Is the power of positive thinking a lie?

Hello friends!

I received the title question from a dear reader and I would like to share with you what I think about this topic. When we enter a bookstore and go to the Psychology Section, we will come across very varied books. Among them, it is virtually certain that we will find self-help titles.

Veja – Difference between psychology and self-help

I think that’s why there is this doubt: does positive thinking make a difference? Does it matter whether you think positively or negatively? Does positive thinking have the power to make us achieve success? Or is all this just a bunch of cheap literature (sold expensive) to deceive people?

First of all, it is important to try to define a little better what positive thinking is. There is no consensus or closed concept, but we can say that positive thinking consists of having and maintaining thoughts that are affirmative, with the belief that the results will be better.

For example, I’m going to start a diet to lose X kilos. Instead of thinking that it will be difficult, complicated, stressful or a failure, I begin to think that everything will be fine, that it will be easy and fun. I start making positive affirmations, that I am losing weight. Perhaps, better, I begin to think every day that I am already thin and healthy.

Well, it’s easy to observe that having positive thoughts will bring more motivation, isn’t it? If the person, on the other hand, begins to think about the difficulty, the weight (!) of losing weight, he begins to criticize himself, see the defects, the motivation and soon runs out and the situation remains the same.

Therefore, everyone ends up agreeing that positive thinking is useful and helps with behavioral change, establishing new projects, fulfilling dreams and everything else. So what’s the problem with positive thinking, why is it so criticized?

Thought vs Thought

As a Ph.D. student, I know a lot of intellectually brilliant people. In fact, since before college, I had many contacts with intellectuals, great connoisseurs of philosophy and the various sciences. And it is common to see in these people the so-called “disenchantment of the world”, according to which there are no gods or goddesses. The universe is an extremely large, infinite place, which puts us in a small and miserable position. Without political ideals or mystical tendencies, they use their psychic energy to criticize and criticize, adopting a skeptical position. For this type of person, positive thinking is nothing more than nonsense that does not consider the tragedy of the world, televised in the newspapers.

But, as we know, amoral intelligence is ethically dumb. Many of these brilliant people end up having jobs as miserable as their little ideas, which, in a vicious circle, seems to prove that everything goes wrong and that negativism agrees with the facts.

Now, considering this type of criticism of positive thinking, I think it would be more prudent to be pragmatic. Does it work or not? Is it useful or is it useless?

The uselessness of positive thinking

It is necessary to make it clear that, indeed, there is a type of positive thinking that is a little naive. Thinking that things will work out and that we will achieve our goals is one thing. Now, another is to consider that events will necessarily agree with what we think, like a law of attraction that will move, like a puppet, in others so that everything converges to the fulfillment of our desires.

In other words, thinking positively is just the beginning. Along the way, a lot can go wrong. But if there is continuity, not only in thought, but also in action, chances are that, in the end, everything will end as planned.

For example, Freud today is considered a genius who explains everything. But it was not always so. A Jew in an anti-Jewish environment and defending unorthodox theses about the sexual etiology of neuroses, he had many problems at the beginning of his career. One fact that struck me as I studied his biography was that he had an intense desire to succeed and spent years trying, first as a neurologist (he almost discovered the neuron), then studying the effects of cocaine, and , finally, with the creation of psychoanalysis.

However, as I said, psychoanalysis was not an immediate success. Quite the opposite. He was the target of so many criticisms that he was only successful by having perseverance in his purpose. I believe that, in this sense, Freud ends up being an excellent example of someone who trusted his own ideas (in his bat as we say here in Minas) and believed that it would work, that he would succeed and, even having many problems along the way , continued his struggle and did not give up until he became famous and rich.

Conclusion

I really like Henry Ford’s quote: “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, either way, you’re right.” In literal translation: “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, either way, you’re right.”

This sentence is simply fantastic because it agrees with the two points discussed in this text. It’s true that positive thinking works, but it’s also true that positive thinking doesn’t work. Positive thinking doesn’t work for people who don’t use it, and it doesn’t work to effortlessly attract an external reality according to our desires, as if it were just a sleight of hand.

But positive thinking does work. It is true that there is such a thing as “the power of positive thinking”.

Two more examples to conclude. If you’re going to try to sell a product and you don’t believe in its quality, you probably won’t be able to sell it, right? Because you’ll think, internally, that the product is horrible, that it would be like cheating your customer and, when you talk to him, you’ll give the impression (although you try to hide it) that the product really isn’t good.

I mean, in this case, the sale already starts with the idea that there will be no sale. There is therefore no motivation to go further, to overcome one’s own limits. In fact, there would be no motivation to try to sell. That is, you think you can’t sell, and you’ll be right: you won’t.

This is valid for all areas. If you think you’re doing poorly on a test, that there’s no point in studying, you won’t study and the result will agree with your initial opinion: you’ll do poorly on the test…

And you, what do you think about positive thinking? Comment below!

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