The Powerlessness of Positive Thinking
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
You don't visualize yourself taking the steps to accomplish a goal, you visualize yourself and your feelings as if the desired goal has already been accomplished.
Not "I will lose 25 pounds!", but instead "I have lost 25 pounds and I look and feel awesome and am very happy and thankful to have done so!" - A great deal of the secret is replicating the emotional state you'll be in when your given goal is accomplished.
The idea being that, I suppose if you were to remove the supernatural element from it, it somehow gets your subconscious to motivate you to doing whatever it is you want done.
Calling it "positive thinking" really doesn't do the concept justice. Thinking of goals as already accomplished doesn't really fit that definition.
If you're just lazy you might be right, but if you're not doing things because you are not sure you're doing the right thing, not sure what you are doing and how and feel intimidated and unhappy, it can help to get into a better frame of mind beforehand. Some things are so much harder when bad feelings get in the way.
[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/9wr/my_algorithm_for_beating_procras...
I absolutely hate messianic-style writing.
Much like criticizing all liberals as being dreadlock'd pot smoking communists, or criticizing conservatives for hating everyone who isn't them and being heartless.
Using these extreme examples does nothing more than incite arguments... But I guess in this guess arguments get you links, and links get you ad revenue... perhaps it's not so surprising why this article was written.
Not "will do", but "already done".
Instead of naive positive thinking, psychological research in habit forming suggests that creating a robust system and habit (or set of habits) is much more powerful. Assuming and accepting infrequent shocks (e.g. on a diet, but ate 3000 calories at a wedding banquet) and building the system to handle these, is much more likely to create success than fantasy thinking.
David Allen talked about this - to paraphrase, he said that your real system is what you actually do when you are tired / hurried / overworked and don't have time to do all the steps of your idealized system. (Obviously, he recommends a very simple system that you can practice easily at any time.)
Habit formation itself comes from routine. Not the desired routine. This is why we have bad habits.
Good habits are hard, because they are not what we naturally tend towards doing (or we wouldn't try to build them, we'd already have them). Habits are self-reinforcing, and are really based off ideas of success and failure. If we fail to (and regret our failure to) carry out our habit, that is discouraging and actually makes it harder to keep up with the habit.
The best way I have found to develop wanted habits is to never recognize failure in the habit. Always recognize success. You want to do something habitually, keep track of when you do it. Don't keep track in a way that lets you notice when you fail to do it. If you want to do something daily, don't mark on the calendar when you've done it, don't write the date that you did it the last time. Instead write down a simple tick each time you've done it. Increment a counter. Watch it go up.
Say you want to start to wash your brontosaurus (named Rex) on a regular basis, say you never wash him currently. Start by washing Rex and mark a tick down. Then the next time you think about it, wash Rex, and mark a tick down. If you want to do it daily, the next time you think about it, consider whether you already washed him today. If you haven't, wash him, and put down a tick.
Don't tally the ticks up. Don't look back to see how frequently you actually washed him every day. Don't get frustrated because for the past three weeks you washed him daily but last week you missed him three times in a row. When you worry about how well you are washing him, just think "Did I wash him today?" and then wash him if you didn't.
You'll start washing him every day. Or you'll start to wash him every other day and be happy with it. Or you'll wash him from time to time. Think about the results instead. Do you have a brontosaurus that is sufficiently clean? If you do that's great, keep it up, whether you do it daily or monthly. Do you not? Then consider what else you could do besides cleaning him yourself to make him cleaner.
Whatever you do, don't just get mad at yourself for not doing it and demand from yourself that you do it more often, and then promise yourself that you will. That won't work. You'll maybe do it for a bit and then burn out from frustration and failure.
You can always do something like set a reminder if you don't think about it. But if you remember and avoid it, and then get angry with yourself for avoiding it (or rationalize your avoidance), you're doing the opposite of what is needed to make a habit.
If you find you are avoiding it (Ah man, I'm too tired right now.) don't tell yourself you will make it up tomorrow. Don't get angry with yourself. Don't even acknowledge it. It's a habit, not a chore. It's something you want to do more frequently, not something you have to do. Acknowledge when you do complete it, not when you don't. As soon as you start to argue with yourself ("I should do this, but I don't want to") you're already losing the battle. Don't consider at that point what you should do. Just do it, or don't do it. Notice and feel good when you do it.
Habit formation is a form of wishful thinking. You're creating a rut of the mind, and as such, become more separated from the reality at hand. Wishful thinking, at its core, is a form of separation from reality.
Normally, external conditions reinforces the habit, and so the rut of the mind gets deeper and deeper. But when external conditions change -- as they inevitably will -- you end up with a psychological dynamic described by the Five Stages of Grief. Most people's notion of "bad" are formed from when external changes forces them out of their comfortable habits. They cling to these habits and wish things would "get back to normal".
As such, there is neither "good" or "bad" habits. There are just habits, all of which keep you from adapting to change, and are just as much out of touch with reality as wishful thinking.
When [...] asked who didn't make it out of Vietnam, Stockdale replied:
Oh, that's easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, 'We're going to be out by Christmas.' And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they'd say, 'We're going to be out by Easter.' And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart."
Stockdale then added: This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Frankl
"optimistic outlook" vs "optimistic thinking" is far better, IMO
I imagine that if you interviewed the survivors you speak of, they would agree.
The optimism described by Stockdale was a false promise and when broken proved hollow, whereas the optimism described by Holocaust survivors tend to be more about belief in things despite a feeling of betrayal.
I don't believe this is true at all. I'd argue the best way to stop thinking about something, is to divert your mental focus to other thing/s intentionally. Best way to stop thinking about your ex? Find a new boyfriend, dive deep into a work problem, find a new hobby to occupy your brain power, and so on.
Want to insure you aren't thinking about something? Don't attempt to insure you're not thinking about it by thinking about it (a blatantly self-sabotaging concept).
There's absolutely no need to constantly do mental reference checks to make sure you aren't thinking about the white bear in a red ferrari. In fact, that's the worst thing you can do. You can only focus on one thing at a time, and your brain is finite, as such it's not that difficult to saturate it and drown out competing thoughts. Given enough effort and time, the bear is banished from your short term memory and its emotional hold on you is dramatically lessened. After a while you then realize that it has in fact been a long time since you've thought about the bear, and you realize said bear's hold over you is no more. All accomplished without constantly thinking about whether you're thinking about the bear.
“Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong;"
This is utter pessimism. I feel sorry for people who are on board with it. In my experience, the gains garnished from being super optimistic and taking chances have been much greater than had I sat around on the couch not trying. I never achieve up to the level of my goals and imagination - but that's because I continuously push them higher and higher. Instead, I aim for Alpha Centauri and land on the moon.
I should also add that the emotion of _curiosity_ is a very powerful one for me. When I imagine the future, and I _don't know_ what something will be like, the curiosity is a very powerful motivator for me to at least try it out.
I seem to recall reading on Ars Technica a summary of a study that found that, in a controlled experiment, those who tried to stop thinking about something by directly shutting it down were more successful than those who tried to replace the thought with a different thought.
(1) It is not enough to think positively. You actually have to change how you feel. If you are out of touch with your feelings, then no amount of positive thinking will change anything.
(2) In order to be in touch with how you feel, you first have to tune into how you feel right now -- whether that is "good" or "bad". Then accept it for what it is now. It's only after that, that change happens.
Similarly, when it comes to exercise, I find I'm much more motivated by fear. I will tend to slack off if I don't have a goal, but if I enter a marathon, I'm constantly thinking about how much it will suck if I haven't trained enough, and I am motivated to get out of bed early and run, or run after a long day's work. I feel great after a run, but that's not what drives me.
"Fear is the spur." As a good friend of mine once said :-).
This article seemed to suggest that positive thinking means: "Plan for the best outcome and assume the worst will not happen." That is wishful thinking ('positive fantasies'). I don't think the two are the same thing at all.
I don't think most people share your definition.
I have a simple mind and not a very strong vocabulary. I have no doubt that I am probably out-of-sync with popular opinion on this topic.
We developed a smartphone app at http://positivethinking.net to solve this problem.
I don't doubt ideology like The Secret does more harm than good, that's why our tagline is YOUR SUCCESS STARTS WITH A POSITIVE MINDSET.
Because being optimistic and hopeful is only a small part to being successful, it's only the start, actually practicing and working towards your goals is the other 90-95%.
The way we try to help is by motivating and inspiring you consistently to reach your goals. For example if you want to be successful at business we will send you insightful quotes from the likes of Richard Branson and Steve jobs daily.
If you want to be fit and healthy we have things like "success trains, failure complains" and "to cold, to busy, to tired. NO EXCUSES, TRAIN EVERYDAY".
Being reminded daily of these things has helped changed my thoughts.
Ps, I'm not sure if calling my app "positive thinking" was a great idea because it often gets lumped with the lazy wish-and-the-universe-will-provide ideology but it was purely a SEO move.
I would love peoples thoughts on all of this!
This is a massive oversimplification. I know many, many people, including myself, for whom imagining positive outcomes feeds a chain reaction of emotion and motivation which drives us to try things within and beyond our reach and ultimately to come out on top even in the face of numerous failures.
Of course, as posters like theorique point out, it is not enough to merely fantasize. The positive fantasizing must, and will, motivate one to build successful habits. It is not enough to distract ones' self with a utopian mirage. It is necessary to include details and additional questions in the fantasy, such as "back from the future thinking." e.g. "Ok, my startup is successful, who are my customers? Who are they servicing? Which features of what I'm doing/did got me there?"
And I believe doomsayers like the authors of this paper and this article know it damn well. There's just a more comfortable place for them in the larger cultural climate to negatively criticize the author of The Secret than there is in clarifying it. For the authors of the paper, there is more academic capital in running a "computerized content analysis" than there is to actually produce any results that help anyone.
Furthermore the abstract of the Oettingen paper suggests serious misunderstandings of finance (1. Just b/c DJIA goes down doesn't mean the economy is bad. 2. The measurements were made during a financial crisis) and correlation vs. causation.
So, fuck this article! Go out and do something awesome and visualize the shit out of it!!!!!!
That can be done to a certain extent. Sun Tzu, for example, advised burning the ships in order to make the soldiers desperate. Desperate people appear to get a lot more things done.
The thing is that, this is not sustainable. Unsustainable efforts like this does not just lead to burn out, it also leads to unbounded profit motives that drives a lot of the inequalities today ... which, of course, makes more desperate people.
I have used this fear-of-failure to drive actions before. But I have learned that it is a part of "intensity". That is, I'm "cooking" myself. If I turn the heat up too fast, then I'm going to avoid it like hell.
When people open up to this part of consciousness where they realize they can change the intensity, it feels like you can do anything you want. BUT, it is the nature of that kind of experience that you overcome all inhibitions and obstacles ... including when you need to stop turning up the heat.
Coming back to the cooking metaphor: if you have ever cooked food before, turning the stove up to its max will not make the food cook faster. (If you don't cook, I highly recommend picking up some basic skills, like from Alton Brown's Good Eats series; there are a lot of interesting life lessons coming out of the application of heat to food).
So I have this knob in my life. I turn it one way and I can intensify the heat and pressure. I can turn it down and I can adjust it. If I want to toast and incinerate something, I'd turn it all the way to max. Usually, I want a nice simmer that will go on and on. It depends on the recipe (your strategy), your ingredients (what you have to work with), and what it is you are trying to accomplish.
A good, quick application of heat might inspire you to take action, but you can flame out quickly. You are totally allowed to turn it down so that once things get going, it will keep going.
That is, your point is that the research conducted over-simplified the technique. If I understand your point, "thinking positively" is not enough; the subjects in the experiment did one step, but not the others that you think are required. So how do you design an experiment where thinking positively necessarily motivates "one to build successful habits"?
Positive thinking, in my view, is more about saying "What do I need to do make this happen." instead of saying "I will never be able to make this happen." This article seems to use a destructive type of thought that is more like "This will happen to me!"
"Gabriele Oettingen and Doris Mayer asked eighty-three German students to rate the extent to which they “experienced positive thoughts, images, or fantasies on the subject of transition into work life, graduating from university, looking for and finding a job."
I agree that simply imagining things simply working out for you can be damaging. But I think that there's something like positive thinking that doesn't include baseless fantasizing. To think "I get an interview from 1/3 of the applications I send out, and I might be hired for 1/5 of the positions I apply for, so if I make sure I am applying, I will likely find a job" is reasonably positive thinking, but it's more constructive than thinking "Ah, I'm awesome, there's a job I want, and I'm certain they will hire me because I'm thinking positively. I won't bother applying elsewhere, I'm special, they'll need to take me" and then falling into a depression when you don't even get invited for an interview.
On the other hand, both of those situations are better than sitting at home and thinking "I'm never going to get a job anyways, I might as well not apply".
To me positive thinking is about looking at all of the angles, not being afraid to see where things go differently, but still have a positive outlook. "If I do this, there's a 25% chance it will fail. If it fails, I will lose my money, if it succeeds I will make 200 times what I invested. I have enough set aside to try this 10 times. It's worth doing it, and I wont ruin myself if it doesn't work out."
It's that sort of thinking that shows that failure isn't bad, it's just a possibility. Recognizing that and planning to make the best of both the bad situation and the good situation is positive thinking.
Thinking "I'm going to start this business, I'm going to throw everything I have at it, but I'm going to pay myself a fair salary and save. When I succeed, I will be rich. When I fail, I'll be in a comfortable position to start again. Life is good." is positive.
Thinking "I'm going to start this business and throw everything I have into it, and if it starts to look bad, I'm going to throw even more into it until I'm a hollow shell of a man who can't live with the idea that I could fail" is ignorant. Wishful thinking, but there's a difference between thinking positively and being ignorant of the circumstances.
This just shows that fatalism, whether positive (things will definitely work out) or negative (things will definitely not work out), is a bad thing. It's much better to believe that outcomes aren't predetermined.
A negative fatalistic attitude is self-fulfilling. But some people take an extreme lesson from this: that attitude itself is the sole determining factor of any outcome.
But it's trivial to show that's wrong. Negativity doesn't stop you from taking action: if you think something bad will happen but aren't fatalistic, you will try to stop it. Conversely, positivity doesn't encourage action: if you believe that a positive outcome is preordained, there's no need to take action.
What you are describing is practical thinking.
Beliefs -> Emotions -> Thoughts -> Actions.
So trying to force positive thoughts on top of negative beliefs will last as long as that exercise.
When you "forget" to think positively - you get back to the default polarity of beliefs.
So to make the change positive and lasting the beliefs needs to be addressed either directly or via associated emotions.
Beliefs <-> Emotions
Beliefs <-> Thoughts
Beliefs <-> Actions
Emotions <-> Thoughts
Emotions <-> Actions
Thoughts <-> ActionsDennis: Yeah, man, all you have to do is envision all the shit in the world that you want, cut pictures of it out and paste it on a board. Then you get it, you get the stuff!
Ancillary to that: "When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures." James 4:3
Just saying.
I don't regard making contingency plans for worst case results as negative thinking.
Resonable "I can't do that" (because obese people don't jump 4ft high) is negative thinking but can be quite resonable and motivating to find another way.
On the other hand blind "I can do that!" is still called positive thinking even if it's pure delusion that leads to disaster.
Having been down in some dark pits of despair, I can honestly say that "The Secret" had a profound effect on my life. I don't mean in a subtle way. It was more black and white: one day I was depressed, poor, and lonely, and then I saw The Secret and started acting more on instinct, the way humans might have thousands of years ago before they were institutionalized. My theory about how it works is the same as when you look at geese flying in the sky in January and it’s 10 degrees outside, and wonder how in the heck they are not starving or freezing to death. “The secret” is that they are simply acting in harmony with the reality that brought them into existence, not fighting it every step of the way or dwelling on how things “should be”. Modern concepts like scarcity, power, success, money, etc are insidious forms of mind control because they frame reality in a way that traps people. Children don’t normally suffer from maladies related to these things, because they are oblivious to them.
Now how come adults dwell on them so much? I think it’s because they are so busy working hard to earn a living or provide for their children that they put subsistence at the top of their priorities. But life’s a game, we’re all going to croak at some point anyway. The truth is that whichever culture you are in, at whatever level of affluence, has a strong incentive to keep you right where you’re at. You could stop trying, go on autopilot and spend your time daydreaming, and.. nothing happens. You just continue on your present course. You start noticing how outside forces step in and solve problems that you used to be micromanaging. You start to notice coincidences and miracles, or even the emotional fabric that holds society together, the way that people rely on each other. And your subconscious comes to the forefront and brings opportunities to your attention that you couldn’t see before, so you can act on them and create tangible changes in your life. To me, that’s the most powerful lesson from The Secret. To let go, realize it’s all just details, and experience the act of living without constantly trying to validate it. Then the natural laws come back into play and thriving is a likely outcome.
Anyway, that’s the tip of the iceberg, if anyone is feeling a little off lately, or having a sense that its “me against the world” or “me against god” or “everything is hanging by a thread”, basically anything along those lines, I highly recommend looking into group meditation. I started with something called The Reconnection, or Reconnective Healing, because a good friend of mine is into it. It’s just a tool among many to quiet the mind and let the subconscious come forward.
I still think it’s kind of eerie when I think about something and the universe changes to reflect my interests, but I don’t necessarily think it’s supernatural. It could have something to do with the way we store memories or some physical process like that. I’m not really sure, I just know that the effect is real because as soon as I started trying it, there were too many unexplained coincidences to happen by chance. I think it’s loosely related to how faiths become prevalent. It’s not due to the specifics of any religion, but the notion that belief in itself creates outcomes. It’s sad and ironic that so often, capable people write it off because science has no explanation for it (yet). But would knowing the mathematics behind it, say like psychology or economics, help us incorporate it more readily? I’m not so sure. If you took any kid and told him or her that the universe is governed by strict laws, there is no deeper meaning to any of it, or even free will, then depression is a likely outcome. I know it happened to me, and I wore my depression like some kind of badge of honor, like I had it all figured out, when I really didn’t. I still feel depressed from time to time like anyone else, but I actually use that as a signal now that I’m holding on too tightly, and take some time for myself to stare at the stars, or go into the wilderness, or do something that’s not governed by man-made laws, and then MIRACULOUSLY, I feel better.
And the people who do this are as offended by my view of the world as if I spilled shit on their white suit. I'm biased, but I don't see myself as overly negative. The way I see it, I just don't go out of my way to see the bright side, or try in a motivated way to hit positive notes while conversing. I don't feel motivated to be negative, either. But this sure as hell makes me the most negative person I know, by default. To me, I just can't have a view of the world other than the view I have; and I can't speak things other than what I think and see.
From the other side, for myself, I have been guilty of the same thing in the past. But since I became more aware of it, I now try, when someone talks about bad luck or unpleasantness in the world, to listen and nod, rather than allow my larynx to reflexively spasm into a positive platitude.
No, I am not fun at parties. Not to worry - I don't go to them.
Also, yeah I think criticizing positive thinking in general, and The Secret in particular, both in the same short article, is pretty sloppy.
Yeah. Those people suck at it. You are absolutely correct that, use of "Yeah, but" and "Well on the bright side" "Hey, at least" generally indicates trying to gold-plate pig shit.
As I have mentioned in other comments, "positive thinking" is a misnomer. You're really working with emotions, not thought. Thoughts arise from emotions. "Positive thinking" is not so much as using your language to try to gold-plat pig shit so much as tuning into the underlying emotions, and perhaps, shifting the emotions to a different shape. When that happens, the thoughts will arise in a different pattern.
"I'm biased, but I don't see myself as overly negative." <-- A lot of negative people wading through their crap don't see themselves as negative. I speak from personal experience. I can say this kind of stuff now, only because I was able to tune into the darker emotions and learned how to release them. There are lots and lots of methods to do this, much literature, teachings, and trainings on this. The darker emotions stay within you and color how you experience the world; unless you've had a lot of training and practice at being aware of yourself, it is unlikely that you would even know how much crap you carry, though it would feel as if you were being neutral. (It isn't that you are neutral; it is that it feels normal to you).
Perhaps, be open to the possibility that there are people who don't suck at this stuff. Observe what they do, the play of emotions running through them, and how they affect people around them. There are folks like that out there.
I think it's pretty unbalanced to not have any darker emotions. I mean, certainly, one can take it too far, but I find this social pressure to be always happy to be... very fake, and very irritating.
@lsc there is another aspect to this too. A lot of people are addicted to their darker emotions. It is possible, your feeling of irritation is arising from such an attachment. It is also possible that you have an aversion to the feelings of joy, affection, love, happiness. Lots of people do, even the ones who are clearly faking their happiness :-D
All of those are emotional skills. Why do you feel so surprised about this?
I was asking @benched why the person is surprised. What is obvious to @benched is not obvious to me; what is obvious to me is not obvious to @benched. What's the point of the upvote or downvote? Why did you feel the need to take the time to read all the way here and then downvote that comment?
Then you seem to imply that anyone who doesn't find these things obvious is emotionally unskilled, whatever that means.
If you took a stab at explaining what those things actually mean, I'd have upvoted. That would make for an interesting conversation, even if I didn't agree with you. As it stands, though, your post reads like a content-free insult, which is exactly the sort of thing that ought to be downvoted.
Next time, just ask for clarification rather than hitting the downvote button. I don't mind that you downvoted it; but without explaining your action like that, you are doing just the same as I am: failing to communicate.
To address your questions. When you say "platitude", that means that those are words empty of power. That is for example, someone says: "Don't dwell, release!" Now, if you have never, ever experienced how to release emotions, you are also unlikely to know how your mind and awareness dwells upon those emotions. Because you have never directly experienced how to do it, in your mind, it is impossible to do. So when someone says to you, "Don't dwell, release!" there is no frame of reference to even understand what that means. To you, they are meaningless platitudes -- regardless of whether the person speaking to you has those skills or not. But for folks who have experienced this, it is obvious. It is obvious because the word obvious stems from the same word as "observable". (It is interesting you took the word "obvious" and filtered it to apply your emotional response to it, probably something along the lines of, "you are stupid because you cannot even perceive this"; for me, the intent and emotional content at the time I wrote this was more along the lines of, "yes, it can be this easy too, you should try it, don't think too much about it").
Most people are emotional morons. That is not an insult. That is exactly what most people are: confused and unskilled with emotions. If anything, it is a cause for compassion, not a means by which someone can feel better about themselves by being "better" than someone else. It also does not mean someone will stay like that forever. Like all skills, you can develop this, though it takes effort.
Most people avoid painful emotions. Part of their subconscious dwells on there. It stays there because they do not want to surface it to the consciousness allow themselves to really experience that feeling, and allow it to fade on its own once it surfaces. Feeling insulted or offended, or feeling offended on behalf of someone else are examples of this dynamic in play.
Usually, if something like that surfaces, and the person tries to shunt off the suffering onto someone else as quickly as possible. One typical and popular method of shunting off suffering is a process called "blame". Our justice system, in fact, is not really about justice so much as divying up blame, that is, divying up suffering among the people. That kind of stuff persists, as each person passes blame on to the next person. It may also take the form of abuse and assault. It may also take the form of more subtle things -- little revenge, or rationalizations. Sometimes, the person isn't fully aware of it, since the misery is so intense, it blocks out whatever it is that is surfacing.
Even more subtly is when those emotions shapes and changes your thought pattern, and you think you are being reasonable. But you're not. Anytime someone has those hidden agendas, they speak or act in one way while trying to get at something else, this dynamic is at play.
Usually, when I teach someone these skills, we'd work on what is being experienced right now. If this were a real-time conversation in meatspace, we would be talking about the emotional impulses within you that led to the downvote. It would be easier in meatspace, since I would be able to tell when things start getting sidetracked, like turning this into a drama about @hosh vs. @lsc rather than what is arising right now. Since this is not meatspace, by the time you read this comment, the arising feelings would likely be different.
If you're truly impeccable about that bit about wanting a serious conversation about this, PM me privately. Indirect means of contact are in my profile. Alternatively, send me your contact info and we can go from there.
I'm not going to downvote /this/ comment, because I think it's contributing something. It's... too large and complex for me to properly digest and respond to right now, but I think there is something there... you are attempting to convey something to me... which is going to be quite difficult, because we have very different ways of relating to emotions, and because we have very different jargon, and even when we mostly agree on a word (like your example of 'obviously') the emotional connotations associated with that word are quite different.
I suspect that we even have a different way of relating to the emotional connotations of a word, and separating those from the thing actually being described.
But, if this was your response the other night, when I had more time, I likely would have put significant effort into responding instead of just downvoting.
Your reasoning is that you are helping contribute to the site, and it is nothing personal. That's fine, and perhaps admirable. So why do you feel that this is helping the community? Where does the need to help the community arise from? Where is it located in your body? These are experiential.
I think you are right that we have different ways of relating to the emotional connotation of the word. There is a particular skill at play here. Hmm. I'm not sure how to describe it without jargon.
In order to understand a word, you experience the meaning. That experience tends to be an aggregation of a lot of things: patterns of sensations within the body, which tends to be interpreted as plays of emotions, which give rise to a narrative... a reason. Since this experience plays out at the sensory level, you can observe this on other people. Some people see things. Some people hear things. Some people get things. (There is mismatch when say, you hear an exchange like, "Do you see? It's crystal clear." "No, you don't get it. You don't grasp the significance.")
The other thing is that we tend to think awareness is the same as experience. It's not. It is possible to simply have awareness without content. There are also examples where someone's body might experience something, but the person is not aware of it, often because there is armoring or aversion.
Further, there are people who tend to associate thought with consciousness and awareness. Typically (but not always), such a person do not have enough awareness of the emotions at play. I speak of these things because I've been like that before, so I know what it is like to be emotionally clueless and what it is like to be much more in tune with the play of emotions.
If most of your awareness rests in your intellect, and you feel comfortable using your intellect, you're not as likely to be aware of the underlying emotional or sensory experiences. So if you attempted to use "positive thinking", you could make a change in the pattern of thought. But that does not necessarily make a change in the pattern of emotion.
The Litany Against Fear from Dune is a great example. That never worked for me :-D But I know folks where it does work for them. There is enough awareness and presence with the emotional that, when they speak "I will let fear pass me by..." it really does pass them by. The experience the fear arising in their body ... and leaving. (And that is actually how you release. You allow it to go on its own). It never worked for me because I was simply pushing symbols around in my mind, yet since my awareness was not on the fear, there is no connection between my intent/will with the emotion. For me, I have to direct my intent/will to tune into the fear, recognize it, and watch it, and allow it to pass out of my system on its own. Simply speaking the concepts are powerless platitudes for me without the presence of my mind in my emotions.
Does that help?
Are you talking about being a darkworker? Or is that too far afield?
I heard Gregg Braden speak recently about his new book, Turning Point. I admire his skill at communicating. He is able to talk about this kind of shadow-side work without freaking people out.
He explains it like this. That there are vast changes going on right now in the world. That people are waiting for "things to get back to normal". And he gently leads the person to understanding that ... this is the new normal. And accepting that, you can adapt to the conditions that have already change. And to do that, you need to look at what is going on instead of avoiding it.
I have not started his book, though it is in my queue. The subject matter interest me as much as his communication skill. Maybe I can learn to speak in a way that won't freak people out about shadow-side work :-)
I have never heard someone use the term "darkworker" until you brought it up, but it makes sense if people are going to talk about "lightworker". I have met and know a lot of folks who polarize things like that; many of them have great wisdom and I respect it, yet at the same time, I have learned not to bring up things like deliberately stalking your shadow. It freaks them out too much.
I'll try to describe this in a way that is OK for a public forum (and as I said, feel free to contact me privately).
If you ever had the experience of unity consciousness, that is the base. A lot of "lightworkers" have experienced that. However, I don't think they ever went through the implications of what that experience means. For them, there is some notion of "alignment with source" or something similar. Lots of wisdom comes out from it.
However, if you have attained in the insight of oneness ... then how can anything, no matter how dark, terrifying, or evil be not an emanation of source?
There are significant teachings and methods where, after attaining the insight of oneness, you have a basic connection of true nature; and as such, you can also recognize true nature in any and all phenomena. It is in this way that transmutation can happen. You stalk the shadows in order to bring light there, to see the truth for yourself and to see the truth within the dark.
It is also risky, since, this kind of practice easily attracts people who have a fixation on darkness (for a variety of reasons). Or, if you have any shred of arrogance, or messiah complex, or trying to be the hero, all of that comes out when you stalk the shadows. But then again, if you have the insight of oneness ... where else is there to go? There is no such thing as raising the consciousness of just the folks who are good, or "in alignment" or some other such notions. And further, stalking the darkness like that will suss out all the karma and obscuration within you faster than anything else will. This is why there are yogis and sadhu who meditate in the cremation grounds (because they recognize all is the cremation grounds).
What is also interesting is that these practices themselves tends to trigger a lot of fear in folks. One of most potent practices is awesome: it will, over time, allow you to release deep trauma like few other practices will. We're talking heavy shit here: PTSD, ardent desires to self-annihilate out of shame and guilt, rape, etc. A teaching and a method that helps heal that kind of stuff, that's an awesome gift to the world. Imagine the kind of compassion it took for the originators to see into the dark and create such a gem.
Yet when I have recommended it for friends, they react to it just like the first two times I encountered it in my life: great fear and aversion. For example, they'd buy the book, and keep it on the shelf, and never read it. Something inside them knows that it will work to relieve their suffering, and they avoid it like hell. They avoid it like hell because the price for relief of trauma is realization. Most people won't try it until they get desperate enough.
One more thing: I don't use labels about identity. I don't consider myself a darkworker or a lightworker. Or a programmer. Or a meditator. Or any X. I might practice stalking the shadows, or emanating peace, or program computers, or meditate. Saying I am X is not impeccable. Eventually, I might even drop "I practice X", who knows? ;-)
I guess the followup question is: what are you looking for right now?
Not according to the theory behind one of the most effective psychotherapies we have available today [1], CBT. In the cognitive theory of behaviour, thoughts drive emotions; emotions drive behaviour, the consequences of which drive further thought, thereby creating a feedback loop. Thoughts are based upon beliefs; distorted beliefs lead to distorted thinking and distorted actions. Thought-directed self-help would be directed towards resolving these distorted beliefs.
So "Positive thinking" can mean different things to different people.
This article seems to be discussing a definition I would prefer to label somewhere between "wishful thinking" and "the lazy person's effortless alternative to diligent-self-help-practice that just may work if you're lucky enough to independently rediscover proven self-help techniques indirectly as a consequence of your raised consciousness, or through dumb luck".
In the framework of diligent-self-help-practice, "positive thinking" can be considered as a subset of "rational thinking". CBT, for instance, acknowledges that there are often different ways to view any given situation, and that there is no single "right way". Your personal beliefs will determine which perspective you take, and therefore what emotions you will feel (and consequently what your ultimate behaviour will be). Many people are not aware of the beliefs driving their thought processes, or do not believe that beliefs are malleable, and consequently have a blind spot towards solving their problems.
> benched> I just don't go out of my way to see the bright side, or try in a motivated way to hit positive notes while conversing
The belief that hosh and benched appear to share - that they're just "stating the facts" for everybody else - can, from the perspective that beliefs are malleable, be seen as an unnecessarily self-limiting view of the world.
For instance - let's say you've just been convicted of murder and will serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole in some hellhole. Sure, you could just "state the facts". That may lead to saying to yourself, matter of factly, "well I've just destroyed all my chances of X!". And if you believed X is the most important thing in the world to you, with this thought brought upon by your belief you may find yourself feeling suddenly very depressed at the loss of X.
Now: some people accept that this is a perfectly valid perspective, but not a particularly helpful one. "Positive thinking" in this context means finding a more helpful belief to drive a more constructive perspective. Because whatever is going to happen in that hellhole is going to happen; unless you choose suicide, the best chance you can give your sanity is to give life a meaning invulnerable to what's going to happen [2].
Of course all of this is easier said than done. I'm damn sure if I were ever in this situation I would struggle very much to think positively. I do think I'd have a big advantage of coming to a constructive solution over the guy next to me who hadn't been practising positive thinking, though.
A good part of CBT is helping people find and change toward more empowering beliefs but in practice our beliefs are often tightly coupled together in the worst imaginable tangle of ropes, requiring significant insight and diligence to untangle and restructure a working solution, like refactoring in-memory a production system that has been continuously developed on the wrong foundation for 20, 30, 40 or more years.
Perhaps some people can sense the cognitive dissonance (that a new belief will interfere with an existing belief) but not how to resolve it (usually the introduction and/or refinement of other deeply held beliefs), and become disillusioned with the process, preferring instead to label themselves as just "stating the facts" ;)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy#Ev...
I have literally watched people, with this notion that thought drive emotion, attempt to talk their way through things. It never works. When it appears to work is when there is emotional acceptance -- what you call "belief".
What is even more interesting is that a lot of people are emotionally attached to this notion that thought drives emotions. It's both absurd and tragic, watching folks fixated on this notion that thought rules emotion thrash their way through life, creating misery for themselves and others and not knowing why this is all happening.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_ther... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
Contrary to what some would have you believe in this thread, you can change your beliefs and emotions through consciously directed thought, but it's not easy.
In moderate dosage, it is useful to blunt negativity and hopelessness, which can also cause failure. But use too much of it, and you're lost in la-la-land. As they say, it's all in the dosage...
I think the positive thinking method would get a lot better if it focused less on the outcome, and more on the process. Don't focus on having the great job and enjoying it, focus on the qualities that it takes to get there.
I've spoken with some Orthodox monks in Eastern Europe, where I grew up. Some of them (a rare few, yes) are surprisingly un-dogmatic, and focused on spirituality instead. Take their prayer for example. It's not so much a naive conversation with an imaginary deity, as most people think. It's more like an old-school mental self-programming technique.
They instruct you to never say "give me money", but instead say "give me the strength to attain success" - and visualize it, the process, not the result. They emphasize that you remain the material agent; if you're "given" anything, it's the mental conditions that boost motivation and clear thinking.
Even from a purely material and scientific perspective, I'm definitely fine with that view, give or take a metaphoric understanding of the process of "giving" (it's ultimately a change in your mentality that occurs due to prayer and visualization, and even they emphasize that the way the change happens is a mystery better left alone if you're practical-minded).
This is historically very, very common. Any deep dive into religious mysticism of any type will immediately blur the line between self-programming and conversation. It's not great (though hardly impossible) as a route to secular authority so it's rarely the dominant understanding.
Most people tend to stick with one or two modes of consciousness as that feels the most familiar and comfortable.
Further, depending on what kind of emotional triggers you have, you might be leaking a kind of emotion that is perceived as negative to other people. To you, you might be looking at something "realistically". Perhaps others are afraid to look at that stuff. Or perhaps, you have some form of aversion yourself where you avoid experiencing the "positive". (I cannot really tell just by reading your comment, just offering possibilities).
In all these cases, I don't think there is necessarily anything wrong with a person, whether they are experiencing different modes of consciousness or they have aversions.
Having said all of that, I had mentioned in other parts of the thread: "positive thinking" is usually taught incorrectly by people who suck at it. To use it correctly, you actually do have to look at what you don't want to look at. It is also not enough to think positively; you need to generate a different feeling until that feeling feels "real", from which the thinking will naturally shift into a different direction. As such, this kind of stuff requires quite a bit of skill with emotions.
That's a serious request. On re-reading, it sounds snarky, but I don't know another way to phrase it.
The easiest way is to find someone who is emotionally sane. You probably have at least one such person in your life. That person tends to remain calm, yet seem to be fully aware of what is going on around them. They might quietly step in to calm the situation, or perhaps, just their presence seem to calm any panic of fear. People tend to go to them for advice, not necessarily for solving problems, but because hard problems don't seem to seem as hard when you talk to such a person. It might be your mother, father, or grandmother, or grandfather. It might be be a mentor or a teacher. You ask them for help with getting in touch with your emotions. If you have someone like this in your life, and they know you well, then they'll be happy to help you on this... often because they can see how you suffer from being unable to process emotions well.
There are other approaches:
- Take the 10-day Vipassana retreat. You would get in touch with the things that arises within you.
- There are various shamanic medicine ceremonies using some form of psychedelics. These are guided, though the quality will vary. Since psychedelics alter your experiences, it opens up ways to experience emotions.
- You can go to a licensed therapist. Like gurus, meditation teachers, and shamans, quality varies ... and sometimes, therapists will have their own pet theories (as you can see in other parts of the thread on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). A licensed hypnotherapist, or a psychologist/psychiatrist that knows how to use hynotherapy and practices meditation themselves are likely to be able to better help you with this. (Since we're not talking about behavioral modification, we're talking about becoming more self-aware). There may be other indicators, but I don't know this space well. There is usually stigma attached to this since people associate this with going to get "fixed" rather than going to get advice.
- There are also lots and lots of different kinds of seminars, workshops, etc. related to this, often crossing into the woo.
Books are the last resort, though if you read a method and like it, you can check out their their CDs, videos, and attend seminars. Books are good for sampling techniques, though without an in-person guide, it might be difficult to touch intense emotions. On the other hand, if you do have someone in your life that is emotionally sane, you could ask them to help you work with techniques from the book.
One book that is interesting is called the Sedona Method. I want to preface it to say that, what is written in the Sedona Method is not unique, though sometimes the language might make it appear so. The methods are solid though, and the authors used NLP to guide you through the experiences step by step. It is fairly accessible.
Finally, if all else fails or you have more questions or want other ideas or where to go looking for this skill, feel free to contact me. Indirect means of contact are in my profile.
Your (our) way of thinking strongly reminds me of the "let it crash" philosophy. What are your thoughts on that?