• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Affirmations, attitude of gratitude, all that positive psychology and self help stuff

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
What's your view of it and would you be willing to suspend disbelief and try any of the ideas for a few weeks or a month and post about it?

I wonder if there's anything to any of it and I'm usually more inclined to the disbelieving end of the spectrum when it comes to these things, I think there's generally more cause for pessimism than optimism and being wary of that kind of thinking and its consequences can be the safer option given that the world is full of assholes and sociopaths or wannabe sociopaths.

However, I'd be willing to give it a try if everyone else would, my new years resolutions are a bunk anyhow and I'm going to have to restart from scratch tommorrow or the beginning of February.

So who's interested? The usual suspects will be in to say how stupid they think this is but ignore them, especially if you're a new member or havent visited in a while, they arent representative, I hope, or dont need to be.
 

Cellmold

Wake, See, Sing, Dance
Joined
Mar 23, 2012
Messages
6,266
I think there was a discussion about realism recently and while my original stance was that realism doesn't exist, it's just degrees of pessimism and optimism, I actually think I've been won over to the idea.

So positive affirmations work when there is a legitimate reason to engage in them ie: you're not as bad as you think you are. But the reverse is also true and sometimes you have to accept that you are bad and do so in an honest manner and work towards understanding why that is and how you might improve, if you want to that is.

That's simplistic of course and not doing the topic full justice, but it's the best I can manage from bed. Or am willing to manage.
 

Bush

cute lil war dog
Joined
Nov 18, 2008
Messages
5,182
Enneagram
3w4
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
I'm on board.
 

Galena

Silver and Lead
Joined
Mar 12, 2013
Messages
3,786
Enneagram
4w5
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I'm down to experiment.
 

Chthonic

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2014
Messages
683
What's your view of it and would you be willing to suspend disbelief and try any of the ideas for a few weeks or a month and post about it?

I was a new ager from way back and eventually fell off that wagon. I'll try and summarise.

- Positive thinking works to an extent. It's superficial and yes, looking for the silver lining in everything does give you a slightly better way to cope with the rollercoaster of life. Mainly because you tend not to sulk or dwell and keep saying....next all the while believing that the next bit will be better. It's basically a cycle of hope and moving forward. Tick for that aspect.

- Affirmations, were mostly a waste of time for me. The way most affirmations are structured is to affirm things that directly contradict your current experience. The mind rebels with that. They work better if you are simply affirming the things in your life which are going well. But overall they are a weak tool and ineffective for longterm positive results.

- Mindfulness, which is being totally immersed in the moment, unconcerned with what comes next and unconcerned with what has passed, has proven to be the most effective technique for me to make serious inroads into how I feel on a daily basis and how I interact with the world as well. I've been practising this in a very focused way for almost 10 days now (1 hour per day) and the change in my life is measurable and quite surprising, when viewed through the lens of effort versus results. It's bizarre how much difference making a practice out of simply letting go really does make. I smile a lot more, am a lot more communicative in person and losing my avoidance tendencies. This is a very powerful technique that has been proven to work for others and works very well for me too. Better than both of the other two combined.
 

Cygnus

New member
Joined
Feb 10, 2014
Messages
1,594
I say poor-performing people only look overconfident because their "standard" confidence level overfills their meager abilities, while the talented look underconfident because their average level doesn't fill the void of their greater abilities.
 
Top