Positive Thinking Can Land You in Trouble
7 Apr
Its about time I nailed this. Positive thinking is encouraged everywhere you look these days. But I think it can land some people in trouble.
How to Think Smart
Smart thinking requires looking at potential consequences, both positive and negative of decisions and actions in the short, medium and long term. You want to check all three of those time scales if you want to think smart, and you must look at upsides and downsides for each if you want to make well thought out decisions. Failure to neglect any decreases the quality of your thinking.
The Problem With Failing to Acknowledge Reality
The problem with inveterate positive thinkers, is that their default setting is to strive to look only at the positives. But reality always has a downside. The downside is there whether you’re prepared to acknowledge it or not. Whilst I agree that positive thinking can make you feel better in the moment and should increase your chances of acting towards more positive outcomes, you’re also open to the surprise negative consequences you failed to look at and failed to plan contingencies for. This breaks people. I’ve seen it happen a lot.
Inveterate positive thinkers can become delusional. I don’t value the positive thinker standing next to me telling me that “it’ll all work out alright” when I’m faced with an important decision. They don’t have the authority or credibility to tell me that. As far as I’m concerned, I might as well have a clown advising me. Similarly positive thinkers who are into extreme sports just scare the hell out of me.
The positive thinker who thinks it’ll be OK if she jumps off a cliff and will land safely and lightly on her feet also concerns me. Its just not useful to think positively in certain situations.
Positive thinkers may now think I’m being negative. (Or will they? Maybe they’ll see the good in what I’m saying?)
Useful Thinking
Its why I don’t talk of positive and negative thinking, and instead developed the terms “useful thinking” and “unuseful thinking”. Its useful if it enables you to avoid or minimise negative consequences (think short, medium and long term) and instead steer you towards the outcomes you really want. Its unuseful if it doesn’t. Some positive thinking is “unuseful thinking”. Some negative thinking is actually “useful thinking”. Think about it.
Some of you may feel that this post has a negative tone to it. I’d say it has a useful tone to it. I hope you find it useful.
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Hello! I'm Mark Moore and I help employers and employees maximise their value to each other.
Mark, I think you’ve put forward a very interesting distinction here. I have been trying to define this one myself for a while. I’ll have to give it a go and see if it is useful for me
Thanks Rob – let us know how you get on. I often check my thinking to ask ‘is this useful thinking?’ or better still ‘what is the most useful way to think in this situation such that I get the positive outcomes I want and avoid the negative?’ Cheers..
Hi Mark,
There is a book entitled ‘Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America & The World’ by Barbara Ehrenreich. It picks up on your points and is an easy read, actually an enjoyable read, as well. I’ve had enough of this constant ‘smile and be happy’ stuff, every now and then we have a right to be, well ‘pissed’. Hope this is not too negative.
Ray.
Hi Ray,
Wow – that’s interesting and surprises me that someone has tackled this in a book! I’ll check it out, I’d imagine it’s more realistic than a lot of the unquestioning positive thinking stuff out there.
Totally agree – and personally I think allowing yourself to contemplate negative angles keeps your feet on the ground. It keeps you level headed. It’s useful to acknowledge reality.
Obviously people don’t want to become entrenched in negative thinking, but the key I believe is to think usefully. I don’t think your comment is too negative, I think it’s useful. Many thanks for sharing with us.
Mark
P.S. Another one that bugs me is when people try to teach people to stop being angry. There are times when anger is the natural response, and again I think can be useful to drive you to do something about a bad situation and improve the quality of your life. Obviously, if it crosses over into unuseful behaviour and you have to replace all your ornaments and windows in your house, then you went too far..
Think smarter not harder.