The Power of Realistic Thinking

Sara Stewart
December 1, 2009
The New York Post

“IF you can’t say something good about someone,” a wise woman once said, “sit right here by me.”

Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Teddy and notorious curmudgeon, would have been awfully lonely if she’d come up with that personal motto during the past decade.

America’s mania for “The Secret,” team-building exercises, Oprah, vision boards, life coaches, antidepressants and inspirational terminal-illness ribbons has all but outlawed any manner of negative thought.

According to this philosophy, if you're not constantly generating positive brain waves, you’re dooming yourself to a life half-lived, and you deserve whatever hardships may come your way (obviously, as you’re the one who psychically invited them in).

On Positive Thinking

By John Sanidopoulos

July 22, 2009

Recently Canadian psychologists published a study in Psychological Science Today, saying that when we repeat positive statements such as "I am a lovable person" or "I will succeed", it makes some people feel worse instead of raising self-esteem. It said that these mantras may prove helpful in the context of therapy, however when they are repeated on their own they tend to make things worse rather than better, simply because it rarely actually changes circumstances beyond our control.