talking2myself

Stupidly Positive

A Buckinghamshire man diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2006 who won £10,000 betting he would be alive years later, died at the age of 60 a few months short of collecting another £10,000 (BBC News – Buckinghamshire man who bet to beat cancer dies).  On the face of it, it would appear a classical example of the power of positive thinking.

However, when faced with a hungry lion advancing on you in an open savannah, it would be very stupid to think that positive thinking will assist in this matter, the use of ones’ legs and a dose of negative emotions might be the better solution.  Of course, most people would recognise that the lion situation calls for more than positive thinking.  But what about other situations, less straightforward, like when faced with cancer?  The author, Barbara Ehrenreich, in her personal story entitled “Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World” describes just such a situation.

Some attribute the popularisation of positive thinking to the book and DVD ‘The Secret’ but Ehrenreich’s book goes further back into American history of the phenomenon.  Slowly though, a healthy scepticism of the concept is growing for example The selfishness of the self-help industry and Christina Patterson: Heaven knows we’re miserable now.

Positive thinking is one of the tenants of the self help industry.  Numerous guides advise that not only must you continuously avoid negative thoughts but you must also surround yourself with only those who are constantly positive.  This you will be assured will help you be more successful and happier.  It is even attributed as a pre-requisite to achieving ‘whatever you want’. 

However, I put it to you that “to realise that you are crap at most measurable activities and that your talents are so small as to barely dignify the word, is one of the essential lessons in life.” (Three cheers for failure | MT Hughes | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk).  This will mean that you will not expect positive thinking to work for you in cases where it is unreasonable to expect it to.   I suspect that many of the ‘hopefuls’ that appear on “Xfactor”, “XXXX’s Got Talent” and “XXXX Idol” and even those on “The Apprentice” and in “Dragon’s Den” that many are gifted with massive doses of positive vibes but that does not pre-empt them from being rubbish.  Some even threaten us with their return!

If you think that positive thinking will make a super salesman out of you when you’re shy and honest or a film star if you can’t act to save your life then you are heading for a lesson in long term discontent.

May you find the balance.