Mole
Permabanned
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2008
- Messages
- 20,284
Has anybody suggested lobotomy yet?
One small slice cuts out negative thoughts.
Has anybody suggested lobotomy yet?
Just be doubly negative. After all, two negatives equal a positive, amirite?
Exactly. Focusing on the positive at the expense of the negative is as counterproductive as the reverse. It breeds pollyannaism, and seeing the world through the proverbial rose-colored glasses. We can't improve things that need improving if we are unable to see the shortcomings, or unwilling to acknowledge their existence.I don't see being critical as a negative. It can cause internal conflict which can produce excellent results. I would just remind yourself of a bigger picture. Give yourself credit for what you've done but know what needs improvement. Keep balanced. Have realistic goals. That should keep the negativity away.
I don't see being critical as a negative. It can cause internal conflict which can produce excellent results. I would just remind yourself of a bigger picture. Give yourself credit for what you've done but know what needs improvement. Keep balanced. Have realistic goals. That should keep the negativity away.
You could try buying pop psychology books!
Brain Pickings Blog on: Against Positive Thinking: Uncertainty as the Secret of Happiness
[YOUTUBE="bOJL7WkaadY"]book trailer[/YOUTUBE]
^ more from him
The Power of Negative Thinking
By OLIVER BURKEMAN
August 4, 2012
nytimes.com
Excerpt:
LAST month, in San Jose, Calif., 21 people were treated for burns after walking barefoot over hot coals as part of an event called Unleash the Power Within, starring the motivational speaker Tony Robbins. If you’re anything like me, a cynical retort might suggest itself: What, exactly, did they expect would happen? In fact, there’s a simple secret to “firewalkingâ€: coal is a poor conductor of heat to surrounding surfaces, including human flesh, so with quick, light steps, you’ll usually be fine.
But Mr. Robbins and his acolytes have little time for physics. To them, it’s all a matter of mind-set: cultivate the belief that success is guaranteed, and anything is possible. One singed but undeterred participant told The San Jose Mercury News: “I wasn’t at my peak state.†What if all this positivity is part of the problem? What if we’re trying too hard to think positive and might do better to reconsider our relationship to “negative†emotions and situations?
Consider the technique of positive visualization, a staple not only of Robbins-style seminars but also of corporate team-building retreats and business best sellers. According to research by the psychologist Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues, visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it. She rendered her experimental participants dehydrated, then asked some of them to picture a refreshing glass of water. The water-visualizers experienced a marked decline in energy levels, compared with those participants who engaged in negative or neutral fantasies. Imagining their goal seemed to deprive the water-visualizers of their get-up-and-go, as if they’d already achieved their objective.
Or take affirmations, those cheery slogans intended to lift the user’s mood by repeating them: “I am a lovable person!†“My life is filled with joy!†Psychologists at the University of Waterloo concluded that such statements make people with low self-esteem feel worse — not least because telling yourself you’re lovable is liable to provoke the grouchy internal counterargument that, really, you’re not.
Even goal setting, the ubiquitous motivational technique of managers everywhere, isn’t an undisputed boon. Fixating too vigorously on goals can distort an organization’s overall mission in a desperate effort to meet some overly narrow target, and research by several business-school professors suggests that employees consumed with goals are likelier to cut ethical corners.
Though much of this research is new, the essential insight isn’t. Ancient philosophers and spiritual teachers understood the need to balance the positive with the negative, optimism with pessimism, a striving for success and security with an openness to failure and uncertainty. The Stoics recommended “the premeditation of evils,†or deliberately visualizing the worst-case scenario. This tends to reduce anxiety about the future: when you soberly picture how badly things could go in reality, you usually conclude that you could cope. Besides, they noted, imagining that you might lose the relationships and possessions you currently enjoy increases your gratitude for having them now. Positive thinking, by contrast, always leans into the future, ignoring present pleasures.
Buddhist meditation, too, is arguably all about learning to resist the urge to think positively — to let emotions and sensations arise and pass, regardless of their content. It might even have helped those agonized firewalkers. Very brief training in meditation, according to a 2009 article in The Journal of Pain, brought significant reductions in pain — not by ignoring unpleasant sensations, or refusing to feel them, but by turning nonjudgmentally toward them.
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