The Power of Positive thinking....a bunch of bullshit?

The BBQ Pit
21

Oh, I agree. Cognitive Behavior Therapy works. Thinking things like “My life will never get better.” is every bit as destructive to the psyche as forcing yourself to think nothing but happy, happy thoughts.

I just finished trying to support myself with an insurance selling bunch that was heavy into the Positive Thinking stuff, and the damn group seemed more like a mind cult than seriously into selling insurance. One thing one of the leaders told me was to stop watching the news and reading newspapers because those are full of bad news, and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.

So, to think positively, I need to be pig ignorant about the world? No thank you.

22

That’s not what positive-thinkers are saying though. We acknowledge that shit happens. It’s how you deal with that shit that is your choice.

My ex was an extremely negative person. Everything bad that happened was “well of course THAT went wrong, this ALWAYS happens to me, the universe just hates me sigh…” I spent the majority of my time with her just trying to keep her distracted from things that might upset her and ruin the day for both of us because of how down she’d get over every little thing that went wrong. She was determined to believe that life is miserable. In turn, over time, it depressed ME and I realized I was miserable along with her.

The thing is, she wasn’t upset over big things. It wasn’t that her mom was sick or that her apartment burned down or anything, it was “oh I came out wanting to shop for clothes today and this store doesn’t have anything I want to buy :frowning: :frowning: :(” and “I wanted to see that concert but all the tickets are sold out, of COURSE I’m too late, the universe is just toying with me :frowning: :frowning: :(” and “I wanted to eat at that restaraunt but of course it’s closed today, big surprise, sigh, whatever, let’s just not eat :frowning: :frowning: :(”

I wanted to shake her and go “THESE ARE NOT REAL PROBLEMS! Lighten up!!” haha

There’s a balance, because to her those are real problems. Like after you grow up you realize a lot of the silly shit that went on in high school that seemed epic at the time wasn’t a big deal ultimately, but to the kid in school it IS a big deal. But once you grow up and go through a few real problems (the death of a family member, a friend committing suicide, being robbed, being cheated on by your spouse, etc.) you should have a little more perspective than you did when you were a kid in school.

I think part of positive thinking is just putting into perspective what real problems are and what are silly bullshit things that aren’t worth getting worked up over. If something truly bad happens, I’ll be sad about it like anyone else, but my threshold for what’s actually worth being upset over is a lot higher than negative people’s.

Ya, you can’t find the ideal dream job. That sucks, but you’re working on it and you’ll probably end up with it down the road because you’re determined to get it, so why walk around in a cloud of misery until then? If your dream job involves working with your hands and you lose your arms in an accident, shit, okay, THEN be upset, because then you legitimately can’t do anything about your circumstances.

You’ll be just fine. :slight_smile:

I actually stopped reading the newspapers and watching the news a few years ago for that reason. It was of my own accord, I just realized that the majority of the stories were depressing and that I felt depressed after reading them. It’s the same with listening to angsty music…afterward, I feel depressed because the songs bring that out. Or watching a really dramatic sad movie…I know that if I watch it, I’m going to be depressed for a few days afterward, so I’m careful to pay attention to these influences.

Does that mean I’m pig ignorant about the world? No. It just means that maybe if I’m about to head to a job interview in the afternoon, I’ll watch Superbad that morning and save the newspaper for after my interview instead of watching Grave of the Fireflies and reading about thousands of bodies washing up on the shore of Japan.

  • TWTTWN
23

Holy. Crap. I’m going to print this out (or copy it out longhand–seriously). And stare at it. Often.
*Hey, job and marriage and friends are sucking right now, but wild animals? Nope. None in sight.
*
I’m not being at all sarcastic. Thanks, TWTTWN!

24

that is more applicable to my current situation

and TWTTWN Ill re-read your posts tomorrow when I have a little bit more energy…

and yes, safe animals wont pay my bills and they dont make me feel any more optimistic about whats going on…lol…
its all relative, i think is what you are getting at however I feel that by putting things into perspective its honestly not really helping…

25

That’s a good point. There’s nothing magical about trying to think more positively; it won’t magically fix you or your life, but you’ll probably be happier than if you doom and gloom it up every day.

Another method of becoming more positive is paying more attention to all the good things in your life. I like to think of our North American lives as not glass half empty or glass half full, but glass almost completely full except for possibly one teaspoon. It’s easy for us to focus on the couple of things in our lives that aren’t going right, and lose sight of the thousand things that are.

26

Well, I liked the Happy Thoughts forum… :stuck_out_tongue:

27

If I told you to make a list of 10 things that are negative about your situation, and 10 things that are positive, after you and everyone else in the thread made fun of how self-help happy crappy woo-woo it sounds, you could probably rattle off 10 negative things EASILY…but could you rattle off 10 positive things? Even if you thought about it for a half an hour?

Here are 10 negative things about your situation, going purely by your posts in this thread. Read these and by number 10 you’ll probably be feeling pretty miserable:

  1. You’re underpaid.
  2. You’re stuck in a job you don’t like.
  3. 5 interviews, most of which seemed like sure things, haven’t worked out.
  4. You’re worn out from trying to think positive when it’s clearly not helping you get a job.
  5. You’re becoming more negative and don’t like that you’re becoming more negative as a person.
  6. You remember being “high on life” and can tell you’re not that way now, and that’s depressing.
  7. The older you get, the more stuck in this job you’ll be and the harder it’ll be to transition.
  8. It’s harder to enjoy the rest of your life when something this important to you is going bad.
  9. You’re probably slightly on the verge of a “maybe I’m not as good as I thought I was…” ego crash which could cripple your view of yourself and your capabilities.
  10. You used to work at a fantastic job, so the job you’re in now feels even more of a waste of your life.

Well shit, that sounds pretty miserable. Most people can rattle that list off easily, and they stop here and just label their lives as “unlucky” or “I’m a realist” or “life is a struggle” etc.

So here’s 10 positive things about your situation. See if you feel as bleak about the situation by the time you read through the 10th one:

  1. You were qualified enough to get a fantastic job the first time right out of college, so logically it’s possible for you to get a job you like since you’ve done it before.
  2. You were laid off because of a financial meltdown, not because of any personal deficiency, ergo it was just bad luck and not a massive personality flaw or lack of skill/qualifications…you had no control over it.
  3. Once unemployed, you were unsatisfied wasting your time being lazy so you motivated yourself to find a job after just 3 months because you’re a motivated person who values doing something important with your life instead of getting a free ride.
  4. You’re taking pro-active steps toward finding a better job that suits you and that you know you deserve.
  5. You’ve been on 5 interviews toward your goal. They haven’t worked out, but you’ve actually gotten to the final round in those interviews compared to the dozens of other people who don’t even GET the initial interview let alone get to the final round.
  6. You’ve remained positive despite setbacks that would make other people give up after the 2nd interview and accept their miserable lives.
  7. You know you were once “high on life” and you know that’s important to you, so you’re motivated by the desire to feel that way again, versus someone who’s never experienced what it’s like to be high on life.
  8. You still have your job, so there’s no immediate rush to get a new job. If it takes a couple more months of interviews, you can still pay your rent…you HAVE the time to find that perfect job.
  9. You know that if you needed a bit of a boost of money you could apply for the exact same job you’re doing now at a different company and get 15k more while you look for the perfect job since your Manager told you that.
  10. The rest of your life is going pretty decent…your career is an important category to get handled, but once you handle it your life will be pretty much perfect. If that takes another 10 interviews over the next few months, to make your life pretty much perfect all-around, that’s a pretty sweet deal in the longrun.

It’s a lot harder to find the positives in a bad situation, and it’s a lot easier to do it when you look back on the situation or if you’re someone on a message board who’s just reading about someone else’s situation…but that’s why so many people are negative. It’s a jillion times easier. Also people make fun of you less. :stuck_out_tongue:

  • TWTTWN
28

I hear ya. I’m more a fan of the power of realistic thinking.

Realistic thinking acknowledges that life goes through ups and downs…
Realistic thinking acknowledges that going through ups is great…
Realistic thinking acknowledges that going through downs is hard…
Realistic thinking acknowledges that neither ups nor downs last forever, so it’s important not to take the ups for granted, and it’s important not to assume the downs will never end…

Being positive and having a positive life all the time is a completely unrealistic expectation. Not only does it deny the fact that life goes through ups and downs, it seems to imply that the only good life is a positive one. The reality is that most people have a neutral life, with a mix of ups and downs.

29

Just saw a Calvin and Hobbes strip that seems appropriate here.

30

Just to piggy back off the CBT love, I am a huge fan of positive psychology, a field that strives to understand why people are happy and successful rather than why they are miserable and failures. One of my faves, Martin Seligman, in his book Learned Optimism discovered that depression is basically an exaggerated form of pessimism defined by the three Ps:

  1. Pervasive: Failures are viewed as the sum total of one’s existence rather than contextualized.
  2. Personal: Failures are determined to be the result of a personal liability.
  3. Permanent: Failures are perceived to endure forever.

Optimists, on the other hand

  1. Understand that failure in one area of life doesn’t necessarily carry over to other areas.
  2. Externalize the cause of the failure - it wasn’t my fault, but bad circumstances.
  3. Realize failure is not eternal.

According to Seligman’s research, people who address the three Ps in an optimistic manner are more successful, live longer, are more likely to win at sports, are more successful in their careers and of course just lead generally happier lives. This is true regardless of how much has gone wrong in the person’s life. And before anyone calls BS, in his book he describes experiments that establish a causal relationship between optimistic thinking and success at these things.

So there is a difference between realistic positive thinking and being a total Pollyanna. Those who are optimists as defined by the three Ps genuinely are more successful and happy. And what’s better - optimism is something you can learn.

31

Always look on the bright side of life… ::whistling:: :slight_smile:

I was going to recommend this, but you beat me to it.

32

You could also simply have a low threshold for stress.

That’s my problem. If everything is going well, I feel great - I’ve got the situation down, I’m walking on sunshine, life is good, everything’s coming up roses, here are a few of my favorite things and the whole nine yards. :smiley:

However, when I get into a stressful situation, or somewhere that I’m not comfortable, I suddenly flip out into this godawful pessimistic Debbie Downer/Eeyore morph. I hate my life, I’m fat, I’m unintelligent, no one loves, or even likes me, and if they do it’s because I’m a total fake and they’ll find out eventually and discard me like the sad sack that I am… and on and on and on.

Anxiety is a bitch.

And it doesn’t even have to be a BIG anxiety - some minor screw-up or incident at work will have me worrying and flusterating for days!

That whole “be positive!” doesn’t really help, because it’s focusing on externals - be positive and you’ll get x! be positive and x will shower down on you! be positive and watch life improve. It didn’t really help me because I was stuck at the “be positive” half. I didn’t even give a shit what it would do for me - I wanted to know how to DO “being positive” when I spiraled down into my funks.

For me, here’s what I eventually learned that actually helps:

Meditation first, to learn to shut my damn mind OFF. (my flavor is ki-Aikido, but lots of people say that Yoga is really good - I’m the reverse of flexible, so Yoga stresses me out, which isn’t exactly the goal here.)

Learning to recognize when I’m being irrational about stress and worry. (Husband and I call it “mudballing” - the image is like that comic image of a snowball rolling down a hill and getting bigger and bigger, but it’s mud instead of snow.) Just recognizing that I’m doing it lets me take a moment and consciously redirect and think about something else, or find a funny video or comic strip to read, to lift my mood a little in the moment.

Physical exercise. It’s really hard to be depressed/anxious when you’re outside in the sunshine, and even HARDER to be so when you’ve tired yourself so far out that you can’t even think straight, let alone obsess over anything.

Plus, the nice physical rewards help counteract the stupid thinking “I’m fat, I’m ugly, I’m unmotivated, I’m uncoordinated, I can’t do anything” because looking at my much more fit self, I can SEE that it’s not true.

Giving myself permission to vent and rant and rave and get things off my chest, and then not bringing them up again for a certain period of time. Both halves are useful, but they work best together. I used to have a set time, but I’ve gotten better at this one, so I pick time-delays now based on how upset the situation/stressor makes me. Varies from a week to a few hours.

To me, this does two things. The venting bit acknowledges that whatever it is actually IS a legitimate worry, and that I do have to deal with it, and I don’t want to. Then, I have to find other things to talk about/do/handle, because I am not allowed to talk about that problem any more for a while. Putting it away like that minimizes how important and terrifying it is, because here I am making dinner and talking about the cats, so the world CAN’T be ending due to x. Sometimes now I even find that when I get to the end of my waiting period, I don’t feel the need to mess with x again - it’s like it’s resolved itself while it was hanging out in my subconscious.

Don’t know if any of these will help, or seem useful, but a bad stress reaction could be one reason you’re such a different person now from when times were good.

33

fantastic replies all…esp TWTTWN…
this turned out to be a really informative thread

34

I agree with this philosophy - in fact, this is how I live. Much less stressful this way.

It’s so easy to think ‘I should be here right now’: i.e. the right job level, the right house, the right car, the right relationship level (marriage), the right family level (kids, and they’re doing well in school).

The point of life is to be alive. If you are doing *that *you’ve achieved the goal of life. You’ve won! Anything beyond that and you’re kicking ass and taking names. :slight_smile:

35

My mom is like this. I think she really, honestly belives that happy people don’t get sick. Trying to talk to her about her mother’s dimentia is … unproductive.

36

I tell people this over and over and over, and no one seems to want to use it as the excellent tool it is - not just for stopping the worry train, but for sleeping problems, too, which go hand in hand with worrying and anxieties. Sigh.

We magnify what we focus on - when you focus on all the things bugging you, they take up all your attention. They shrink when you turn your attention to other things. Then, when you turn your attention back to them, they tend to stay in a more realistic size.

37

Agreed. I hope you stick around, TheWho.

38

I think this is a very important point. I DO acknowledge when things are bad, I just don’t dwell on it. Like I was fired once, and it sucked, I had to uproot my life and move to another city and I knew it as soon as the pink slip was in my hands. So I gave myself 3 days to wallow in misery and feel bad for myself and vent and be angry and frustrated etc., then the next day get down to business dealing with the situation. When my ex-GF and I broke up I did the same thing.

I actually learned this from women handling break-ups haha Guys will pent things up and act like they aren’t bothered by the break-up, but girls will get a bucket of ice cream and gather their girlfriends and spend the night bitching about what scum men are and get it all out of their system while the guy has bottled up anger and resentment for months or years.

:slight_smile: Thanks! I’ll be around as long as there are still threads on dating, relationships, and general mental health! I went through a lot of big self-help changes in my outlook and it’s made an epic difference in my day-to-day happiness. I used to be a very pessimistic negative “realistic” person and it took a solid year+ of consciously changing my attitudes toward life to break out of that negativity, so I understand where people like the OP are at and I’m happy to use my own experiences to help them out if I can.

  • TWTTWN