Get wind of it

Just in case you're not aware of this, there was a book that propagated this idea and it went on to become a huge success - even a movie. Keen to capture the magic of success, I too grabbed a copy of The Secret. OK, I'm not going to say I was disappointed by the content, but at the end of the book I still didn't get the things I wanted. Was I missing something? Was I not wishing deeply enough? Was I doing something wrong? I decided to find out if any of my friends had greater success with the book. Did they find the secret? Had they achieved success? I found that only a few people seemed to have found happiness or wealth simply by wishing for it.

On second thought, I can think of a few people who did become happy and rich - the book's author and publisher. But then they wished for it and worked hard to realise it, right?

Thinking positive

While philosophers have been drilling it into us since as far as we can remember, we all know that positive thoughts are important, even a determinant, for a happy life. However, it was Norman Vincent Peale who in 1952 wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, setting in motion a multi-million dollar ‘feel good by thinking positive' industry.

Ever since, authors, life coaches and well-being experts have been underscoring the importance of entertaining positive thoughts to enjoy a fulfilling life. Loads of books have been written on the power of positivity and all of them have gone on to become bestsellers keeping, if anybody, the authors and publishers in a positive frame of mind.

But is positivity all that it's cracked up to be? Are we oversimplifying the rules of life? Can having positive thoughts change the life of every person? New research findings would make us believe otherwise.

According to a psychologist at Waterloo University in Canada, looking at life through rose-tinted glasses may not always leave you feeling elated. On the contrary, it can leave you feeling bitter and depressed because it leaves you struggling to narrow the chasm between thought and reality.

Joanne Westwood, the psychologist in question, made it lucid with her experiments on positive thinking. She conducted a series of experiments along with her colleagues on people with low self-esteem and those with high self-esteem. She got both sets to repeat sentences like: ‘I am happy; I am loveable,' several times a day. Through careful observation and analysis, she came to the conclusion that too much positive thinking made people who were feeling good better.

But, and now here's the clincher - those who were gloomy or had low self-esteem ended up feeling worse. "The belief that we should think positively permeates our culture. My research challenges that belief. It even seems to contradict common sense," wrote Westwood in the preamble to the published results of her study.

The real world

The tide, it seems, has turned. New Age psychologists say that while it might be fine to occasionally seek motivation through positive thinking, it is preferable to take a reality check every now and then, know your strengths and weaknesses and be a realist, or, better still, a pessimist in life.

Taking life with a pinch of salt never hurt anyone, is the new mantra being intoned. In essence, preparing for the worst is the best way to remain happy. Which reminds me of my grumpy great-uncle back in India who used to take along an umbrella whenever he stepped outdoors because ‘‘you never know when you might get caught in a downpour"! Was he being overly cautious, seeing only the clouds instead of the silver lining? I don't think so. Particularly because when others would return home drenched after being caught in a shower, he would come back from his walk dry. Pop psychology has a term for people like him - a defensive pessimist or someone who anticipates negativity and overcomes it by taking timely precautions.

Positive thinking, as some studies have found, can occasionally end up oversimplifying our lives - glossing over the hard facts and leaving us feeling cheated when compelled to face those facts. People who have experienced a traumatic incident or have faced steep challenges in life do not want their senses to be dulled with false promises.

Tina (not her real name), a mother of two physically challenged children, agrees with this school of thought.

When her sons were toddlers, she desperately believed in the power of positive affirmations and used to repeat positive statements as often as she could. "After five years of positive thinking I realised that it was getting me nowhere. I would close my eyes and think of my boys walking and running around. However, when I would open my eyes and see them in their wheelchairs, I would feel angry and depressed.

"Now I've decided to get a grip on reality and accept the fact that the situation is going to be pretty much the same. This acceptance has in fact empowered me," she says.

Working wonders

Does positive thinking have a salubrious effect on one's mind? Does it really work the kind of wonders that self-help guides promise it does? Melanie Schlatter, a health psychologist from Dubai, offers her take on this. She believes we need to balance the pros with the cons. Positive thinking is an essential ingredient of healthy optimism, she says. Being able to ‘look on the bright side' and affirm to yourself that ‘all is well in my world' can certainly buffer one's cognitive interpretation and emotional experience of negative situations. It will enable people to move on more expediently. However, being positive is only a small part of the puzzle in terms of psychological health simply because it's not always possible, nor realistic, to try and be positive when the event doesn'tcall for it.

"Positive affirmations are not tools to solve a problem directly. As such, if you use them to blindly sweep your true thoughts and feelings under the carpet, then you will never make true sense of that situation or be able to act appropriately in the future when similar situations arise,'' says the psychologist.

"You also have to believe what you are telling yourself. Therefore, with respect to the research conducted - the results are not surprising. If [your] innate schema or belief is that [you] are unloveable, then [your] ‘filters' are hard-wired to continually find supporting evidence for this.

"Going against the grain [by repeating contrary affirmations] feels unnatural and potentially depressing, because such people don't truly believe they are loveable. Also, there's a lack of evidence to support anything other than that innate belief. It is much better to help people affirm personal beliefs or traits for which they have some evidence, and from which they can start to build their own confidence.''

Schlatter recalls patients telling her about the various self-help books that they have read. "Many clients have told me that they have read numerous self-help books that are only temporarily motivating or inspirational. Inevitably they still feel depressed, anxious, or have low self-esteem.''

One reason such patients do not experience a major positive change in their mood is because the underlying causes for depression and anxiety are not tackled. "They don't understand why they generally think or feel a particular way [for example, trying to fight a ‘glass that is half empty' mentality]. They keep reverting to what they are familiar with - even if it is illogical or self-defeating. If people understood more about their innate beliefs and how they actually developed them, then, in conjunction with tools to address the appropriate management of thoughts and feelings, the power of the positive words would resonate more deeply. This is a key to psychological health."

Being negatively positive

Realists feel that we've got to understand that there's no ‘one size fits all' when it comes to finding keys to improving our mental health. Julie K. Norem, a US-based professor from Wellesley College and author of the celebrated book, The Power of Negative Thinking, feels we ought to be judicious with our positive thoughts so that we can be realistic.

"One of the primary reasons optimism can work so well is that having positive expectations can be motivating - it makes you feel like working towards your goal is going to be worth it. But there are other ways of motivating yourself, without resorting to unrealistic optimism or ignoring the possibility of a negative outcome.

"I think that the most effective way to think about the possibility of failure is in terms of specifics: what, exactly could go wrong and result in things not turning out well? If you think about specifics, you can identify those things that you have potential control over and devote your efforts to making sure those things go well. That's your best chance of ensuring success, while remaining realistic."

Since the last decade, a number of pop psychologists and self-styled experts have begun promoting their own brand of positive thinking blurring pure academic merit with mass appeal aspects. Norem feels that the ‘feel good jargon' sounded good in bestsellers but took away from the core concept.

"I think that, in an attempt to reach the largest number of people possible, there is a tendency to oversimplify the state of research evidence and the extent to which particular findings do or don't necessarily apply to everyone. Most of the researchers involved in positive psychology have quite a sophisticated understanding of the state of research literature, and the limitations on how certain we can be that one thing causes another. However, the positive psychology movement as a whole involves many more people than just serious researchers and sometimes one hears oversimplified reports of studies from various media outlets and others.

"For example, one might mention a longitudinal study that shows optimists live longer [while leaving] open the tempting interpretations that 1) there are no conflicting or different results from similar studies [when in truth there are. One highly respected longitudinal study found that cheerful people died early], or that 2) changing one's level of optimism is an easy task [it isn't] and that doing so will increase one's life span [no evidence either way about a causal relationship like that], or that 3) optimistic approaches work better for everyone all the time [they don't].''

Be a sceptic not a cynic

Are we dumbing down reality when we constantly want to think positive and believe everything will be fine, bright and sunny, when it really may not be?

Dr Scott Lilienfeld, a psychology professor from Emory University in the US who blogs on the subject, expresses doubts on the positive psychology movement. He agrees that people might be underestimating life's dangers when they rely completely on positive thinking.

"There certainly is a danger here because reality isn't always as pleasant as we'd like it to be. Thoughtful proponents of positive psychology are certainly aware of this hazard, but some proponents of popular psychology have been less careful.

"A small positive bias towards the world is probably adaptive. It encourages us to take necessary risks and face situations we might otherwise avoid. But if this bias becomes too extreme, it can lead us to underestimate life's dangers," he says.

When that happens we might be in danger of harbouring illusions like for instance believing that we are big, brave and powerful and can fulfil all our dreams in a jiffy when the truth may be far from that.

Dr Lilienfeld cites examples: "Some psychologists, like Shelley Taylor, have noted that positive illusions can sometimes be healthy. For example, the early stages of a romantic relationship are often characterised by a certain amount of over-idealisation of one's partner. That in itself is not a bad thing. But when the illusions become too detached from reality, we can forfeit our ability to respond adaptively to life's challenges. Throughout history, many otherwise great generals have suffered disastrous defeats as a consequence of overconfidence. Our level of confidence needs to be roughly calibrated to reality."

The positive of negative thinking

So what is the ideal combination of positivity and negativity? Perhaps a good dose of healthy pragmatism that sometimes allows us to see the glass half full or half empty, depending on the situation. In other words, we must promote healthy doubts and question things.

Dr Lilienfeld says, "I would argue that we need to be sceptics, but not cynics. A sceptic is someone who approaches new questions and situations with an open mind, but insists on evidence. A cynic is someone who dismisses new approaches out of hand. Healthy scepticism is what we need.

There are many positives to negative thinking. For instance, when your expectation levels are zero, one is not heartbroken with failure. On the contrary, when you are crowned with modest success where you're expecting little, it helps you have a moderate approach to everything in life. Dr Lilienfeld thinks a healthy mix of both positive and negative thinking can see us through life.

"People must not be straightjacketed into what is considered a socially acceptable style of thinking. We need to respect people's differing coping styles rather than impose these styles on them. For some people, positive thinking may be the best coping style in the long run, whereas for others negative thinking works well for them. We all need to be flexible, because some situations demand positive thinking, others negative. If we are too wedded to one style of thinking, we can become trapped and fail to adjust to the changing demands of everyday life.

"And almost surely, there are virtues to at least some negative thinking. Negative thinking forces us to turn inward, examine our cherished assumptions and engage in healthy self-criticism. When not taken to an extreme, such thinking can often spur us on to do better, to make much needed changes in our lives and ultimately to become better people.''

The man regarded by some historians as America's greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, was prone to bouts of severe depression and was often deeply self-critical. Yet some historians have argued that these tendencies helped to make him a great president because his remarkable capacity for introspection and self-scrutiny allowed him to make extremely difficult and courageous decisions."

So the next time you are feeling low, do not compel yourself to affirmations that might leave you feeling cheated. Take a reality check and you might cope better with life. At least that's what the latest crop of research findings say.