The Dangers of Positive Thinking.

When you walk through the self-help aisle of any book store, you are likely to see plenty of books based on the notion that positive thinking is the key to getting what you want. The message is clear: if you want to achieve something, just keep telling yourself  “I can!” and envision yourself accomplishing your goals. Success will surely come your way.

Not so, says years of psychological research. Certain kinds of positive thoughts, known in the research as fantasies, can actually be detrimental to performance.

When we fantasize, we idealize our futures. We imagine all the wonderful things we can achieve and the ease with which we can achieve them. Fantasies are not based on past experiences, meaning that we can have fantasies about achieving things for which we have no training or practice. They are also not at all based on what we believe will happen. We are fantasizing when we talk with our friends about what it might be like to win the lottery or be an NBA superstar.

Fantasies are different than having positive expectations about the future. Expectations are based on past experience and future probability. For example, I might have a positive expectation that I will do well on my next statistics exam because I have done well on my homework assignments and because I have studied hard. Because they are based in reality, positive expectations are associated with better effort and performance. So it’s not that all positive thoughts about the future are detrimental, just certain kinds.

4 Perils of Fantasizing

To understand why fantasies are a type of harmful positive thinking, let’s take a look at four negative consequences of them.

1. Reduced energy

Generating positive fantasies about desired outcomes can sap energy. For example, researchers asked undergraduates to imagine that they won an essay contest. In the positive fantasy condition, they asked participants to imagine that everything about winning the contest went really well; in the other condition, they told participants to imagine that winning the contest was not as great as initially anticipated. Those who fantasized about positive outcomes reported that they felt less energized than those who did not fantasize. In a similar study, fantasizers also showed decreases in systolic blood pressure (interpreted as decreases in energization) whereas the non-fantasizers did not.

2. Mental, but not actual, attainment

Indulging in thoughts about a bright future can lead to “mental attainment” of that future: thinking as though you have achieved it. This can leave people with little motivation to achieve their goals in reality. In one study, participants who generated positive fantasies about an outcome (e.g., being more focused at work) evaluated outcome-related words in ways similar to people who have already accomplished a goal. It was as though participants were thinking that they had achieved their goals without really doing so. Importantly, this means that they had less motivation and were not thinking about the steps needed to reach their goals.

3. Bad planning

This one’s pretty simple: if you only think about how positive your future might be and how easy it will be to get there, then you don’t plan for obstacles that might be in your way! For example, if I fantasize about getting my dream job, I might not consider how to deal with tough coursework, data that aren’t perfect, or rejection of my papers. If I have no plans for how to deal with these roadblocks, then I’m much less likely to get past them.    

4. Pursuit of unfeasible goals

One problem with positive fantasies is that they don’t help people distinguish between feasible and unfeasible goals. When people fantasize about a positive future, they show levels of goal commitment that are independent of their expectations for achieving those goals. So even if they think they are unlikely to reach a certain goal, fantasizers remain committed to the goal.

Though you might see this commitment as beneficial, I would encourage you to imagine all the resources and time you might waste if you continually pursued goals that were just too far out of your reach. Much better to consider your talents and opportunities and put your resources toward goals that align with them! 

Unfortunately, research shows that this is something people who fantasize about a positive future are unlikely to do.

Hopefully these four consequences of fantasies have convinced you that positive thinking might not always be the answer to motivation and success. The next time you find yourself fantasizing about how great it would be to get a promotion at work or to date the hottie next door, snap out of it! Thinking realistically about how you can achieve those goals might be better than imagining you already have.

By Kate Reilly / Source: Psych Your Mind

 

“Who is really in charge of your life and your world?”

 

Who really have the say and authority in your life (world)? Who is and have been creating your life experiences since early childhood up to now? Many of us have been playing the role of a victim for so many years that we are unable to recall who allocated this (victim) role to us. The question that we need to answer is, “Who is really in charge of your life and your world?” It is important to remember that everyone is a creator in his/her own right. Everyone is thus the ruler of their own world and circumstances. It is vital to understand that it is unacceptable to allow anyone to impose his/her ideas, will and creations on to us and our world. This is how we become the slave of those that enforce their will (scripts) on us and took over our domain.

Rene

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Question – “Do I want to win or do I want to be happy?”

 

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When we detect something via one or more of our five senses “it is what it is” until we make up our mind what we are going to make of it and what we are going to do about it. Its status remains neutral until we “respond” to the event detected of that we possibly thought of.

 

Example – someone said something that and we proceed to lodge it in the “process pending” file in our subconscious computer. No rational and objective reaction can take place until we hit the process button. At this stage we only have unqualified raw data in our mental “in box”. We are most probably composed and don’t feel sad, angry, upset or rejected. We continue to sustain our “current” mood. It is only after we begin to process the input received that we detect a change in our mood. It is only after we filtered and judged the “input” that our brains release the appropriate chemical cocktail into our blood that it deem appropriate to the task at hand. This is when we begin to experience elation, anger, joy, sadness or frustration. We also then received a “spontaneously” action plan as part of the reaction protocol. Can you see that nothing happened until we pushed the process button? Let us look at a few examples of input that most of us experience often.

 

We are late for work. We think suddenly conclude that there is a conspiracy against us. We woke up to the fact that most robots are either out of commission or red.

 

Our partner makes a negative comment about a mistake that he/she perceived we made.

 

We receive a final request for payment of something we bought in a moment of possible “insanity”.

 

We read that there is a child dying of poor water quality in Africa every minute.

 

We hear on the news that our crime rate achieved new horrific record levels.

 

We see on the news that Malema outperformed himself at a political meeting with a new harebrain idea how even more funds can be extracted from those that he deem financially affluent.

 

THE FORMULA

 

ONE – Accept “what is”. Do not send the input for processing to the processing part of the mind.

 

TWO – Ensure that you fully understand the INPUT that you are confronted with. Ask question, and do proper research.

 

THREE – Now send this data to your sub-conscious mind for processing.

 

OPTIONS

 

What many of us fail to grasp is that there is no rule or valid reason to respond or react until you feel ready to deal with a task at hand. The best responds is often to not to do or say anything and remain detached emotionally. A series of out of order robots must be accepted as something that we can do absolutely nothing about. It will be silly and a total waste of energy to react like a mad man every time you are confronted with a red or defective robot. The outcome of such behavior could produce a totally unacceptable outcome and can result in your getting arrested for road-rage. The same holds true with most of the examples that I provided earlier. Most of our reactions are silly, a waste of time and meaningless. We in a moment of insanity bought something that now put us under serious pressure. How will massive feeling a guilt, fear and anxiety make this problem go away?

 

NOTHING HAPPENED – STORY

 

Most of us have a tendency to write a whole script around everything unacceptable that we are faced with. We become the main actor on the stage in our heads. We to top it all also play the role of a victim in these dramas. Most problems that we are faced with can be resolved if we learn to cut out the drama part of our processing.

 

ACCEPT WHAT IS

 

Accept what is – Don’t go into a “why me” mode. Don’t moan and fret while you think what could or should have been. Accept the current situations and deal with in when you are composed and have valid data to work with.

 

Accept that most of the stuff that we perceive as a crisis is silly and should not even be processed. Malema said something that you deem a threat. Understand that there is nothing you can do to modify or change what he said. All you are going to achieve is to mess up your blood pleasure and flirt with a heart attack.

 

Just observe what was said in a detached manner. Don’t make what was said good or bad or right or wrong. Become a dethatched observer and look at the whole silly game the same way you will observe a tree that you pass on your way home. All you see is a tree. You have no specific opinions about the tree. You allow the tree to enter your field of vision and allow it to leave your field of vision without thinking or making up stories about this tree. It is our reactions that provide the power to most of the stuff that we are faced with.

 

The earth will remain stable on it axis and the sky will not fall if you OBSERVE all input in a detached manner. Refrain from attaching any emotions good or bad to any input. You take back your power when you accept “what is” and stop processing every event as if your life depended on it. It is your ego that is causing most of the shit that you are faced with daily. Your ego must always react to everything and everyone. Your ego is the one that drag you through an endless range of unpleasant emotions and experienced daily.

 

The question that you need to ask yourself is, “Do I want to win or do I want to be happy?” Allow yourself to float downstream. Stop swimming upstream in an attempt to pacify your ego’s desire to retain control or take control.

 

This does not mean that I expect you to become a bowl of jelly. I repeat that we must “accept what is and observe “what is” in an objective and relaxed manner without saying or doing the first thing that comes to mind. Only take action when you are composed and have solid and valid data to work with.

Rene

 

Question: Why do I seem to imitate a yoyo? Some days I am up (happy and satisfied) and the next day I am down and deflated (sad and defeated).

 

My answer: There is a spiritual glue that seems to keep everything in place in the universe. This force is like the gravity that ensures that everything is pushed and pulled just enough to sustain its balance. We also need to sustain our balance in all areas of our lives. We need to keep our emotional and physical body in check (balanced) to the best of our ability. We tend to amplify certain things out of proportion. Our mental pendulum then tends to swing back too far to compensate and produce exactly the opposite outcome we desire. This is when pleasure ultimately turns into a painful experience. The key is to find the middle-path – balance if you want to experience tranquillity and positive outcomes. It is not what happen to you that cause the damage. it is how you respond to challenging events. Look around you and you will see that their are cycles in everything. It is natural for things to have up and down periods. Down periods provide wonderful opportunities to learn from mistakes we made in our previous up period. A learn financial period provide an opportunity to take a hard look how we manage our money in affluent periods. Life is all about learning. Our best education comes from the down periods in our life. Life would be a painful experience if we were in a happy and successful period all the time. Problems and challenges are the spice of life.

 Rene

 

THE A-B-C OF SUCCESS – K and L

 

K
Knowledge	Knowledge is power. The more you know about something the more confidant you will become in that discipline. We often laugh when we hear the latest dumb blond joke, but forget that we often present ourselves in the same “dumb” manner when we express our view in fields that we know very little about. When you feel that the conversation is outside your field of knowledge then it is time to listen and learn and not to make a fool of yourself.
Killer instinct	When you are involved in a task or project then you need to develop a “killer instinct” and do whatever is necessary to finish the task at hand. We often land ourselves in situations that will challenge our level of courage. If you want to always be nice notwithstanding the rude and obnoxious behaviour of others you will become abused and a victim. There comes a time where you need to become assertive and stop beating around the bush.
Key	The more “right” things you do the higher you chances of success. When you ignore the invisible keys that you inner voice provide you with you start dunning into serious problems. The keys of success are to do the right thing or the most productive thing at any given moment in time.
L
Luggage of the past	Every time that you fail to forgive others or yourself you add more weight to the luggage that you already carry with you through life. Feelings of guilt or what you could or should have done is futile emotions. When you fail to forgive others for what they could or should have done you avoid living with hate in your heart.
Love	Love is something that you earn by building a trusting relationship over a fair period of time. Love can never be one-sided or sporadic. Love is not something that you obtain or buy. Love is something you rent and the moment you stop making investments it will return to its rightful owner.
Lever	Guilt emotions are often used as a lever. The moment that someone can make you feel guilty about something they receive a lever from you. This lever is then used to manipulate you and force you to do things that you never would have done in the first place.
Let go	You need to learn early in life to let go of things. The biggest mistake that people make is to hold on to things that hold no further benefit to you. If a relationship is over let it go and get on with your life. If you made a mistake and fail to let go you get stuck in the past. If you hold on to tight to someone you make him/her claustrophobic and will finally lose him or her.
Lazy	You should develop a do it now attitude. The moment that you start procrastinating you start accumulating the load that you will have to carry tomorrow. Make a to do list for each day and give yourself no rest until you have taken care of the things noted on the last.
Light-hearted	Try and bring humour and light heartedness into whatever you do. Do not go through life with a sombre look on you face all the time. People avoid individuals that are too serious and intense. Try to think in positive and constructive manner notwithstanding the pressure and stress that you are going through. Remember light-hearted does not mean that you must become a clown or silly.