POSITIVE THINKING VERSUS A POSITIVE ATTITUDE

In the 1970’s I read Norman Vincent Peale’s “The Power of Positive Thinking” and have worked on being a positive thinker ever since. There have been many evolutions and adaptations on positive thinking over the past decades.

In the 1980’s positive thinking was overtaken by “Positive Mental Attitude”, which was largely positive thinking with an emphasis on one’s attitude for the purpose of improving performance.

In the 1990’s it evolved into “positive attitude” which focused entirely on attitude rather than thinking or performance. Considering the possibility of negative outcomes as a part of understanding various courses of actions was branded as “negativity” which was bad because it made it hard to maintain a positive attitude. In corporations, government, and across the globe talking about negative outcomes, downsides, or catastrophes that might happen became unacceptable. Over time nothing depressing or negative, no matter how much evidence might exist to support it, could be mentioned in any forum and those that did were criticized and often removed from their positions.

The positive attitude culture that dominated the early 2000’s has lead to a “positive” view of reality where housing prices always go up, anyone can make a quick $100K by working weekends fixing up and flipping houses, everyone can retire rich without saving, corporations can be successful without being profitable, and the US economy can thrive even with all the jobs going overseas.

This positive attitude delusion lead to the “internet bubble”, the “housing bubble” and what is surely coming next the “bailout bubble”. The internet bubble made us rich by owning stock or options in companies that had no market or income, the housing bubble made us rich by just living in a house owned by the bank, and the bailout bubble will save us from a depression and allow us to continue our collective delusional lifestyle. In every bubble, thinking and work is not required, just the positive attitude that things will somehow magically work out.

I view positive thinking as using your mind to understand the problems in order to come up with the best solution. The positive part is the belief and faith that those problems, however difficult or hopeless they seem, are fixable and there are opportunities that can be discovered in understanding the problems fully. One of the examples of positive thinking in Peale’s book is about an incident while he was in London in the early 1940s while the city was being bombed. He was in a crowd that noticed a young child trapped in a burning building. As the crowd stood staring in horror, Peale scavenged through the wreckage found a long board, carried it up the stairs of a nearby building, put it across to the building that was burning, and convinced the child to crawl across the board to safety. Positive thinking focuses on believing that there is a solution, thinking about what can be done, and carrying it out. I am sure some of those in the crowd had a good attitude but the attitude did not lead to any action that helped the child.

Our “positive attitude” culture has made it easy for mangers and leaders to deceive the world about the results they are producing in return for their multi-million dollar bonuses because the focus is on attitude and feeling rather than objective results. Good attitudes do not empower people or society to understand the problems we face or motivate us to do the hard work to solve them.

I don’t see value in wailing about the problems facing me or the world, instead I see great advantage in thinking about the issues in the pursuit of understanding what I and the world are facing so that I can come up with the best solutions possible. Thinking about the economy, retirement, global weather, and other challenges of our day, I am motivated to ask, How can I make things work better?, What better solution is waiting for me to discover?, What difference can I make to my family and community? Though the answers may be slow in coming, the effort of thinking about the questions with the faith that answers will come has added greatly to my life.