On Positive Thinking

[In todays society to think positive means more often than not to be self-affirmative. Self-affirmation however, while it can be a means towards success in a capitalist system which aims towards the acquisition of wealth, is a selfish attitude that builds self-esteem in a negative way and causes more psychological damage than healing. The study below seems to affirm this truth.

I spent four years working as a salesman. My managers would encourage us to listen to CD's about self-affirmation and how attitude affects the wealth you make and the overall success you have in life. During sales meetings we would sometimes study such capitalist-friendly Bibles as Dale Carnagie's How To Win Friends and Influence People or Norman Vincent Peale's Think and Grow Rich. On my blackberry I would get quotes from these authors as well as the "great" men and women of history about the methods they learned that helped them reach "success" in life and avoid "failure".

Does this stuff work to make people materially successful? Yes, I believe they do help. But these same people are also the most aggressive, pushy and lying salesmen I knew. They became so convinced in their heads that they were absolutely entitled to success, that they would do just about anything to acquire it. The self-affirmation they learned made them nothing but self-absorbed, self-seeking and all around selfish at the expense of others. Don't get me wrong, they were all very nice and friendly when not in sales mode and I enjoyed their company, but get them in front of a customer and they transformed into some of the most desperate and greedy people I knew. And if I also didn't live up to that standard as a salesman, then I couldn't expect to maintain my quotas and thus eventually my job. As a result, over a period of four years I worked four different sales jobs that eventually I was either layed off from or I walked out of. When you sell something people don't need and have to convince them that they do need it, then ethics is usually thrown out the door - no matter how much that sales person thinks they are doing something positive for others. In the end, the only one being benefitted is themselves and this is justified by supposedly helping others.

There is another form of positive thinking that is healthy however. As Christians we are encouraged to have a positive and optimistic outlook on life, to see the good in others rather than the bad or negative, and to glorify and thank God for all things whether they be positive or negative in our lives. Such positive thinking discourages the arrogance of self-affirmation and cultivates within us humility, compassion, love and other such virtues. While self-affimation serves the god mammon, humility and love serve the true God.

It is for this reason that Elder Paisios always taught the necessity for christians to be positive thinkers - to only see the good things in life and be blind to every evil. He would teach: "We must have positive thoughts, otherwise none of the spiritual fathers - not even the Saints - can help us." I encourage everyone to read his biographies and writings to see the many illustrations by which he did this. "This is our aim," he would say, "to totally submit our mind to the grace of God. The only thing Christ is asking from us is our humility. The rest is taken care of by His grace." The consequences of not having positive thoughts, taught the Elder, is psychological problems. He says: "When our soul lives carelessly without watching over its thoughts, it will consequently fill up with dirty and sly thoughts. As a result, people start developing psychological problems which gradually pile up."

Ultimately we are to get rid of our thoughts altogether, whether they be positive or negative. Elder Paisios elaborated on this, saying:

"Almost all of us consider our thoughts to be simple and natural, therefore, we spontaneously rely on them. On the contrary, we should neither trust nor accept them. We must not have any thoughts in our mind or heart, neither positive ones, nor negative ones, for this space inside us belongs to the grace of God. We are obliged to keep it clean, not only of our various thoughts but also of the slightest and most elusive slip of the mind. We can only achieve this, if we fervently love Christ and unhesitatingly trust Him. As a result, we humble ourselves, and divine grace, naturally, will be revived inside us, for it is only granted to the humble ones; 'God opposes the proud, but give Grace to the humble'" (1 Pet. 5:5). -J.S.]


Positive Thinking Can Make Things Worse, Study Finds

Article from: Agence France-Presse
July 03, 2009

REPEATING positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed" makes some people feel worse instead of raising self-esteem, a study says.

"From at least as far back as Norman Vincent Peale's (1952) The Power of Positive Thinking, the media have advocated saying favourable things to oneself," said the study by Canadian psychologists, which was published in Psychological Science today.

It cites a popular self-help magazine that advises its readers to: "Try chanting: I'm powerful, I'm strong, and nothing in this world can stop me," but says the practice doesn't work for everyone.

Positive self-statements make people who are already down on themselves feel worse rather than better, according to the study conducted by psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee of the University of Waterloo and Elaine Perunovic of the University of New Brunswick.

For the study, the psychologists asked people with low self-esteem and people with high self-esteem to repeat the phrase: "I am a lovable person," and then measured participants' moods and feelings about themselves.

What they found is that individuals who started out with low self-esteem felt worse after repeating the positive self-statement.

"I think that what happens is that when a low self-esteem person repeats positive thoughts, they probably have contradictory thoughts," Dr Wood told AFP.

"So, if they're saying 'I'm a lovable person,' they might be thinking, 'Well, I'm not always lovable' or 'I'm not lovable in this way,' and these contradictory thoughts may overwhelm the positive thoughts."

Although positive thinking does appear to be effective when it's part of a broader program of therapy, on its own it tends to have the reverse effect of what it is supposed to do, said Dr Wood, urging self-help books, magazines and TV shows to stop sending a message that just chanting a positive mantra will raise self-esteem.

"It's frustrating to people when they try it and it doesn't work for them," she said.