The Power of Positive Thinking?

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It has been generally accepted that one does have some control over the direction of one's thoughts. Like, if I'm in a car accident ... do I embrace being pissed off and scared, or do I be happy no one was hurt? It could go either way.

My question, however, is, to what extent are we not responsible for our negative thinking? This has been bothering me since it was brought up in another thread. I put a lot of stake in maintaining a positive attitude. I manually force my brain to twist things to a positive take. I greet people in a friendly manner when really I just want them to go away because the interaction causes me pain. I am disingenuous.

This lack of personal integrity and constant redirection of perception is grating on me and I wonder how responsible we are for our mental control of our thinking. At what point does one just throw up one's hands and recognize that something sucks?

When it actually does suck.

Many times, I've thought things sucked when they didn't. I would learn that later, to my detriment.

By the way, I'm not into the Norman Vincent Peale/self-help type of "positive thinking."

Even when something really does objectively suck, at some point it helps to just accept it and move on. And by "move on" I only mean to stop fighting it if it something you have no power over at all. Let it occupy that part of your life of the moment and find happiness or positiveness in a different part. Often that is enough to end up greatly lessening the impact of the really negative part (which, in a roundabout way grants you power over it).

It is fine to recognize that something sucks, in my opinon.
In fact, I say that things suck all the time.
But saying that things suck doesn't really prevent me from taking positive action.
So I would say that positive action is more important than positive thinking alone.
It seems that thinking more positively helps me take more positive action.
But sometimes I can also take positive action on something while saying and feeling that the thing sucks.
For instance, I might say that my class project sucks, but I still do it, and it might surprise me in not sucking when I do it.

You have to think first and foremost about what's helpful to your going concern.

If you're dealing with minor annoyances like driving annoyances, various kinds of stable but irritating life restrictions, long-term singlehood (well, that could be good or bad depending), those are probably the easiest to compensate out with having other things going on and staying positive about those things. Dealing with things like you're talking about, ie. the car accidents and various nasty surprises - there's a lot you can think, hopefully you're staying on the ball to handle the situation logistically as best possible, but you'd really do yourself the best service to focus on it not in terms of positive and negative but what will help you the most both there in the longterm.

There's obvious dangers to both directions - overt pessimism's like not showering, too much optimism blunts critical thinking. The happy medium I think is really found by the question of 'what's the most useful?', and that's fair because this is a question of your subjective life, as you suggested your integrity, and that's also about your hormonal health and making sure that you aren't loaded down with frictions that don't lead to any helpful outcome.

That's true. Sometimes you don't realize what you have until it's gone.

It's best not to let something bad cloud your feelings about other things. I have sometimes found it hard to enjoy things I like because I am haunted by memories of past bad experiences. For example. I have a basic distrust of authority. I think because of my experience in school where I was not recognized as autistic and had to fend for myself. I feel they let me down. But to what extend should I take this distrust and expand it to include all societal authority?

That makes a lot of sense. There's no point dwelling on negativity. Doing positive things even when you don't feel like it does make a person feel better.

I think this relates to what btbnnyr said and I think you're right. Keep moving forward even when you can't see the benefit.

So I guess, as we are responsible for our actions, taking positive steps is necessary regardless of your thinking.

"Doing positive things even when you don't feel like it does make a person feel better."

I've found that even doing neutral things can work. When I feel too many incremental negative things having a built-up affect on me, I go for a long, fast walk. It helps to live a block away from a trail-head and work a block from a marsh with semi-maintained walking paths. But when I was young I was captivated by a short blurb in...maybe it was Reader's Digest at my grandmothers? Anyway it was about someone asking their elderly or dying father why, when they were children, as he left for work he'd always touch this one tree limb, and then again as he came home. He said when he came home he'd leave his problems there and then pick them up again the next morning. That sort of thing works with lots of small suckinesses, too. Find a way to leave them for a bit, and take a break. Find an escape, or build one. Make it a habit, even if it is just walking around the block every day, or setting an hour aside to read a book every day or...whatever allows you to not be affected by them and not think about them for that small bit of time. It *is* a bit of a meditation, and it takes practice to let go, but the regular schedule helps. Funny thing is, after a while when you pick them (your troubles) back up again they often seem...just the tiniest bit smaller or weaker, somehow.

Physical activity does help and I live in a nice neighbourhood. Sometimes, though, it's like I get stuck. Like I'm idling or paused and have no forward momentum. At times like these I try to force myself to do something, no matter how small. Otherwise I fall into a pit of confusion.

I find the power of positive thinking ONLY works in certain social situations. Because thoughts, feelings, an attitude have no real effect on physical reality.


Do whatever you find helpful. I've discovered that being more honest with people is better than this positivity bullsh*t. Quite frankly, free will is an illusion and positive thinking advocates are trying to manipulate others. We don't often have control over how we feel about something or even how we react to it.

I think I should try to conceal my true feelings less than I do now. I feel dishonest some times.

Actauly it doesn't really matter if the depressed person is responsible. Feelings are subjective, like I said in the other thread, responsibility for those feelings is also subjective. "Positive thinker" divorce themselves from that to an extent.

The first thing to to do is recognize you are in a negative cycle. Ignoring it is not going to make you automatically happy.

Positive thinking can feature, but first it is about breaking that negative cycle.

TBH I can give an opion from anxiety POV, from a depression POV I'm less experience, but there is CBT approaches to that too.

My version of CBT uses interruption more than rationalisation, as this can be counter-productive for hyper-analyticals.

I do get a kind of depression I think, but for sort periods, situational, sporadic. Generally I find that sleep is the best treatment. However I think those that get cyclical depression, or for longer periods this isn't enough.

No. Responsibility for feelings is ultimately not subjective at all. Because an important difference between thoughts and emotions is that emotions cannot be switched on and off the way thoughts can(for most people). And for some folks, when emotions are triggered, they elicit thoughts that reinforce those feelings and the cycle continues for a while and then eventually stops. You are responsible for your words and deeds, but not your emotions.

I think you are misunderstanding me, but subjective I don't mean you have absolute control over them. I don't mean that at all.

It is subjective it the same way that pain is subjective. Pain is something that is perceived. Some people are able to gain some control over it, however how that is done is counter intuitive.

As far as having control over our emotions. Conventional thinking involves "thinking' your way out. This might not be the best level of cognition to tackle such a problem. You are basically trying to control your brain activity.

My cousin is a neuroscientist who did research on different types of meditation. Her area of research was perceptual dominance using fMRI. The study shows that meditation exercise that involves taking you away from you thoughts "one point", was able to fix visual dominance to one side for extended periods. One monk held one side for 7 minutes.

Bare in mind that visual dominance is the side which the brain favours, but the side are constantly switching normally.

This has nothing to do with spirituality or supernatural. This is a brain state, with practice you can train yourself into.

The control experiment "contemplative" considering suffering didn't have this effect, and probably wouldn't be advisable for depressed people.

On a more basic level diet and excersise can have an influence on our brain health.

18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh [my human nature, my worldliness For the willingness [to do good] is present in me, but the doing of good is not
Is something that applies to me.

Positive thinking for me can get challenged. I need
thought stoppers
Meditation
What I call brain to mouth filters
Cardio exercise
Anger management / Cognitive Thinking Error recognition
I've actually taught the last 2.
"He taught what he still needed to learn."

signature. Level 1 in the new terminology (in case you were wondering.

[/quote]
Pain is not subjective and has nothing to do with perception. Pain is a reality. How we measure it is subjective, because there is no way to measure it. But the experience is real.
Meditation is great, but it won't help with pain management. And, like you say, if a depressed person meditates, it could end really badly.

Pain has everything to do with perception, sorry you are not correct.