The power of positive thinking and its perils.

I have just finished reading " Supersuvivors-the surprising link between suffering success".It is a compilation of stories of people who overcome some major adversity and then completely turned their lives around. While on the face of it ,it is easy to dismiss this as a set of "rag to riches" stories which will tug on our heart strings and stoke our desire for success. Well you will dismiss it like this only if you have not read the book. It does try to go deeper into those success stories and try to come up with some common links in those stories which may help  other people .Of all the things mentioned in the book the one that struck me was the authors attempt to debunk  the over use of the phrase " The power of positive thinking".

Whenever we are low, handling some major blow that life has dealt us or it could be due to some minor adversity in the day to day running of our lives, we are told by everyone and everything around us that we should think positive. By thinking positive and staying positive we will be able to overcome any problem that we might be facing. The authors call this way of thinking a myth.In fact they go on step further and say baseless positivity will only take away from our power to handle the situation.if we just want to stay positive it can be away of drugging ourselves that there will be some divine intervention and life will improve by itself. it can incapacitate us from facing the actual crux of the situation . To solve anything we need to first understand it completely,break it down to its bare bones and then see where we are,where we need to be and whats the way to get there. All that can only happen if we are truly one with our problem-when we go deep into its heart and internalise its mechanism before we begin to try to resolve it.I found this portion of the book in line with my way of thinking though of course it was much more articulate and well thought out than anything i could have come up with.

The book does not dismiss the use of positivity completely. The authors want us to face our situation- the reality of it all and then work on it. As we do that work we stay hopeful our efforts are in the right direction. They call this grounded hope.Much better than mindless positivity.