The Power of Negative Thinking

Wall Street Journal ^ | December 7, 2012 | OLIVER BURKEMAN

[lbryce]

The holiday season poses a psychological conundrum. Its defining sentiment, of course, is joy—yet the strenuous effort to be joyous seems to make many of us miserable. It's hard to be happy in overcrowded airport lounges or while you're trying to stay civil for days on end with relatives who stretch your patience.

So to cope with the holidays, magazines and others are advising us to "think positive"—the same advice, in other words, that Norman Vincent Peale, author of "The Power of Positive Thinking," was dispensing six decades ago. (During holidays, Peale once suggested, you should make "a deliberate effort to speak hopefully about everything.") The result all too often mirrors the famously annoying parlor game about trying not to think of a white bear: The harder you try, the more you think about one.

Just thinking in sober detail about worst-case scenarios can help to sap the future of its anxiety-producing power.

Variations of Peale's positive philosophy run deep in American culture, not just in how we handle holidays and other social situations but in business, politics and beyond. Yet studies suggest that peppy affirmations designed to lift the user's mood through repetition and visualizing future success often achieve the opposite of their intended effect.

Fortunately, both ancient philosophy and contemporary psychology point to an alternative: a counterintuitive approach that might be termed "the negative path to happiness." This approach helps to explain some puzzles, such as the fact that citizens of more economically insecure countries often report greater happiness than citizens of wealthier ones. Or that many successful businesspeople reject the idea of setting firm goals.

One pioneer of the "negative path" was the New York psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died in 2007. He rediscovered a key insight of the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome:

[bravo whiskey]

www.despair.com for those who dislike the motivational posters in offices.

[Twinkie]

Christmas shouldn’t be this way either. - Neither should Thanksgiving. - Lately, we’ve established a tradition of going over to a nearby state park (Thanksgiving evening) and having the Thanksgiving buffet; sometimes to Shoney’s or other places. None of the cooking like we did for many years, none of the mess of pots and pans. (Fun for the guys; the WOMEN not so much.) This year, I got manipulated into getting back into that trap since my husband’s very elderly cousin insisted on us coming over there. It was OK; I was glad I could help her out in that (she is 84 or 85!). I told husband afterwards that it was not going to become a TRADITION, not for me (like things tend to do with him); that it just WAS NOT RIGHT. He agreed; and I was surprised.

[Rodamala]

There is this book, The Secret, that is one of the latest secular "Power of Positive Thinking" self-help books... and this link is to the best review I ever read on Amazon. Hilarious.