The Self Is a Positive Thinker
Mindfulness Myth #3: Positive Thinking and Self-Delusion
The Self Is a Positive Thinker
Mindfulness Myth #3: Positive Thinking and Self-Delusion
The Self was strolling in the sunshine, thinking back to her conversations with the Coach. They’d spent considerable time debating the difference between the voice urging her to acknowledge her faults and the one sneering at her for them.
The Self wondered now, how about positive thinking? Everyone kept lecturing on the importance of thinking positively. Doesn’t it imply that she should only give credit to whichever voice was being nice to her?
Where does the truth sit in this setup? What exactly is positive thinking, and how does one practise it without deluding oneself?
Lost in thought, the Self didn’t notice she had been walking down a street with quaint little houses. She was approaching two neighbours living across the street, both doing some work on their fences.
In fact, one of them was busy painting his fence white while the other was only contemplating his own with a dejected expression on his face.
She went over to the unhappy man.
“Good morning, my friend, can I be of any help?” the Self asked merrily.
The man looked up with tearful eyes.
“I’m afraid there’s nothing more to do here”, the man answered blankly. “It’s completely rotten.”
“Are you sure? What if you replaced the broken pickets?” the Self said, taking a closer look.
“Won’t help, kid. Can’t you see here?”
The Self bent slightly and touched a picket to examine it more closely. It was rotten, all right, and so was the rail. The man pointed demonstratively to the length of the fence, suggesting the size of his problem.
“This fence will never be good again; it’s beyond repair.”
The Self turned to the nearest post.
“Look at this, this is fine! If the posts are solid enough, that’s a good basis to build on, don’t you think?”
The man shook his head, meaning utter futility.
“One or two posts might be fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that the fence is just screwed up!”
The Self nodded thoughtfully.
“Well, you may be right. Still, why don’t you try propping it up with something that may still hold when the fence collapses? Or maybe you’d like to go to the DIY store and get a new one? I can help you put it up!”
The man sighed and shook his head again in helplessness.
“Taking this rot down and putting up a new fence — my goodness, this will be some work, to say nothing about the costs! There’s my neighbour over there,” and the man gestured towards the busy man across the street. “His fence is just as rotten as mine, but he thinks a bit of white paint will do wonders. Thinking positively, he calls it. I’m realistic, you know, no point feeding on fancy thoughts or fake solutions. One must face the truth.
“And then again”, he resumed after a moment’s silence, “a wrecked fence is the first thing one notices about a house, so what I’m looking at here, under my nose, is the worth of my whole property going to the dogs!”
The Self was quiet, not knowing what to say. She’d offered help. She wished the man good luck, then crossed the street to the man painting his fence white. Maybe this dialogue will be more refreshing, the Self thought.
She crossed the street and greeted the busy man.
“Good morning, my friend, a great job you’re doing here!” the Self exclaimed. The man greeted her back cheerfully.
“Good morning to you, pretty Self, good to see you! I am doing a great job indeed, I suppose, you know, this fence is good, but the little scratches it’s got in time could use a little paint.”
The Self nodded in consent and came closer. She couldn’t help noticing that the man was splashing generous amounts of paint over flaky and brittle wood. His neighbour was right: this fence was rotten, too! Those were not just scratches. And paint would definitely make it no better.
“Oh,” she said, “but take a look here! This picket might be safer to replace completely. Quite a few of them, actually”, the Self added cautiously. She looked the entire length of the fence. The whitewashed part was giving it away: the wood was spongy.
The man kept smiling and carried on applying paint tirelessly.
“The fence is an old one, I know, but you’ve got to look on the bright side, and that is: it’s still standing, so I’m doing what I can — a little bit of paint won’t hurt. At least it’ll make it look better.”
“Of course”, the Self replied, embarrassed.
“But if you need help, we could drive to the DIY store and fetch the pickets you’d want to replace, you know? I think a few of them might come down in a week or two, and then all your work will have been for nothing.”
The man shook his head, laughing.
“Oh, you worriers, I know you; you’re an unhappy crowd with your negative mindset, right? You can only see the empty half of the glass. But one has to think positively.
“Take a look here. What do you see? I bet you see a rundown fence. I see a fence that’s good enough to stand and which is going to look even better by sunset. I’m expecting some extra money in spring, and I’m sure it will last long enough until I get the money for a new one!” The man winked at her and went on painting cheerfully.
The Self felt the corners of her mouth sinking. In spring — ten months away? She thought she could already hear the cracks of the lifeless wood under the paintbrush. The already whitewashed segments were lopsided and seemed to be on an imminent course to the ground. It was clear the posts were rotten underground, too.
She took leave from the man, wishing him good luck. She started walking in a pensive mood. The Coach had taught her to reflect on every encounter.
These two neighbours — both have a rotten fence. One sees only the rot, the other only his wishful fantasy. Which side of the street is closer to the truth?
Neither. Which is why it’s good I’m walking in the middle.
Is the busy man a positive thinker? I’m sure that’s not what it’s called.
But then, is the hopeless man realistic?
Where exactly are they wrong?
She saw the two neighbours with her mind’s eyes engaged in a debate, where she, the Self, was throwing questions at them as in a quiz show. If only she could reconcile these two men’s standpoints, she might better understand what positive thinking really was.
Welcome to our personality quiz. Just try to answer without thinking too hard.
Question: When you discover there might be a problem, what do you see?
Neighbour 1: A problem that’s getting huge the more I look into it.
Neighbour 2: Arhhh, there’s no big deal, really.
Question: What do you do about it?
Neighbour 1: The situation is driving me crazy; I can’t get down to action. There’s never a complete solution.
Neighbour 2: I get busy doing something; keeping busy helps me think the problem will go away.
Question: And how do you estimate things will evolve?
Neighbour 1: I must face the truth: this problem will ruin everything!
Neighbour 2: I’m an optimist: things will come around just as I wish.
Question: So, where are you looking to find the truth?
Neighbour 1: The truth is in seeing the fault. It’s called being realistic. Anything else is self-delusion.
Neighbour 2: The truth is in seeing only the good. It’s called positive thinking. Anything else is negative emotions, which should be dismissed.
Question: But wait, what do you think of the others, those who may see things differently?
Neighbour 1: Utopians! I need to make them get real and see their limitations.
Neighbour 2: Negativists! I need to make them see how miserable they are.
The Self heaved a deep sigh. She had got so tired of all those shouting their teachings at each other, self-infatuated with their view. It looked as if people would only think there’s only left or right, and if left’s wrong, right must be right.
What was this positive-negative divide, after all, the Self wondered? Positive thinking, negative emotions, and here’s the truth, slapping you in the face?
Brainstorming mode:
Positive thinking?
Solution-oriented. Reframing my take to gain a perspective that keeps me going. Keeping score of my assets and being thankful for them.
An optimist?
Seeing that I’ll somehow move on. Some way, not necessarily the way I’m expecting now.
Negative emotions?
Human. Can be used as a spur to find ways of moving on.
The Self was so happy with her findings that she felt the impulse to run back to the two men and tell them. Maybe this would help, the Self thought. But then she realised:
If I tell them, these will be just words. It’ll be another wise teaching, like the ones they so readily serve out in their self-righteousness. For positive thinking to work, it needs to come from the inside. Without feeling it, positive thinking is only whitewashing a rotten fence.
But then, something else may help, she realised.
She ran back to the two neighbours.
“Hey, you both, could I ask you a small favour? Will you please come over here, where I’m standing?”
The Self had dug her heels into the ground, determined not to budge from where she was in the middle of the street.
The two men looked up and stood still for a moment in disbelief. But the Self had sounded so self-assured summoning them over that they complied.
“Right, now take a look over to your side. What do you see?” the Self asked them.
The two men turned around and started watching their houses, lawns — and fences.
“All right, I guess I know what you mean”, said the one who had been whitewashing, scratching his head. “The fence is sagging to the ground. The poles are clearly wrecked and can no longer hold.”
“That sounds like a starting point to me”, the Self smiled.
The other was still quiet.
“Well, I can see the house and the lawn make a lovely picture, indeed. And the fence — well — you were right, maybe a few of the poles can still be saved.
“But I’m still freaking miserable because I’m no good with DIY, and that’ll cost me a fortune that I can’t afford!”
“And that sounds to me like another starting point”, replied the Self.
“So what do we have? We have a problem,” and she nodded to the neighbour who’d spoken first, “and we have some emotions about it”, and she turned to the unhappy one.
“Good. Now what do we do from here? Because we don’t want to stay stuck in negative emotions”, she turned again to the one who had claimed to be a positive thinker, “but we don’t want to ignore the problem either”, she said, acknowledging the one who’d claimed to be realistic.
The two men looked down.
“Maybe I could ask you to talk to each other and put together whatever you may have: tools, skills, perspectives, solid poles, white paint — you name it! Just no talk about positive or negative, please! No teaching, no labelling, and no slapping in the face.
“Oh, and whatever you do, make sure you come back here to the middle of the street to check in with each other. Agreed?”
She left the two still confused but eyeing each other as if considering where to start.
The Self walked away, wondering if it might be any good. When she reached the road bend, she took another look back. One of the men was driving his van out of the garage, and the other was waiting to get in. Were they going to the DIY store? She wondered with a smile.
The Self went from walking to leaping, left leg, right leg. She had a slide with these ideas to show the Coach this afternoon!
Read my Mindfulness Myths series.
And you?
Do you think you are a positive thinker? What makes you think so? What do you do that you call thinking positively?
Are you often prey to negative emotions? How do you handle them? Do you run, do you dig them deep under while deliberately distracting yourself? Do you feel guilty when you feel such negative emotions, as if you’re caught doing something wrong?
Do you relate more to one of the neighbours in this story? Could you then use something from the other neighbour’s approach?
If the story has “spoken” to you, do you feel you could also use some of its content in practice?
Please don’t forget to respond some way to the story :)
Thanks!
Sorry for my somehow delayed comment. What about a pragmatic self? Assisted by a tailor-made mind? Neither losing itself into an absolute bliss of positivity, nor limiting itself to a dark pessimism.
Let's say, a self + a mind, both focused on solutions, on finding a balance. That "aurea mediocritas" which does not mean mediocrity, but a middle way that reconciles both ways. I hate extremes. A balance in everything, when possible, is my way in life.
Thanks Mioara, yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Positive thinking is too often understood as painting everything pink (or a rotten fence white), and then of course there’s disappointment, plus the ridicule of those who call themselves realists. Positive thinking, in the Eastern tradition, is a way of mobilising inner resources to make amends where possible, and move on. It‘s not a way of denying reality, but a way of looking at it that enables us to seek solutions. In a way, you can call it the middle way between paralysing pessimism and the bliss of positivity (self-delusion).
Oh, and - there are no delays, you are welcome to comment anytime :)