If you have always heard that you should think positive….think again. Studies suggest that this advice that Norman Vincent Peale, author of “The Power of Positive Thinking”, gave us more than 6 decades ago may actually give us the opposite result of what was intended.
Negative thinking might be exactly what we need to make us happy and help us cope with stress. One pioneer of “negative thinking” was the New York psychotherapist Albert Ellis, who died in 2007. It goes something like this….
Maybe the best way to address an uncertain future is to focus on the worst case scenario rather than the best. If you are always focusing on the best, most promising awards…it can reinforce the belief that if it doesn’t work out, it would be devastating. In other words, a pretty hard long place to fall from.
On the other hand, if the worst case scenario is asked, then what you need to ask yourself is…would it be tolerable? “What if (blank) would happen…then what?” If the potential loss seems tolerable, then most people will probably make the decision to take the risk. It gets us out of our fear and allows us to take predictable risks. Lets face it, it’s uncomfortable when the future is uncertain. But great things can happen when we realize that in most cases the worst won’t kill us.