Go for positive thinking

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I tend to stay away from WP because there is usually so much negativity here. It is so easy to let go and be negative here. That's not right!

Being negative is a toxic habit, we were not born thinking that way. We were not thinking negative before being mistreated by life events. It is not a fatality. It is hard enough to cope with everything that we cannot control and can go "wrong" when being on the spectrum, so let's decide to stop being pessimistic or complaining about how Aspie's life sucks. Sometimes it first takes to decide to look forward with hope, it takes to look at what can go well in the future and aim for it.

We are all coming a long way but we are still here, alive, fighting, true to ourselves. We are all fighters in our own special ways. We are doing what we think is right every single day. Morally, we are all Great people. We are gifted in so many ways. Nobody can deny that.

I wish all of us a lot of positive thoughts and the very best in our lives because we all deserve it more than anybody else.

Sorry for being negative (and using a metaphor), but your advise equates to us walking in the middle of the street and hoping that if we only think positively enough no car will hit us ... Replace street with life and car with just-about-everything. I have survived this long *because* of my negative thinking.

And what is survival to you if all you can look forward to is more negativity? Let it go. Think of the wonderful things there are out there, as there are many. Take a deep breath, and draw yourself back a step, so you can take a reality check: you've got it easy as pie. We both do. That we can even be posting something on a computer means that we've got it way easier than most of the rest of the world. Some of the most heavily populated areas of the world are smoggy, miserable, and terribly hard to achieve anything in.

Go to Beijing (or take a nice stroll to the Yellow River, see how disgusting it is, and see how hard it is for the people who live there), or better yet go to Morocco where people have to lock up every night for fear of horrifying terrorists, and then you can tell me how bad you've got it. If I could literally go hungry to get through school when I was young and get a degree to teach (hahahaha, still funny to even remember teaching third graders so long ago), then you can make something great of your life and be a happy person. Did you ever pick cotton with your bare hands as a child? Did you ever ask your mother what was for dinner and hear "air pudding" half of the time? I doubt it.

Have you been to any of these places? I spent half a year in Senegal and almost three years in South Africa, traveling to many other African countries, thank you very much.

The fact that someone else also has a sh***y life, for different reasons, doesn't make mine any better.

If you have it "easy as pie": good on you. Go bother someone else.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/currency/2014/02/the-powerlessness-of-positive-thinking.html

Positive and Negative are extremes. You can be too much of either. The fact for me is that I don't like everything I come across in life and I feel like a complete fool when I act like I enjoy something I don't like.

I think there has to be a balance. If you don't believe you can do something and never try then you'll never accomplish it. On the other hand, believing that you can fly and jumping off a building is not a sensible approach to life.

I've seen cases where people who put too much stock in positive thinking ending up facing a lot of avoidable hardships. Everyone seems to be on the same page that you have to walk a line, and I would tend to agree.

Depends, how is negativity handled?

1) "Yes, it's all horrible!" reinforcement

2) "No, just be positive!" deflection

3) "Let's dissect this and talk about it" analysis

I think only the third one is worth having around. Negative feelings have their place because emotion is a response to what's going on in someone's life, but they're boring and counterproductive when they just go around and around and are taken at face value.

Being too focused on positivity is also bad because it doesn't allow negative emotions time to be worked through in a natural, healthy way. Neither sadness nor depression nor trauma will go away if you ignore it.

On the topic of Africa and various struggling countries that are often weaponized in "your problems" arguments, I meet a lot of students who've immigrated from West Africa or who visit relatives there at work. Even the girl who wrote about getting sent home from school because her family couldn't pay and being fed by a friend's family doesn't look down on problems in America. I wonder what she thinks of people using her childhood suffering that way.

I basically agree with the above. I also agree there is to much wining and paranoid, conspiratorial, and prejudiced thinking on this site. I have only been here here since August 2013 but it seemed there much more acceptance and even pride in who we are back when I first joined. Aspies in America circa 2014 does not resemble where Jews were in in Germany in 1933 or ordinary Syrians these days for that matter. But reacting to the negativity by going to the other extreme is wrong also. We are not all great people, We do things in a different way but we are just people who do bad and good and are too lazy sometimes just like the so called neurotypicals. As as people we need a place to vent and this site is it.

I think it is important to remember that by nature we are black and white thinkers. It helps us see things that others can't, it also makes us see things as much worse (or better) then what they really are.

You say:
"The fact that someone else also has a sh***y life, for different reasons, doesn't make mine any better."
But: The idea is not to change the details of your life, only your appreciation for it's better points.

I'm going to stick my neck out about a mile and a half here but I'm going to say I don't agree with you. Go ahead and smack me:::: "How the .... would you know how I feel" etc., etc.....so right....in a way.

Everyone has a spectrum of their "sh***y life", and I mean EVERYONE. Sometimes lives are "definitely" shittier than (or better than) others.

And for example....from bad to good....we can say the goodness (or badness) ranges from 1 to 10.

When my badness gets near 10 it's because everything is going to s**t around me....no one understands anything about me....I'm always getting into arguments...and I'm always forgetting things (etc.). BUT: Then I think about the refugees streaming out of Syria (and etc.) and I wonder if my living there would change my personal "scale of anguish" (1-10) at all?

My speculation (no plans for Syria this summer) is that my petty "scale of anguish" would change drastically and things I used to take for granted now would be more precious and cherished, and this new "scale from 1 to 10" would become my new life. This is one way human beings adapt to changing environments.

Therefor:
I believe if someone can consciously modify their emotional range to encompass a wider understanding and acceptance of the world then their own views of their personal conditions must change positively. Unless, unfortunately, you're one of the poor Syrian refugees already (pray for them).

denny

In total agreement with you Aspendos they can all get lost. Its simplistic and patronizing BS most importanty unrealistic.

Positive thinking works well in some situations, but, in general, realistic thinking is better.

There's a difference between being negative and being in sucky circumstances and having the audacity to actually acknowledge such.
Furthermore, positive thinking solves nothing.