that will not be very usefull to people ofcourse.
Better is to go back to your bases and check the why’s and whether you really want it so bad. And what if you don’t get it …. Most come out way cleaner and might not be that obsessed with those things anymore. It’s not reasoning about .. it’s reasoning within .. sometimes talking with someone else might help.
I can walk over this coles …. I CAN …… I don’t even need to say it .. it’s a different state you need to enhance ot on the inside .. comes with experience … checking states inside yourself .. in the end you only will need to hook up to a certain feeling/state …
But hey, to walk over coles????? Can think up way better things to use such a state for .. lots of thiings in daily life which I dont feel like doing .. I detach completely .. and get into my other self … white light ..
You know, those psychics and such, they always babbled about protecting yourself with white light … ehehehehe … why did they not explain a bit more simple. On the other hand .. it comes with experience … And no, nothing spiritual about it. Just another thing in your mind toolkit. It needs to come from with in. Dont visualize. Practise with experiences, and after a while … you can see it on the inside whenever you want. First you probably felt it more up there … above your depressive self. We all used different structures to be up there instead of down there. And still do. Eventually it sticks, sort of. Then you go do the opposite … Life, such a wonderfull thing. It doesn’t make sense at all, after all.
Interesting article!
In fact, my recent encounter was with one of my colleagues. We got this common friend whom I knew closed a mega deal with $20k commission earned. I went to my colleague and shared the news with him hoping that he will be motivated and work harder.
I was wrong, rather than motivated, he felt very unfair. He had worked almost the entire year and had not made that kind of commission. After that, he was down for few days.
Therefore, people with low self esteem do not really have that fighting spirit and we must be careful when motivating them. Otherwise, they will be demotivated instead.
An insightfull post. Will definitely help.
over optermism over valueated is this just positive thinking gone overboard positive thinking has its place but over use it like anything and it will do more harm than good
“I am a wonderful person and will find love again” and “I am capable and deserve that pay rise”
To me, what these “affirmations” are saying are “I have not got love at this moment” and “I don’t have the money I want at this moment”.
Instead, perhaps it would be more valuable to think “I feel loved” and “It feels so great to have 10 thousand pounds to spend on whatever I want”. These of course would be visualisations and somewhat imaginary as they haven’t actually happened yet. They would appear to be more influential to your life than lying to yourself about who you are by “affirming” something that you are lacking or are not confident about.