The inherent flaw in positive thinking is captured best by one of the characters in an Edith Wharton story, ‘There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running after happiness.’
If you ever went through a rough patch in your personal or professional life and happened to search the existing self-help space for any practical solution, you are most likely to stumble upon the omnipresent advice of looking at the positive side of your current situation. Quite a vast landscape of self-help space is often found dispensing the advice of positive thinking - the efficacy of which is debatable, to say the least.
A person with low self-esteem is highly unlikely to become a confident person by merely faking the so-called behavioural nuances of a confident person. Since that person didn't feel particularly confident, to begin with, in his honest effort to convince himself otherwise merely reaffirmed his negativity. In short, “positive thinking” in all likelihood will make him feel worse and less happy in the process.
A set of thoughts which are in direct dissonance with your behavioural pattern will struggle to leave an imprint on your psychology.
Most of us usually go through life under the delusion that it is certain people, situations, or events that make us sad, anxious, or angry. But nothing outside your mind can properly be described as negative or positive at all. What actually causes suffering are the beliefs you hold about those things.
The inherent flaw in positive thinking is captured best by one of the characters in an Edith Wharton story, “There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running after happiness.”
Our insatiable urge to find perfection in everyday life is one of the primary causes of our general dissatisfaction. Denying failure doesn't mean that it does not exist. Similarly, denial of obstacles and concomitant failure is never going to help you prepare for unforeseen challenges. Avoidance of impending obstacles is hardly the answer.
Clinging to a particular version of a happy life, while fighting to eliminate all possibility of an unhappy one, is the cause of the problem, not its solution. The sooner you come to terms with your own set of vulnerability and imperfections you are ready to accept failures as a part of the growing process. You start believing that nothing is going to keep you down and out for long.
Your tireless effort to dot every “i” and cross every “t” in life often results in unmanageable stress in life. Mindless pursuit of positive fantasizing might give you a false sense of calmness, while obstructing you from realising your most cherished dreams.
But if positive thinking is not the best solution then what the alternative is?
Gabrielle Oettingen and Peter Gollwitzer, experts on the psychology of motivation at New York University, discovered that people are far more likely to achieve their goals if they think hard about both the outcome they want and the obstacles they are facing and plan for both.
Goals without plans and plans without a schedule are nothing but a hopelessly unrealistic dream. Plans and schedules have the potential to transform a seemingly unrealistic dream into realistic milestones.
Therefore an approach to goal-setting that contrasts the ideal outcome with the reality of the obstacles results in a more robust and successful plan of action — known as mental contrasting.
Why does mental contrasting work so well?
The mental contrasting allows people to direct more energy towards goals; they had a chance of achieving. It enhances our awareness of obstacles in our path. It also strengthens cognitive links between the future and obstacles, as well as between obstacles and what we need to do to overcome them. All of this primes us to tackle obstacles that seem possible to overcome and to shrink away from obstacles that we believe are insurmountable.
People with realistic goals invariably apply more effort and perform better, and people with unrealistic goals often tend to leave midway. The path of least resistance is rarely the preferred choice for achievers. Invariably all breeds of achievers train themselves to face the worst fear without being intimidated by them. As a result, they are ever ready to adapt their strategies accordingly and tend to thrive under all sorts of challenging circumstances. “Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.”
Our cognitive association between the future possibilities and possible impediments prove to be a significant factor in deciding how long we will pursue a seemingly challenging task and to what extent we are willing to stretch ourselves to find a solution. And a lot of it depends on how you treat your mind and feelings.
Have you seen the sky clinging on to a specific weather condition or trying to get rid of the bad ones? The human mind is a lot like a screen on which our feelings get projected but should screen get confused about its own identity by the content of the things that get projected on it?
However, we all are committing the mistake of identifying ourselves with emotions that get often projected through a diverse set of experiences. We often let those emotional experiences shape the contours of our identity; which is not a wise decision on our part.
Your current feeling shouldn't be an obstacle in executing your daily plan of action. Making it a hostage to your ever mutable feeling is not the wisest of decisions. Your feelings are just part of your inner expression. Accept it and let it be. Your mind can coexist with the diversity of your feelings without being affected by it. Just give it a try.
(The writer is an IRS officer. Views expressed are personal.)
