Why positive thinking can make you unhappy

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

When using new practices and life hacks, it is important to know not only about their advantages, but also about their disadvantages. For example, the common “Thinking positively” attitude can harm you and your mental health. Let's see what negative consequences positive thinking can have and how to avoid them.

There is one thing that the authors of books on positive thinking are silent about: such attitudes are not suitable for everyone.

In an experiment by Canadian psychologist Joanne Wood, students were asked to say "I am an attractive person." It turned out that the self-esteem of those people who were confident in themselves before the experiment only increased. But for those who could not boast of confidence, this affirmation only hurt.

Wood suggested that positive attitudes that have no reinforcement often lead to negative outcomes. They are usually advised to use books created for people who are insecure, that is, those who are better off not focusing on unreasonable positive mantras.

It is wrong to say that all positive attitudes are harmful. But there are cases in which it is better not to use them …

When you're not even going to do something

Positive thinking can increase your strength. It is not capable of radically changing the situation. If you go to the exam, but have not even opened the textbook before that, positive attitudes will not help. If you've been preparing for a challenging job interview, then positive thinking will make your attempt to get the job successful. Hard work and effort can only be spiced up with positive mantras. By themselves, verbal attitudes do not help in any way.

When positive attitudes feed your ego

When you start convincing yourself that you are more attractive, smarter, or healthier than you are, you are in denial. In essence, you are rejecting reality. It may seem that this is not so bad: many live in a world of illusions. But sooner or later, those around you will help you understand what the real state of affairs is. And it never happens painlessly.

When they form pipe dreams

Sometimes people turn positive thinking into a tool with which they model their cloudless future. For example, they begin to sincerely believe that they will win the lottery or that they will meet “the one” and live with her all their lives without sorrows and troubles. But life is a complex and multifaceted thing, and it must be perceived as such. You won't be able to isolate yourself from all failures, and the taste of victory is especially sweet after a series of failures.

When you want to change your destiny

We are constantly told that we ourselves determine our own destiny. We forge our own happiness, with positive thoughts we indicate to the Universe what we want, and we get it.

It becomes all the more painful when this installation does not work. Very often situations occur in life that you can neither control nor prevent. For example, illness, accidents, natural disasters, death. You will not help yourself here with positive thinking: no one can change or stop this.

But you can use positive attitudes to help yourself get through trouble. You are absolutely responsible for your own reaction to the "gifts" of fate, and so do it.

When you hope for quick results

When people start thinking positively, they expect quick results. But life doesn't change overnight.

Positive thinking is a long-term process that includes hard work, attention to detail, and constant work on yourself.

When you do not know how to correctly interpret what happened

Not only positive attitudes towards the future can be harmful, but also an overly optimistic interpretation of events that have already taken place. The psychotherapist believes that it is very important to correctly interpret what has already happened.

Psychologists distinguish the so-called optimistic and pessimistic attributive styles, that is, how a person explains to himself the events happening to him.

• A pessimistic style is a tendency to attribute failures to internal (“I'm so worthless!”), Permanent (“That's always the case!”) And global (“No matter what I undertake, everything is bad”) reasons. Good luck is explained by external, situational and unstable factors (“Well, yes, once in something small I was lucky”). Research shows that people with this attributive style are significantly more prone to depression.
• An optimist is more likely to attribute good luck to internal, stable and global factors ("I passed the exam. This is because I am so smart and tried as usual. I do well with other subjects as well"). Such a person explains failures by external, local and temporary events.

It would seem that everything is fine, but this is only at first glance. Elena Perova notes: if you do not take responsibility for those failures, where it really is, then failures will most likely repeat themselves over and over again and soon no one will want to deal with you.

Hurray-positive interpretation can be not only beneficial. Suppose a person decides that the failure was due to the fault of others, does not draw useful conclusions, does not take into account his mistakes, and the failure will happen again.

Elena Perova

Books, expert opinions, and advice from successful people are very good tools to use. But you need to treat them critically, otherwise correct, in general, settings can harm you.