Skilled Positive Thinking

A recent article by Steve Pavlina inspired my article here. He asserts in the article Beyond Self-Delusional Positive Thinking: “A common criticism of positive thinking is that it’s self-delusion. [...] I happen to think this criticism is perfectly valid.”

I disagree with this criticism. Although there are many perspectives on what “positive thinking” actually refers to, positive thinking as I conceive it is neither self-delusional nor counter-productive. Instead, it comes down to a simple matter of skill. As a matter of fact, we are far better at negative thinking than we are at positive thinking. We are excellent critics of ourselves and everyone around us. It didn’t help that we had to grow up with a million older know-it-alls around us — constantly telling us that there’s a better way to do it, someone already thought of it, you did it “wrong”, etc.

Most internal dialog with ourself is in fact negative. We do far more dialoging with ourselves like “I should have done it that way”, “she should have done it this way”, “why can’t he be more XYZ”, “I need to get that done soon or I’m going to behind in everything else..”, etc. We do far less of “Hey, I did a great job on this!”, “She sees that differently than I do, and that’s OK!”, etc. (It was actually easier for me to write the 4 negative examples versus the 2 positive examples.)

The point is: we’re excellent, skilled negative thinkers and critics. We’ve been doing it so long, and it’s been done so long to us, that most of our internal dialog defaults to negative thinking. So, what’s wrong with practicing positive thinking as a skill? After all, when you’re just learning a new sport, instrument, karate move, etc, you’re (hopefully) not thinking “Just by practicing this new skill I’m being self-delusional…”! Instead, you’re (hopefully) thinking: “This is awesome right now, I’m glad I’m doing this, and as I practice it I’m going to continue to get better at it, enjoying it all the while. Like any skill, I’ll develop it over time as I use it.”

That’s ultimately what a criticism of positive thinking is saying: “You’re self-delusional just to practice the skill of positive thinking…” Just typing that sounds ridiculous. How can you ever expect to get better at something if you can’t practice it? We’re already far too practiced in negative thinking — let’s give that a rest, and try on a different hat.

Steve’s article actually goes on to suggest several excellent areas to work on, and they’re worth a read to be sure. However, I think ultimately positive thinking itself can be valued as the opposite of a skill we’re already far too good at. And in that light, I’m up for kicking my negative thinking skill to the sideline for a bit, and giving my positive thinking skill the workout it’s been waiting for!