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The Limitations of Positive Thinking
Finding Balance
Both positivity and negativity have a place. We should learn to find a balance between the two.
Instead of focussing on positive thinking, we should hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
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Positivity Could be Good for Us
Negative thinking can narrow our thinking and prevent us from moving forward. Positive encouragement can open our minds to alternatives. It fosters creative thinking and opens us up to take on risks.
However, pursuing happiness for the sake of happiness has been shown to make us more unhappy. The more we try and force positive emotions, the less happy we become.
Forcing positive thinking
Forcing positive thinking puts us under pressure and in an always-on-the-alert mode. We can never relax because a negative thought might pop into our heads when we least expect it.
It can make us feel more negative emotions and we may blame ourselves for not being happy enough.
We need some negative emotions
Emotions like fear and anxiety can help us to act in certain situations, for instance, alerting us to danger. Anxiety should not be avoided. It can point to an underlying issue that needs to be addressed.
Thinking negatively can also help us prepare for worst-case scenarios in advance. However, too much negative thinking is not good for us either.
Avoid positive affirmations
Positive affirmations can actually be detrimental.
If you have low self-esteem, repeating feel-good phrases can make you feel worse. And for those with high self-esteem, although positive affirmations tend to improve your mood only slightly, there's no lasting effect.
Finding Balance
Both positivity and negativity have a place. We should learn to find a balance between the two.
Instead of focussing on positive thinking, we should hope for the best, but plan for the worst.
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Subjective well-being
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Subjective Well-Being components
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Measuring Subjective Well-Being
Tracking your own subjective well-being can be very powerful if you keep alongside a journal of your life's events.
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"Good" or "Bad"
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Don't apply labels
When people are faced with extreme adversity, some persons positively flourish while others fall apart.
Those who rise successfully do not place a label on what they go through. They take every circumstance as a given. It is merely something they have to address.
We don't need positive thinking
Positive thinking tends to separate situations in terms of good and bad.
First, you think something is bad, then you have to actively think it is less bad, but you always know you are fooling yourself. You don't have to go through life labeling what happens to you. Don't pick up that useless burden. You can de-condition yourself and experience less stress.
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Lack Of Self-Confidence
... is associated with:
- Depression
- loneliness and feeling left out
- Lower academic achievement
- Lower life satisfaction
Building Your Self-Confidence
You become more self-confident if you become better at what you do.
The process goes like this:
- Improve your competencies
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Individual happiness cascades through groups of people, like contagion. So make friends with people who live near you.
Embrace opposing feelings
Happiness can come from noticing and embracing a wide spectrum of emotions--both good and bad.
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Self-optimization and depression
In a way, depression is our way of reacting, withdrawing, and possibly metaphorically recharging our batteries.
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Something concrete we can change
We should stop trying to adjust people to circumstances that are not worth being adjusted to. If people suffer from stress in an organization, try to look at how work is organized and change it, instead of referring them to something like stress coaching, or psychotherapies or mindfulness exercises that are really just treating symptoms.
These sensitive, intelligent, resourceful people should be out changing the world, not just sitting in therapy rooms trying to improve themselves.
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Self-inflicted stress
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Managing self-inflicted stress
- Use the 60-second method: Set aside 60 seconds of pause before doing anything in relation to what is stressing you out. Don't react.
- Manage your time in a realistic way.
- Ask for help and accept that you might not be able to accomplish everything on your own.
- Acknowledge that your stress is mostly self-inflicted and make changes to fix that.