Even though we spent decades thinking positively, we are not happier than our ancestors. And even the increased economic success and growth don’t translate to happiness.

Business Of Positive Thinking

In Smile or Die , Barbara Ehrenreich traces the roots of the positive thought movement to nineteenth-century America. So-called New Thought came to life as a rebellious school of thought against the more gloom and doom state of affairs where the focus was on the hard work and duty of every Christian. If you don’t follow the rules and don’t work hard, you end up in hell. New Thought heralded the notion that we can achieve happiness in this life simply by having the right mindset.

“The positive thinking movement is a big business, but anything this ephemeral that turns into business is questionable.”

The positive thinking movement is a big business. You can buy tickets to hear motivational speakers. You can buy their books. You can attend their training. You can spend a lot of money to learn how to think positively and still feel miserable. Anything this ephemeral that turns into business is questionable.

Most of the advice you get from motivational speakers and self-help gurus sounds great, but there is little scientific evidence that it works. Removing the word impossible from your vocabulary, visualizing your success, and constantly hyping yourself up that “I can” may feel like it works, but when it comes to actual results, the effect is questionable. Even if it works once, it may not work a second time, which raises the question of whether some other forces were at play even the first time.

Happiness Is A Byproduct

You can’t will yourself into feeling happy. Happiness is a byproduct and should never be the goal. The more you try to chase happiness, the more unhappy you become. The more you try to eliminate everything negative from your life, the more miserable you will feel. You simply can’t forcefully remove negative thoughts, uncertainty, or insecurity from your mind. It will just make you anxious and bring more negative thoughts.

“You can’t forcefully remove negative thoughts from your mind. It will just make you anxious and bring more negative thoughts to the top.”

You can’t suppress your thoughts. Just try not to think about something. Try not to think about your favorite food, and you will find yourself thinking about it constantly. Try to force yourself not to worry about the upcoming unpleasant activity, and you will increase your anxiety as by trying not to think about it, you are actually forcing your brain to focus on it.

To deal with the negatives in our lives is not trying to suppress them but embracing them as part of life and simply not giving them a second thought.

By learning to embrace negativity, using your insecurity, enjoying uncertainty, and accepting a lack of control, you do more for your happiness and peace of mind than pushing for positive thinking.

In fact, that is what philosophers and religions have advocated for thousands of years. Just consider my favorite philosophy, Stoicism. The ancient Greek and Roman Stoics understood this well and constantly prepared themselves for things to go wrong. The complete opposite of positive thinking. When things did go wrong, they were ready to cope.

Yellow Cars And White Bears

We get more of things we focus on. When you walk down the street and focus on yellow cars, you will see them everywhere, even though you would swear there were none just yesterday.

You will feel better about the world if you focus on positive things in your life and be grateful for what you’ve got. It makes intuitive sense. But it doesn’t mean you can willfully remove the negative thoughts.

“It is impossible forcing yourself not to think about a specific thing. The only way you can achieve that is not to try and distract yourself by doing other things.”

Try the famous experiment of “not thinking about the white bear.” Get a watch and try not to think about a white bear for a full minute. Think about anything else, just not the white bear. The thing is to not think about it. You need to keep reminding yourself you shouldn’t think about it.

So what is happening in your mind can be something like this: “I’m supposed not to think about a white bear. So what about cars? I should probably get my car washed. It has been a while since the last time. What time is it? Another fifty seconds to go to not think about white bears. I should probably get a new car anyway. What model? I’m happy with the current one, but maybe I should get something bigger and faster. Don’t think about white bears. Thirty more seconds to go...”

It is physically impossible forcing yourself not to think about a specific thing. The only way you can achieve that is as a byproduct. Not trying at all. Simply distract yourself by doing other things.

If you want to keep thinking positively, you need to constantly search in your mind for negative thoughts so you can remove them. You need to keep thinking about the white bears, thus sabotaging your effort of not thinking about them.

Affirmations Don’t Work

Things get even worse. Part of the positive thinking movement is also the belief in affirmations. Affirmations are the cheesy pep talks you give to yourself to uplift your mood. “I look good today.” “I’m successful.”

Joanne V. Wood and the team showed in two experiments that the affirmations might cause more harm than good. The participants of the experiments were asked to repeat positive statements of self-affirmation like “I’m a lovable person.” Those who repeated the statement and tried to focus on how it was true felt worse than those who didn’t repeat it. This applies especially to those with low self-esteem, those who need affirmation the most.

“If you have low self-esteem, the positive affirmation conflicts with your low self-esteem, and thus the affirmation gets rejected, and your self-esteem gets even lower.”

The problem is that we have a strong need to feel consistent. If there is an inconsistent message, our brain has a tendency to remedy it. If we keep repeating that we are great, while deep down we feel we are not, our brain then tries to resolve this by forcing us to feel even more strongly that we are not great. If you have low self-esteem, the positive affirmation conflicts with your low self-esteem, and thus, the affirmation gets rejected, and your self-esteem gets even lower. Positive affirmations only work when you already feel great. But then you don’t really need them in the first place.

Positive Visualization May Backfire

One of the problems with positive visualization is that it may backfire. Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen ran various experiments to show what happens when you visualize the positive outcomes of an activity. As it turns out, those who practice the positive visualization of the successful outcome become less motivated and often achieve less than those who don’t. The reason? Our subconscious mind may start to believe that visualizing success means already achieving it.

“The problem with positive visualization of the successful outcome is that our subconscious mind may start to believe that visualizing success means already achieving it. So we stop trying hard.”

Oettingen suggests mental contrasting as a visualization technique that is superior to positive future visualization. The practice is rather simple. Write down or think about several positive outcomes of completing the goal. Focus on the biggest benefits and spend some time visualizing them. Then, write down several obstacles you may encounter that may prevent you from achieving your goal. Pick the biggest ones and again visualize these obstacles. That’s it. You motivated yourself to achieve the goal, but you also realized there would be roadblocks, and you were ready to tackle them.

Researchers have shown that mental contrasting can have a lasting effect for up to three months or until the goal is achieved. For example, suppose you want to eat better to improve your health. In that case, you can mentally contrast this with the obstacle standing before you, a big piece of chocolate cake. Seeing the cake as a negative obstacle will help you to avoid it and improve your diet.

The catch is that you need to be in the right mindset. For those who expect to succeed and use mental contrasting, it works quite well and leads to increased goal commitment and energization. However, when used by people with low expectations of success, it reduces commitment and and leads to demotivation. It is a difference between positive expectations (judging the desired future as likely) and positive fantasies (positively experiencing one’s thoughts and mental images about the desired future).

As the studies prove , positive expectations reflect past successes, leading the person to believe their efforts will pay off. Positive fantasies, on the other hand, lead people to visualize and enjoy the success already now, before they even started working on the goal, and thus curb the effort and may hamper the achievement of the goal.

What To Do Instead

I consider myself to be a pretty positive person. Or rather, I have learned to be positive. However, that was never the goal. As we have seen in previous paragraphs, Western civilization’s cult of positivism may not be the best strategy to achieve success and live a fulfilling life. Unfounded positive optimism about the future may easily become a huge disappointment and depression when things don’t go as envisioned.

There are better strategies. For one, it is the defensive pessimism I talked about before. And then there is Stoicism, where the goal is not the ultimate positivity and happiness but rather inner tranquility, a calm indifference towards one’s circumstances. That means being comfortable with the negative aspects of life and thoughts and expecting them to occur.

“Visualizing the worst-case scenarios allows you to prepare better for them. Understanding that nothing lasts forever and we can easily lose the things we have today fortifies us against negative events in the future.”

Instead of positive visualizations, Stoics focus on negative visualization or the so-called premeditation of evils. Visualizing the worst-case scenarios forces you to prepare better for them. Understanding that nothing lasts forever and we can easily lose the things we have today may sound like a downer, but it fortifies us against negative events in the future. We then cope better when things don’t go as planned. Being ready for the worst-case scenario also means that even if things go badly, you are still fine because you know they could be even worse.

If you practice positive thinking and it works, then good for you. However, if you find it difficult, unnatural, or simply making things worse, consider the defensive pessimism and the premeditation of evils practiced by the Stoics. It worked for generations for thousands of years, and there is no reason why it shouldn’t work for you too.

More on the topics of Career and Life:

Feeling Like a Fraud? How to Conquer Impostor Syndrome

Unraveling the Myths of Ego Depletion: A New Take on Willpower

12 Ways How To Cope With Loneliness

Defensive Pessimism As A Winning Strategy

Mastering Skills with Deliberate Practice

Why Dedication And Perseverance Outweigh Talent

The Forgotten Pleasure of Reading

Unlocking the Secrets of Flow: Achieving Optimal Experience in Work and Life

Passion Is The Key To Happiness, Or Is It?

Count Your Expenses In Time, Not Money

Originally posted on my blog about management, leadership, communication, coaching, introversion, software development, and career The Geeky Leader, or follow me on Facebook and Twitter: @GeekyLeader