Is a positive attitude the key overcoming obstacles and achieving a better life, or is it the sort of magical thinking that leads to burned feet at fire walks and mortgage meltdowns? It can't be both. Can it?
In case you're wavering, here's a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Self Help for Skeptics: Train Your Brain to be Positive, and Feel Happier Every Day: It Only Sounds Corny." And here's one to counter it from a few weeks ago in the New York Times, "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking."
Admittedly, these two articles aren't really arguing with each other. But, I feel like they are in spirit -- much like articles that talk about digital culture as a boon or a bane to our social lives, education, political discourse, etc. There's legitimate reasons for both, depending on where you look, what your values are, and how you define your terms.
Returning to the question of attitude, among the more interesting studies I've read on optimism was a German study* of positive expectations v. positive fantasies on achieving personal goals (these goals varied from university students aiming for good grades to people desirous of a quick recovery from hip-replacement surgery). The researchers measured the extent to which their subjects had positive expectations or positive fantasies about their goals (way too much to explain in a blog post, but the paper goes into it in depth) and then checked in on their subjects' progress some months later. The results? More positive expectations correlated with more progress and goal attainment. But more positive fantasies correlated with less.
*Link is to an abstract. You can download the full text for free from Google Scholar, but it takes a while.
In case you're wavering, here's a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal, "Self Help for Skeptics: Train Your Brain to be Positive, and Feel Happier Every Day: It Only Sounds Corny." And here's one to counter it from a few weeks ago in the New York Times, "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking."
Admittedly, these two articles aren't really arguing with each other. But, I feel like they are in spirit -- much like articles that talk about digital culture as a boon or a bane to our social lives, education, political discourse, etc. There's legitimate reasons for both, depending on where you look, what your values are, and how you define your terms.
Returning to the question of attitude, among the more interesting studies I've read on optimism was a German study* of positive expectations v. positive fantasies on achieving personal goals (these goals varied from university students aiming for good grades to people desirous of a quick recovery from hip-replacement surgery). The researchers measured the extent to which their subjects had positive expectations or positive fantasies about their goals (way too much to explain in a blog post, but the paper goes into it in depth) and then checked in on their subjects' progress some months later. The results? More positive expectations correlated with more progress and goal attainment. But more positive fantasies correlated with less.
*Link is to an abstract. You can download the full text for free from Google Scholar, but it takes a while.
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