This refers to the Sunday Times article I linked to below, here’s the link again:
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/ariel_leve/article1622259.ece
(note: I haven’t actually read the book – just this article – so I’m not presuming to criticise it specifically, just my experience of that genre of self-help).
I was struck by the line: ‘If it’s something that makes her feel better, why did I need her to see the downside?’
So, why DO I need to be so cynical about these positive-thinking … things? (sorry for that lame word ‘things’, but the only word I could think of was ‘scams’, and I thought I’d better not put that ).
I guess if other people want to believe in it, I shouldn’t be so scathing, I should let them get on with it, and hey, maybe it will work for them, and that’s great. Perhaps my antagonism is mainly sour grapes because it doesn’t work for me.
I think there are three main problems from my point of view. One is that I’m too rational and can’t see how it would work. Well, I can see how it affects people in face to face situations, so that if you act confidently, they will respond differently to you. But as far as affecting causality at a distance is concerned, forget it, that is just mumbo-jumbo
Second thing, I have tested it empirically, I have tried it and it has let me down.
Third – how DO you actually control your emotions? That is the toughest one, I think. I am far too governed by my emotions, and I really struggle to see how to control them. So, forcing myself to think positively is a real struggle and always feels inauthentic and fraudulent. Which is not to say I’m incapable of feeling that way spontaneously, of course, it’s just the whole business of MAKING yourself act/think/feel a certain way that I rebel against. But I am working on it.
There’s a fourth – which I’ve just thought of – and this is probably the reason why I react so strongly – it’s that some people are so damned evangelical about the whole thing that it gets right up my nose!