"How about a little realism?"

[peristaltor]

To the rabid optimists: Put down the pom-poms. Step away from the pink megaphone. You aren't helping.

Please read this. Without knowing it, without being able to articulated it as well, this has been my philosophy for decades.

Comments

[pope_guilty]

I like Barbara Ehrenreich more the more she writes.

[pocketlama]

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For about a year I was a volunteer on a cancer support phone line. I worked the middle of the night and I would get these late night/early morning calls from women and men sobbing from the guilt and self-reproach of having the occasional "negative" thought.

These were all too often people in the last stages of fatal cancer and still they couldn't rest from all that relentless "positive" thinking.

I despise so-called positive thinking with all my soul.
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[binks]

Great read - I'm sure I'll grab the book when it's out.

I consider myself a "positive thinker," but I've never experienced this pressure to be positive that Ehrenreich is describing. I do tend to believe that if you look at things in a way that's positive, they cease to be negative -- but that just seems obvious to me, and has little to do with ignoring real problems or negative emotions, and more to do with shifting my own mindset to reduce unhealthy levels of stress for myself; I find it alleviates my depressive tendencies to do so.

I think one can choose to look at things positively without ignoring aspects of things that are truly negative and working to change them... For example, I think it's possible to be an anti-racist activist working hard and passionately against racism and the atrocities it creates -- while still looking at the process as a personal challenge instead of a burden, and thus being "positive" about it.

[ankh_f_n_khonsu]

Yup, I enjoyed that article too.

[albionwood]

My mom was one of those.. a Norman Vincent Peale ("The Power of Positive Thinking") believer. She used the visualization technique to fight cancer. It didn't work.