Do you also hate those inveterate positive people with their irritating clichés such as ‘everything will be fine’ or ‘everything will be fine’? Then there is good news! The latest guru in the self-help field is called Oliver Burkeman and his book translated into Dutch as ‘Antidote: happiness for people who hate positive thinking’ is about the power of negative thinking. It is an answer to the philosophy of Anthony Robbins in which positive thinking plays a central role.
The negative side of positive thinking and a better alternative
In practice, negative thinking can be a lot more positive than… er… positive thinking. How exactly does that work? Consider the limitations of positive thinking by considering its negative consequences.
- The firewalk as a metaphor of life
- The counterproductive effect of positive visualization
- ‘I am an attractive person’ ‘ My life is full of joy ‘, but not really…,> ‘I am an attractive person ‘ ‘ My life is full of joy ‘, but not really…
- Determine your goals… and overshoot them
- The need for balance of the positive and the negative
- Positive thinking consumes energy and can come with an expensive price tag
- Don’t visualize your hot coals as cool moss, but as hot coals
The firewalk as a metaphor of life
During a so-called fire walk in June 2012, 21 participants in an Unleash The Power Within seminar suffered burns. This firewalk is one of the regular components of Anthony Robbins’ seminars. This writer and motivational speaker is best known in the Netherlands for his book Your unknown abilities, in which he explains, among other things, his insights into neurolinguistic programming. In his books and seminars, Robbins continually states, albeit in different words, that your possibilities are limitless provided you work with the right beliefs in a positive way on what you essentially want to achieve in your life.
The purpose of the firewalk is to give you the feeling that your possibilities are indeed limitless, provided you have the right mindset. Before you step onto the hot coals, tell yourself: I want it, I can do it and I’m going for it. And you visualize how you successfully complete the firewalk: with your head held high and a straight, firm step. During the fire walk itself you are expected to visualize cool moss and keep saying out loud: Cool moss, cool moss, cool moss.
The physiological truth about the fire walk is that none of the participants in the seminar will get blisters or burns, provided that the participant walks smoothly and lightly and for several meters over a horizontal layer of smoldering coals or smoldering wood on a non-flammable surface. The fact that this went wrong during a seminar in California in July 2012 had nothing to do with a wrong mindset, but everything to do with physiological factors.
The counterproductive effect of positive visualization
In seminars and workshops for company employees, participants are often given exercises with positive visualization. In a number of cases you can achieve unexpectedly good results with this. Many management books therefore emphasize the power of positive visualization.
However, so far the negative effect of positive visualization has remained underexposed. Oliver Burkeman wants to put an end to this in his book The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking . This book has been translated into Dutch and has been available since November 2012 under the title: Antidote: happiness for people who hate positive thinking (Ambo Publishers). Visualization can cause someone to feel that they have already achieved their goal and that they no longer have to make a huge effort to achieve it.
‘I am an attractive person ‘ ‘ My life is full of joy ‘, but not really…
Do your toes also curl at those terrible slogans that are intended to make people think more positively? If your boss sends you to such a terrible workshop, seminar or course again, you would sometimes like to hit the trainer several times with his own positivism. But as a good employee, you even swallow the words on your tongue and pretend that you are working hard to become, if possible, an even more positive person. Finally, you don’t want to throw away your chances of a good career by openly doubting the usefulness of those workshops, seminars or courses that are intended to make you an efficient, effective and, above all, a positive-thinking employee.
Fortunately, it is now becoming increasingly clear in broader circles that slogans such as ‘I am an attractive person ‘ or ‘My life is full of joy ‘ are counterproductive for someone with low self-esteem. This negative effect is caused, for example, by the fact that someone who does not believe in that slogan thinks to himself very convincingly: ‘But not really!’
Determine your goals… and overshoot them
Tony Robbins’ insights include consciously setting goals. Managerspeak is full of blah blah about objectives and achieving goals.
But setting goals can have the unintended side effect of overshooting the set goal. This is especially true if you focus too much on a tightly formulated goal. According to various studies, employees who are driven by concrete goals are more likely to disregard ethical standards.
The need for balance of the positive and the negative
Oliver Burkeman points out that ancient philosophers and spiritual leaders recognized the need to find the balance between the positive and the negative, between optimism and pessimism, and between a pursuit of success and security, and an openness to failure and insecurities.
Burkeman recalls that the Stoics already advised visualizing the darkest scenario. This would reduce your worries about the future. If you soberly imagine how bad things could turn out in the worst case, you usually come to the conclusion that you can (learn to) deal with it. If you visualize the possibility of losing your family and friends and your possessions, you may become extra grateful for the fact that you still have them. That insight was already known to the Stoics!
In contrast, positive thinking is always focused on the future. This future-orientation makes current pleasures seem irrelevant and makes it more difficult to live in the here and now.
Positive thinking consumes energy and can come with an expensive price tag
The urge to think positively can lead to a laborious effort to eradicate every trace of negativity. A person who wants to think positively must constantly be on guard against the emergence of a feeling of sadness or failure.
Constantly telling yourself slogans that everything will be fine or everything will be fine does not help you in situations where this is not the case. On the contrary, it even prevents you from taking the necessary steps needed to change your situation.
According to social critic Barbara Ehrenreich, one-sided positive thinking coupled with dismissing the possibility of failure has contributed to our current severe financial crisis. Given the above insights from time immemorial, there is something to be said for this.
Don’t visualize your hot coals as cool moss, but as hot coals
In a nod to Anthony Robbin’s advice to think of cool moss when walking over hot coals, Oliver Burke advises: Don’t visualize your hot coals as cool moss, but as hot coals.’ It seems that Burke may be right about this.
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