Why Positive Thinking Could Be Bad For You
Instead, find ways to turn your negative thoughts into an advantage!
We all know the story. There are thousands of “positivity” gurus out there who preach more or less the same thing: “Think positively and you will achieve everything you want or all your problems melt away. I don’t want to say that is is not true as research has proven time and time again that by trying to have a positive mindset, you can reduce anxiety levels as the subconscious brain can sometimes not distinguish what is real and what is imaginary i.e. by always thinking positively, you can create the illusion for yourself that everything is indeed positive.
There’s one study where they gathered 102 students who suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder and split them into two groups whereby one group was told they should be thinking positively about that specifically the one thing that worries them, and the other group they asked to just think positively in general. After one month of doing this exercise, the results have shown that both groups showed reduced anxiety levels. This is proof that indeed “visualizing positivity” can be effective and help people live happier lives. However, given the fact that our brains cannot distinguish between what is imaginary and what is real, this can create a real problem.
The Progress Paradox
This is when we as humans visualize a certain something over and over again until we trick our brain that we are actually on track to achieving this goal, even though we have not taken any actionable steps to achieve it. This is, for example, when you think about starting a business and you do all the necessary research about the business/industry you’d want to start in, however, you are not actually taking the necessary steps to make it a reality. Basically, you think a lot about doing the thing, without actually doing it. This can be dangerous as you are putting a lot of brainpower into achieving something, and when the time comes when you actually have to take action, you might get demotivated as you’ve already lost so much steam doing all the “prep work” in your head.
The Thirst Effect
In another experiment, they put a group of thirsty people together in one room. They asked them to visualize themselves drinking a glass of cold water, and the research found that for the people who visualized drinking the water, their motivation to actually get up and get a glass of water fell, because they had already visualized in their mind that they had this drink. So in short, physiologically they were still thirsty, but psychologically they weren’t, because in their minds they had already drunk the water. In this case, these positive feelings and thinking gave them a false sense of security whereby you think you are achieving a certain goal, but in reality, you actually aren’t.
There is also more research out there that shows that positive thinking can actually make us as humans worse, which brings me to the ironic effect.
The Ironic Effect
Is self-affirmation useful? Harvard Psychologist David Wegner mentioned that if you are a person with low self-esteem and are trying to gain self-esteem by self-affirming that you are a lovable person, your brain could tend to look for counter-examples to prove that you are indeed not a lovable person, which will make you feel even worse. Just to clarify, this is not always the case or can actually apply to a minority of cases for people who practice self-affirmation, however, there’s research that shows that this could happen.
Now, all this being said. I’m not here advocating that positive thinking is useless, it absolutely isn’t. However, I think it’s just good to share that positive thinking isn’t the answer to everything. Some people might respond differently to positive thinking than others, and this article is just an example to show that there might be different paths towards achieving your goals or creating a better future for yourself.
So if positive thinking isn’t the only answer to happiness then what is?
It’s not so much about thinking positively as it is to try and reframe your negative thoughts and indeed turn negative visualization into your advantage. It might seem counterintuitive, however, thinking negatively about the future rather than positively might actually help us achieve our goals more effectively. There are two ways you can do this.
1) Mental Contrasting
If we visualize a positive outcome, it usually has a relaxing effect on the body. The study I mentioned at the beginning showed that positive thinking can reduce anxiety, however, when we embark on a certain task or undertaking, having some levels of anxiety can act as a fuel to increase our sense of urgency. If you, for example, study for an exam and you think that you don’t know the subject matter enough, you might have some anxiety since you know that failure could be a real possibility. That anxiety will motivate you to sit down and study more until you are well versed in the subject. If you are overconfident, your anxiety levels are reduced and as a result, you might not do as much work given that you think that failing is very unlikely and the sense of urgency might not be there.
So if we want to achieve our goals but don’t want to fall into the trap of positive thinking, we can make use of the WOOP Framework, which stands for:
Wish
Outcome
Obstacle
Plan
When we think about achieving our goals, most of the time we think about the Wish and the Outcome portion. This framework also shows us that we have to think about the Obstacles that we could run into when achieving our goals, as well as the Plan that we need to create on how we could overcome those obstacles.
The German psychologist Gabriele Oettingen came up with this framework, which she outlined in her book “Rethinking Positive Thinking” said that:
“Circumvent the calming effects of dreaming and mobilise dreams as a tool for prompting directed action” — Gabrielle Oettingen, Author of Rethinking Positive Thinking
In short, this means that it is always good to think positively about your goals and how you can achieve them but also, in contrast, think of the challenges that you could face during this journey and already plan ahead of how you could overcome those. If we only focus on positive thinking, we might delude ourselves by telling ourselves that the road to success is easier than it actually is.
2) Negative Visualisation
As a result of doing this mental contrasting, you open yourself up to visualize the present or the future more negatively, which again, might not be such a bad thing. The ancient philosophers called Stoics, practised this all the time to increase their levels of gratitude in order to have a more positive outlook on their lives and their environments.
The famous marketing Guru Gary Vaynerchuk repeatedly said that “he visualizes his family getting hit by a bus” so that he can be all the happier if they are indeed not hit by a bus and are all healthy and happy. Slightly strange, I know, however, being grateful to have a healthy and happy family and repeatedly reminding yourself of that fact, can shoot your levels of gratitude through the roof and will automatically help you cherish all the time you spend with them.
Conclusion
Thinking positively always helps to fight depression and anxiety. This is a proven fact. However, just as it is important to think positively, it is important to know how to navigate negative thoughts, as they tend to creep up on us as well. No person can think positively 24/7, however, if we apply certain mental exercises that let us channel those negative thoughts into something productive and useful, we can turn these into something of value, and in total, can increase our levels of happiness.
Please see below some resources about this subject:
Studies and resources:
Rethinking Positive Thinking: https://geni.us/LBAy https://woopmylife.org/ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... https://www.uni-muenster.de/imperia/m... http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/w... https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?do... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1... https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/rel...
