I’m in the middle of reading the best “No Help” (as opposed to Self Help) book out there–Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-Sided, How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.
As a recovering Positive Thinker, I’ve come to realize that positive thinking, while preferable to whiny, pessimistic thinking, doesn’t do squat to make you healthier or more prosperous. I think Bright-Sided is going to start a torrential backlash of new books and columns giving Positive Thinking a black eye.
Exhibit A: Christina Patterson’s column in The Huffington Post (“Why Negative Thinking Makes The World a Better Place”). Here’s the money quote:
“There’s a lot to be said for negative thinking. Not only because it spares people the tooth-grinding irritation of Pollyannaish predictions of eternal sunshine based on precisely nothing (and usually coupled with the aggressive assertion that they’re “good”) whose chief aim is to imply that you’re rivals in a competition that they’re winning, but simply because it makes the world a better place. It makes the world a safer place and a nicer one.
And the experts, apparently, agree. “Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, co-operation and reliance on mental shortcuts,” says a professor of psychology in this month’s Australian Science Journal, “negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking, paying greater attention to the external world.” People “in negative mood,” he concludes, can cope with more demanding situations than their sunny neighbours and are “less prone to judgmental errors, more resistant to eyewitness distortions and better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages.”