The downsides of positivity

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Positivity is a booming industry. Thousands of books, countless blogs and news stories, untold quantities of internet memes, and quite a bit of legitimate science sing the praises of happiness and positive thinking. This sentiment is not new, of course. Its roots precede the modern era, appearing in some form in the writings of Aristotle; the 1950s saw the publication of Dr Norman Vincent Peale’s bestselling book on the topic, The Power of Positive Thinking; and Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret attributed magical powers to positive thinking in the mid-2000s.

In fact, it appears that positivity’s stock may be past its prime. The stack of books questioning the value of positivity (among them, Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-sided, Gabriele Oettingen’s Rethinking Positive Thinking, and Todd Kashden and Robert Biswas-Diener’s The Upside of Your Dark Side) is beginning to rival the stack touting the benefits of happiness and positive thinking. Might positivity have a downside?

http://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volum ... positivity

All that feel-good-rhetoric does nothing more than to inflate and play on the ego.
And the world is full of ego. People would rather suck up praise about themselves than to correct their own faults.

I believe in positivity, but not in the positivity industry and self-help books.

I believe in what may be termed "positivity coupled with realism and creativity."

I don't believe in allowing the past to affect the present.

I agree. All of these self-help books say the same thing and they become very tiresome. The same thing can be said for the "motivational speaking" movement. Those speeches are tiresome and formulaic.

If there's one thing an incurable pessimist like myself hates, it's other people constantly telling me to be positive. I not only admit I'm a pessimist, I'm actually rather proud to be one.

If there's one thing I'm nearly always positive about, it's that things will go wrong. Right now I'm positive that when my birthday arrives next week, at least one of my parents will get sick with the flu and I won't want to go home for the weekend to celebrate out of fear of catching it, or I'll get sick myself and we'll have to postpone it altogether. Or there will be a huge snowstorm. But if none of that happens I'll at least be pleasantly surprised.

I believe that a positive attitude comes as a result of success. It is not, as all the self-help books tell us, a precursor to it. You don't get anything done looking in a mirror all day and saying "I'm wonderful," and you certainly don't listen to motivational tapes in the car. That's a good way to get distracted and get in an accident. All the positive thinking in the world won't help you then.