Every one of you must have come across sermons on the values of benefits and goodness that derives from qualities of inspiration and motivation- either through a reading exercise during school or quite simply you were recommended to read books on a certain, positive-thinking, by certain authors or a program on TV where someone rendered eloquence on how thinking positive helps. But though many are fascinated by sayings from great people and true stories and incidences of unimagined success put forth in these programs or books, not many have questioned the strike-rate, if i may call it that, of this positive-thinking. Is positive thinking universal?
While inspiration and motivation do really help people towards accomplishments, since without them there will be no actual drive to complete a task and achieve and hence no movement, positive thinking in my opinion does no good. It is clear that inspiration, motivation and positive thinking are not dependent. For example one may not have any inspiration or interest, but will have very strong positive thoughts about doing something stupendous. While the majority of the world may disagree with me by saying that it is only by believing in oneself , by thinking positively, would one actually attempt a task, i would say that there is a gulf between realistic self-belief and the Peter Pan class self-belief that many of these writers advocate, that very class of self belief that the majority of the world are dazzled just to read of or hear about.
The useful form of self-belief, the realistic one is having belief in something you know you can do, and hence you have a positive thought of reaching the finish line. It may not have to be a routine thing, but even something you are attempting for the first time. For example, take a handicapped person. If he knows that, other than his disability, he is quite fit and strong, he may aspire to participate in the paralympics. That is realistic and motivated. But say he read one of these books and starts to believe in fantasies, and makes up his mind to work hard and try to beat say Tyson Gay, quite frankly the book, the pretty overcooked inculcation of positive thinking has done much bad to him. Such kind of positive thinking is the one that is being advocated around the world. My example might be an exaggerated one, but i think I've made my point.
There is also a more serious side to fully believing in positive thinking would help us per se. It tends to put one in a non-stop mode in many cases. There are quite a few example where people have tended to keep believing their fruit will one day bear fruit and kept going in pursuit of something they are just not going to achieve. It clouds people from seeing the cliff ahead and they fail to apply the brakes and stop. Three perfect example come to mind where people blinded by irrational positive thinking have gone in pursuit of wondrous ideals and ended up with an empty hand. The first is the countless people who throughout history have gone in search of the Holy Grail. The crazy thing is that most of these people first of all were not sure even what they were to be looking for or where they should look, and just scampered like headless chicken, possibly inebriated by positive thinking, in search of fame. They may have achieved some fame after becoming known as people who went in search, but it clearly falls way short of what they set out for. You may argue that without the positive thinking they wont have been as famous as they ended up being. But try telling that to someone who got only a fraction of what he wanted. If not for the irrational ingredient of our Stephen Covey and co., such people would rather be guided by the 'realistic' self belief and get more out of their lives.
The second is the voyage around the world by the famous Magellan. Now leave Magellan. There were around 160 more on board than him. Only 15 made it back home. Magellan can claim that he went around the world. What about the scores of other sailors. How long would they have maintained positive thoughts when they realised they are out of supplies? Here time is being guided by luck and chance. There is no 'Power of Positive Thinking' here. The deceased sailors could've thought positive of returning home all they wanted, but they would've known it was more likely they were not going to make it. Could've rather prayed to god to give them luck. You can say praying to god and luck are irrational, but then so is positive-thinking. This isn't to blame Magellan, as the tragedy was something he didn't expect. This incident is just an example to falsify the miracles in positive thinking. Not Magellan.
And finally, to convince readers, something more contemporary. The Stock Market boom of the 90s. One can say it made many a millionaire, but most of them were excellent manipulators rather than core positive-thinkers. Rather the success could've made them the positive thinkers we attribute them to be. This is something i'll about tell very shortly. What happened here was that, every common man soon joined the band-wagon. Only that they were just 'positive thinkers' but very ordinary manipulators and forecasters. They entered the 'Peter Pan' zone of self belief that nothing can go wrong and all will be rich. According to me, despite phenomena such as currency appreciation, share rise, and value appreciation etc, there is something called as conservation of money, just like energy. It may not algebraically equate, but i believe it exists. Nonetheless, whether it exists or not, those who entered the Peter Pan self-belief zone, suffered the impact of the collapse, and only ended with less than what they had at the beginning.
As i was mentioning above, most of the famous people who claim they are where they are because they are positive thinkers, do so only because they fortunately, and only by other virtues were able to get there. I can thus ask the question, ' How many of the positive-thinkers have actually been to emulate the incidences that prompted them to be positive thinkers?'. Hardly a handful. Thus it can be said that even if these people are actually positive-thinkers, they are actually able to be so only because they are able to feed such thoughts, and the food is the successes they've had. When someone who's faced more failures in his life tries to emulate this, he has no food for positive thoughts, he lets the thoughts to starve and the thoughts die. If he still continues to have irrational positive thoughts, quite simply his thoughts become weak and fragile. And since it is the mind which houses all kinds of thoughts, it is the mind which is now unkempt, and we have a mentally unwell person. All successful people say such things only because the world audience denies bragging rights. If one were to say they are where they are because they're much intelligent than everyone else, society deems him as arrogant. If one says they are lucky, society doesn't give them the same adulation, though quite a few do come out and accept they were lucky, commendably. Probably if more successful icons owned up to the qualities they're gifted with rather than attributing it to irrational factors, half the world wont be walking up blind alleys, only to fall off the edge of the world.
Which brings me to the title of this write-up. Do some introspection on yourself. Determine 'realistically' what you are capable of doing. Unless under compulsion like the NASA scientists of the first man moon mission, do not dream of Peter Pan zones for yourself, don't believe that you can fly by thinking positively. Severe introspection may leave you feeling small and inadequate but it WILL SAVE you from walking up blind alleys.
While inspiration and motivation do really help people towards accomplishments, since without them there will be no actual drive to complete a task and achieve and hence no movement, positive thinking in my opinion does no good. It is clear that inspiration, motivation and positive thinking are not dependent. For example one may not have any inspiration or interest, but will have very strong positive thoughts about doing something stupendous. While the majority of the world may disagree with me by saying that it is only by believing in oneself , by thinking positively, would one actually attempt a task, i would say that there is a gulf between realistic self-belief and the Peter Pan class self-belief that many of these writers advocate, that very class of self belief that the majority of the world are dazzled just to read of or hear about.
The useful form of self-belief, the realistic one is having belief in something you know you can do, and hence you have a positive thought of reaching the finish line. It may not have to be a routine thing, but even something you are attempting for the first time. For example, take a handicapped person. If he knows that, other than his disability, he is quite fit and strong, he may aspire to participate in the paralympics. That is realistic and motivated. But say he read one of these books and starts to believe in fantasies, and makes up his mind to work hard and try to beat say Tyson Gay, quite frankly the book, the pretty overcooked inculcation of positive thinking has done much bad to him. Such kind of positive thinking is the one that is being advocated around the world. My example might be an exaggerated one, but i think I've made my point.
There is also a more serious side to fully believing in positive thinking would help us per se. It tends to put one in a non-stop mode in many cases. There are quite a few example where people have tended to keep believing their fruit will one day bear fruit and kept going in pursuit of something they are just not going to achieve. It clouds people from seeing the cliff ahead and they fail to apply the brakes and stop. Three perfect example come to mind where people blinded by irrational positive thinking have gone in pursuit of wondrous ideals and ended up with an empty hand. The first is the countless people who throughout history have gone in search of the Holy Grail. The crazy thing is that most of these people first of all were not sure even what they were to be looking for or where they should look, and just scampered like headless chicken, possibly inebriated by positive thinking, in search of fame. They may have achieved some fame after becoming known as people who went in search, but it clearly falls way short of what they set out for. You may argue that without the positive thinking they wont have been as famous as they ended up being. But try telling that to someone who got only a fraction of what he wanted. If not for the irrational ingredient of our Stephen Covey and co., such people would rather be guided by the 'realistic' self belief and get more out of their lives.
The second is the voyage around the world by the famous Magellan. Now leave Magellan. There were around 160 more on board than him. Only 15 made it back home. Magellan can claim that he went around the world. What about the scores of other sailors. How long would they have maintained positive thoughts when they realised they are out of supplies? Here time is being guided by luck and chance. There is no 'Power of Positive Thinking' here. The deceased sailors could've thought positive of returning home all they wanted, but they would've known it was more likely they were not going to make it. Could've rather prayed to god to give them luck. You can say praying to god and luck are irrational, but then so is positive-thinking. This isn't to blame Magellan, as the tragedy was something he didn't expect. This incident is just an example to falsify the miracles in positive thinking. Not Magellan.
And finally, to convince readers, something more contemporary. The Stock Market boom of the 90s. One can say it made many a millionaire, but most of them were excellent manipulators rather than core positive-thinkers. Rather the success could've made them the positive thinkers we attribute them to be. This is something i'll about tell very shortly. What happened here was that, every common man soon joined the band-wagon. Only that they were just 'positive thinkers' but very ordinary manipulators and forecasters. They entered the 'Peter Pan' zone of self belief that nothing can go wrong and all will be rich. According to me, despite phenomena such as currency appreciation, share rise, and value appreciation etc, there is something called as conservation of money, just like energy. It may not algebraically equate, but i believe it exists. Nonetheless, whether it exists or not, those who entered the Peter Pan self-belief zone, suffered the impact of the collapse, and only ended with less than what they had at the beginning.
As i was mentioning above, most of the famous people who claim they are where they are because they are positive thinkers, do so only because they fortunately, and only by other virtues were able to get there. I can thus ask the question, ' How many of the positive-thinkers have actually been to emulate the incidences that prompted them to be positive thinkers?'. Hardly a handful. Thus it can be said that even if these people are actually positive-thinkers, they are actually able to be so only because they are able to feed such thoughts, and the food is the successes they've had. When someone who's faced more failures in his life tries to emulate this, he has no food for positive thoughts, he lets the thoughts to starve and the thoughts die. If he still continues to have irrational positive thoughts, quite simply his thoughts become weak and fragile. And since it is the mind which houses all kinds of thoughts, it is the mind which is now unkempt, and we have a mentally unwell person. All successful people say such things only because the world audience denies bragging rights. If one were to say they are where they are because they're much intelligent than everyone else, society deems him as arrogant. If one says they are lucky, society doesn't give them the same adulation, though quite a few do come out and accept they were lucky, commendably. Probably if more successful icons owned up to the qualities they're gifted with rather than attributing it to irrational factors, half the world wont be walking up blind alleys, only to fall off the edge of the world.
Which brings me to the title of this write-up. Do some introspection on yourself. Determine 'realistically' what you are capable of doing. Unless under compulsion like the NASA scientists of the first man moon mission, do not dream of Peter Pan zones for yourself, don't believe that you can fly by thinking positively. Severe introspection may leave you feeling small and inadequate but it WILL SAVE you from walking up blind alleys.
