Aug 09
Does positive thinking work?
Does Positive Thinking work? Do positive affirmations help? And is there any substance to The Law of Attraction?
Apparently not – if recent press opinion is anything to go by.
Here’s what the Daily Mail had to say a few days ago,
The power of positive thinking is one of the most pervasive myths of our time. It creates totally unrealistic expectations and fosters a culture of entitlement - as if all you need to do to achieve something is to want it. Not only does it not work but, according to new research, it can have the opposite effect to the one desired.
Psychologists Joanne Wood and John Lee, from the University of Waterloo, and Elaine Perunovic from the University of New Brunswick, both in Canada, found individuals with low self- esteem actually felt worse about themselves after repeating ‘positive self-statements’.
The authors pointed out that for most people it is impossible to change a deeply-held opinion about themselves, especially for the better. When people hear something they don’t instinctively believe, they are not only often sceptical, but adhere even more strongly to their original position.
‘Repeating positive self-statements may benefit certain people, such as individuals with high self-esteem, but backfire for the very people who need them the most,’ they concluded.
In other words, they don’t work. Like the diet industry, positive thinking is designed to fail, to keep people believing there’s something within, but just out of reach, that is going to change their lives and bring them the kind of untold happiness and success that other people have. But there is no place here for reality. In the world of positive thinking, we are told life can be painless, easy, free of conflict, loss and challenge. All your wildest dreams can come true with minimal effort. The myth is relentless.
OK! As the author of five motivational books and more than twenty years experience in the ‘Positive Thinking’ business, here’s what I think:
Affirmations DO work.
I know this from personal experience and from twenty years of using them with clients. The trick is to make them as ‘realistic’ as possible. If you have a strong, passionate belief that you are ugly, there’s no point in affirming, ‘I am beautiful.’
If you do, you’ll simply set up a huge conflict within yourself and your long-term, fervently held belief will win. A smarter option is to start with a statement that is positive but closer to the truth for you, eg ‘I am now ready to (begin to) appreciate my natural attractiveness.
In this way, you can slowly coax yourself to a better way of thinking.
You have to be rational
Changing your thinking from mostly negative to mostly positive takes time. It also takes some convincing – of yourself. There’s no point reciting mantra-like, I love myself if every part of you is screaming, No Way!
The rational approach requires you to be able to justify believing that and seeing the reasons why you are thoroughly loveable and certainly deserve to love yourself.
Here’s how:
- Take pen and paper and write at the top, Reasons why I deserve to love myself. Go right ahead and begin to list the good things you’ve done that summon up a feeling of goodwill towards yourself.
- Keep this list open and ongoing for a week. The more you’ve been in the habit of seeing only the negative, the harder this exercise will be – and the more important.
Understand your resistance
This is where a really skilled and intuitive coach earns their fee. An affirmation will often unearth an underlying, often very powerful, negative belief. Staying with the example of, I love myself, you may unearth a really strong ‘reason’ to withhold loving yourself, be it something you’ve done or blamed yourself for.
This is extremely common and you may need to work on some good forgiveness affirmations, eg I am now willing to (begin to) forgive myself for …
Detox, don’t depress negativity
The more you run away from what you want rid of, you more you feed it – what you resist, persists. You don’t necessarily need the analyst’s couch, but you do need to face your negativity, fear, self-loathing or whatever is lurking under your surface.
Bring it up; breathe, work it out with your coach. Assume that the right affirmations may dredge up suppressed negativity and be prepared to deal with this. Affirmations aren’t always a quick-fix. Occasionally they are – on those occasions it’s due to you having a minimum of resistance to the new positive thought.
Be practical
My approach to generating change is two-fold: get your thinking in place and then get your plan in place. Positive thinking is not a substitute for positive action.
Take your affirmation and write down
“If I really did love myself/think I was good enough/(insert your own)
- what I would start doing is…
- And what I would stop doing is… “
This is often a fabulous way of getting clear on a new path ahead for yourself.
Onwards!
Great article Fiona. I firmly believe that positive thinking works. Six months ago I started a programme “Winning Performance” by Basil Mienie which changed my whole thought pattern. My business doubled and my personal relationships at home changed without me putting in much effort. I found a new purpose in life. I certainly believe that “positive thinking” plays a huge part in my life now.
Regards
Lesley-Anne
There is a great deal in what you say. I fully agree that the negativity ingrained in one is to extract it by bringing it to the surface and to skim it off. I does take time, I experience it but I firmly believe I am a much more positive being than, say, 20 – 30 years ago.
NOW is the time to prove the Daily Mail and the media wrong. Positivity works!
I’ve just studied health psychology and the professor lecturing me broke down the cynical hostility factors, to isolate which components directly contribute to coronary heart disease. The findings were anger-hostility. Heart patients in the study even volunteered to have 2 angiograms 12 months apart, so the evidence wasn’t skewed. Healthy eating, anger management (which is linked to positive thinking) and exercise programs actually reduced the plaque in the arteries – imagine if the experiment lasted longer than a year!
I would not be here today if it was not for John Kehoe and author of Mind Power..(A CANADIAN)I met him and did his courses and so did many other people who are now my friends and made a bit difference in their lives…Positive Affirmations were KEY to our training ..and THEY WORK!
That was a very interesting newsletter Fiona. I too read the article, and felt that although it is correct to question and analyse there also needs to be a degree of balance. The Mail article lacked this balance (not the first time for this paper!)and unfortunately came across as being rather cynical.
The journalist’s final suggestion, that we ought to pass on “a dose of reality” to our children, was hardly the inspirational ‘call to arms’ that will encourage the next generation of visionaries. It poses the question ‘whose reality do we pass on? Theirs or ours?’
I met with the England Cricket Team’s Sports Psychologist this week to discuss this very issue. Not only does he whole heartedly agree that positive visualisation and ’self talk’ is beneficial, many successful sportspeople use it regularly.
That is the secret. For it to be effective, it needs constant practice and daily application. Those that ‘fail’ to see benefits, not unlike dieters that stray, don’t apply it for long enough periods of time.
The other essential ingredient is emotion. There must be feeling behind your thoughts for it to imbed into your subconscious mind.
If you look up psychoneuromuscular theory (enough to give your mouth cramp), you will find evidence to suggest that we can actually ‘trick’ our muscles into acting purely through the power of thought.
Perhaps gym memberships will be a thing of the past…
I am so heartened by all your comments. It’s so very obvious that Life opens up to us when we stay open and keep ourselves growing and expanding and always looking for the ‘gift in the garbage’ – as they say in the US!
Giving up, closing down and sinking into resignation is not a path I’d want to be on for too long. Obviously, there are times when we are challenged to the limits and letting ourselves feel the disappointment, sadness or whatever is entirely appropriate. But the real challenge is in refusing to let those times dampen our spirit and rob us of the chance of happiness.
I’m afraid that I’m going to be the spanner in the works here. I’d agree (to some extent) with the Mail. I spent many years making positive changes in my life, and thinking positively, which I felt at the time was fantastic. I started to engage more with other people, life felt so much better and I felt much relieved. However, over time, I found that I was starting to develop generalised anxiety disorder. I seemed to constantly feel low level tension, which was not something I’d experienced before. Before I’d been depressed and low, but not anxious.
Recently I went back into therapy, and through that I realised that sure the positive thinking was, as I thought helping me to be more able to engage with other people, by stopping me acting in ways that were negative and stopping anger, etc, however I was also expending huge amounts of energy to keep up the positive front.
Through therapy I learnt to stop trying, and one of the most important things for me was that I had spent all my life justifying my existance, so using a method that was all about “proof” and “justification” was just enhancing an already hard situation.
Once I learnt to step back from proving that I was ok, step back from the positive affirmations, and find a different way of accepting myself, life became so much easier and I was then able to start to let go of old stuff.
At this point, I was THEN able to start using positive affirmations, and positive thinking to rebuild the ship so to speak.
So I think there is definetely something very postive about positive thinking, but I also think that for some people it needs to be used with caution. Those who have been very damaged by life can actually end up in a very stressful place where everyone looks at them, and thinks that they’re happy and life is great, whilst inside they’re screaming with stress and overwork at trying to keep it all up.
I recognise that you may say, ah you weren’t doing it right, however, this is the clincher, if used correctly, and approached in a senstive way, it can be fantastic, however, the way that it is banded about can be unhealthy and actually harmful to people. It’s a very powerful method, but one taht needs to be cautioned. People arn’t always able/willing or knowledgable enough to access full information about these things, and therefore it’s not the catch all that perhaps it might seem.
So used with caution, sensitivity and with someone who recognises it’s limitations with people who have severe self esteem issues, it can be great, but it must be used with caution.
Dear T,
I don’t think you’re too much of a spanner! You did what you needed to do to feel well and happy. And repeating positive affirmations without sometimes addressing underlying concerns is not healthy. Who will ever forget Annette Benning in American Beauty listening to a tape in her car and repeating, I AM IN CONTROL, while her life was falling apart and she was ignoring – and not handling the reality around her. What a film!
I feel positive affirmations work, I’m currently listening to Glenn’s get the life you want and its brilliant.
That is a really good point T and very delicately made. It is true that life is rarely black and white, and if the application of positive thinking is too evangelical it can be harmful as well as being a turn off.
A very close friend of mine has had similar experiences, and the call for him to ‘think positively’ just made him want to tear his hair out or wring the person’s neck! Rather like trying to paper over a crack before first fixing the crack, he needed to reconcile the issues about how he thought about himself before he was in a position to use positive images and affirmations. Once this had been done, the positive images became more real to him because he genuinely believed them to be a true reflection of his current and desired self.
Positive is a word that can be thrown around carelessly and without sensitivity, but with the right application it can be very effective.
Having been coached by Fiona, I can vouch for the fact that she understands the application of positive thinking and this has been highly beneficial and instrumental in my own growth.
The more an affirmation is in line with your current beliefs, the more powerful it is. But of course most of us want to use affirmations to CHANGE a situation.
On the basis of my own experience I agree with Fiona & others who assert that you must first use affirmations to dismantle beliefs that deny you your goal. Once you’ve persuaded yourself that you DO deserve whatever it is you’re affirming, you’ll get it. You must also be prepared to keep at it: if you consciously affirm for 10 minutes a day that you’re gorgeous & successful, & spend the rest of the time letting your mind run off negative self-talk (= subconscious affirmations) that you’re an ugly failure, guess which of the two will manifest?
PS – From Fiona’s article & the comments so far, I gather that the Daily Mail (unintentionally) went a good way towards proving that NEGATIVE affirmations (self-destructive beliefs) work, so why shouldn’t positive ones, once the negative ones have been cleared out of the way?
I think for me the mail article reads a cationary tale (that is one that I also feel needs to be read with regards to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, when looking to the psychotherapies). that sometimes it’s not just a case of “Mind over Mood”. Sometimes individuals have been badly damaged, and they may be doing an extremely good job at hiding that, both from themselves and from any practitioner that they turn to for help.
So what I would take from it is, positive psychology approaches are not right for everyone, and an ethical life coach (which having met you at a workshop I’m absolutely certain you are!) needs to have that awareness in their field view when dealing with a client.
I had a very bad experience with a life coach, who took my money (and lots of it!) gave me a pile of positive affirmations to do, a pile of homework, and I just ended up running away after the third session and not coming back for the fourth, when I felt a complete failure for not “getting any better”. I subsequently found that she wasn’t “into” emotional type life coaching, but she hadn’t made that at all clear at our introductory meeting. I was quite clear about my mental health history, but even with that, she did not see that I was someone that she just was not right to be able to help.
I do worry that because life coaching isn’t regulated, there are some absolutely wonderful life coaches out there (of whom I would put you, and have recommended you to friends as an extremely motivational and I felt genuine person, which is what is the core to me of being able to help someone, or recognise when your outside of your abilities), but unfortunately there are also some really duff ones, and also the use of techniques as “quick fixes” when they’re out there known about, can unfortuantely cause some people problems.
Luckily it’s all ended up great for me (though to say ended up suggests I think my journey is done, and I very much dont’ believe that!), and as you say I’ve found a way to become healthy, and now I’m very much in a place where using positive affirmations is helping me so much to continue my personal development so that I’m more than just healed from depression, but I’m also getting into a really great place. It’s great because I’ve been able to take something from all my experiences in getting there. (It’s all great food for therapy when things go wrong and I react, as my therapist loves to say!)
But sometimes along the way if there had been a bit more caution used, it may not have been quite such a struggle to get there.
Hi Charlie, thanks very much for that, that touched me very much. T
I am living proof that positive thinking works! A few years ago, a friend recommended that I read your books, Fiona, and I have quite literally never looked back. I’ve come through a very messy divorce and am single-handedly responsible for bringing up my son (who was 3 when we split) and financing both his life and mine. I am self-employed, and by really believing in myself (and sometimes, I confess, acting ‘As if’) I’ve trebled my turnover in about 4 years, which has helped enormously. I’ve also written articles about self-help and positive thinking, interviewing some amazing women in the process. We all have a choice – when someone asks how we are, we can say “Not too BAD”, or “Great thanks!” The subconscious is listening. Never doubt it.
ps – A sudden thought, getting positive feedback from friends and loved ones is amazingly healing and healthy. When they genuinely tell you your fab, lovely, kind, beautiful, worthwhile etc, that kind of positive affirmation goes a looooooooong way to helping a person to heal enough to start seeing it in themselves!
LOVE your gutsiness, Christina. You’re right – there’s always a choice in how we respond to EVERYTHING. I love the notion of Productive Thinking; where are your thoughts taking you, what results are they likely to produce? Because they’re definately leading you somewhere. I also recommend Bruce Lipton’s book, Biology of Belief, where he traces the effects of our thoughts on the body chemistry. Remarkable, and so obvious. We al know what fear feels like in the body; left unchecked it does immense damage to the immune system. For our health’s sake, it’s crucial to handle that fear and get into a better state of mind.
Personally i believe that the media just needs to have something to criticize. To keep people where they want them. Everytime i’ve been thinking positive and living the way as well its been an amazing outcome.
great post
Yes positive thinking does work, or to put it the other way round, negative thinking definitely doesn’t. However, thinking positively does not mean setting impossible goals for oneself or having ridiculous or impractical expectations. Positive thinking has to be strongly linked to rational analysis of a situation. Otherwise, it might backfire leading to harsh dissapointments.
Hi Fiona!
How great. I’m also in the middle of writing an post for my site in response to that article too.
Great examples!
Jen
Great post! I wonder why people publish such negative perspectives as this. It’s like writing an article “exercise can’t really change your body shape”. The problem with research like this is that it puts people into a helpless position. If you don’t try and take charge of your own mind what can you hope to take charge of? There is definitely some mastery involved if you want to reap the benefits of positive thinking. But there is no question in my mind that its powers are real. “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change”. That’s its power!
Hi there people, without doubt positive thinking does work. Firstly we need to know why/what we are affirming once we have this tackled then the only way is forward. What it is for, why and who can help would be three steps to achieving, feeling and living a positive life. I have recently read the 7 steps to success and just by reading the back cover and what the 7 steps are has definatley got me thinking positive. (Its magic)
Hello to everyone.
Resistance, this is what kept me back. Everything was “such hard work, it takes up too much time, energy, too difficult, etc etc.” This is what held me back from so many things. So, I sat and thought about it, and tackled all these areas by taking bite size pieces. Every day I do just something to make inroads into whatever task I am tackling. Deadlines are flexible, but not too flexible. This way, I am much more relaxed about my task, and I ENJOY it. Examples are:- weight loss, successful. Starting and continuing and really enjoying a trading course. Developing photographic skills. Getting in touch with old friends and family. Making my house beautiful. Keeping fit. Just little bite size pieces, don’t beat yourself up, and ENJOY.
Happiness is a combination of meaning, pleasure and challenge.
Hope this helps.
Debby
Hi,
I found an article in a magazine about life coaching in which Fiona had coached three women, it interested me so I ordered ‘Be your own life coach’. I read the book cover to cover time and again and I’m still amazed by how much it improved every single area of my life. I was going through a very very rough patch at that time and thought it wasn’t really worth going on, Fiona’s words helped me to put everything in order and approach all areas with a renewed way of thinking. I changed my whole world around I am so much happier now, even ten years on and it is all down to looking at things from a different and more positive angle. I’m still amazed by this and have bought the book ten times over for friends and family, needless to say I don’t agree with Daily Mail and I hope other people don’t take their words too much to heart, where on earth would I be if had taken that attitude, it doesn’t bare thinking about. Keep on smiling
Sarah
As always, one receives appropriate encouragement from the universe when one needs it – so Fiona’s comment on bad press for positive thinking is, funnily enough, just what I needed to see – Over the last year or so I have been introduced to the Law of Attraction and how positive thinking is really only effective if accompanied by FEELING GOOD – This feeling good thing is often only achieved by reaching for a better thought – so it spirals happily forward.
HOWEVER – I have recently noted a downward spiral in the way I think and feel. This has been so disappointing and I think it is because I am so much more aware of my thoughts and therefore my negative thoughts! I have always been an incredibly positive person – although usually this has been a way of encouraging others and not utilised to enhance my own life so much.
So to cut a long story short I am reminded that being acutely aware of my own thoughts means I am able to divine and direct my destiny – and I must think positively when I have a negative thought as this only means I am learning to monitor my own mind successfully and therefore can choose to reach for that better thought and therefore that better feeling and a great quote is; “the better it gets, the better it gets!”
All the best from an even more determined positive thinker! x
As an ex employee of the Daily Mail, I am dubious to what is reported in the paper. It was planned that redundancies were going to take place within the newspaper in two weeks time but 9/11 happened and they told everyone who was to made redundant in two weeks the next day because it was “a good day to bury bad news” so shows how credible the newspaper is!!! Oh and I’m not a bitter ex-employee
Fiona,
Positive thinking is essential in life. You have created a wonderful response here, and I hope the Daily Mail take it on board!
Amanda
Coaching for career, business and personal success
Positive thinking and prayer absolutely work and effect every area of your life. And to the folks that wrote the book and the news article disputing it. Jesus was the master postive thinker but guess what they laughed at Him and even hung him so you see, some people just don’t get it no matter what
That is a great blog.
Whilst the Daily Mail article is unfortunately typical of its syle of cynical journalism, there are a few truths in there.
Saying positive statements when you intinsically do not believe they are true or can happen is like putting icing on top of mud.
I liked the balance in your article.
My own take on it is this:
If making a particular statement makes me feel good then I know that it is worthwhile for me to repeat it.
If it makes me feels uneasy, then I know that I will need to address the underlying negative belief before affirming something that has no conviction for me.
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