Why Positive Thinking Is a Bit Overrated
Living Happy
When I was a little kid (okay, and often as an adult), I used to imagine the worst thing that could happen and then prepare for it. Back when I was little those worst-case scenarios my brain could think of were basically:
My bed catching on fire because of a ghost.
Aliens abducting me.
My pants falling down in gym (P.E.) class in front of the entire world, but especially in front of Jamie Schneiderheinze.
I’d do my best to plan what to do if any of those horrific events happened.
This practice—premeditating evils—was something some ancient Stoic philosophers did. Apparently, my little kid self was a Stoic.
By figuring out and working through negative situations, the theory goes, you can prepare for those situations. So, I’ve always thought that my ability to think through the worst thing possible and fear setting was a bad thing, maybe something anxious people do to help calm down? An inherited trait from ancestors that lived through hard times? Just me tying to avoid alien abduction and ghostly torment?
Turns out, I was wrong (most likely) in a good way.
Inverted thinking can be a really powerful tool in a world where we’re often told to only think positive.
GoalCast has a pretty cool post about this, which you should check out.
They write,
“The idea, as Atomic Habits author James Clear explained in a recent podcast interview with the Mad Fientist, is to flip your outlook to the opposite of that which you want to occur.
"‘The way that inversion works is you take what you want to achieve, and you imagine the opposite.… Think through what the scenario would be like to try to fortify your mental outlook so that you could be able to handle when life throws something your way, and then also, and most importantly, to be able to prepare for that. So what can I do to prevent that from happening?’ says Clear.”
When you use inversion as a strategy to help you move toward your goal, you basically just take a hot second and think, “What action might I do that would keep me from getting that goal?”
Then you find ways to keep you from doing that action. You get rid of the obstacles to your goal by understanding them.
Here are a couple quick examples.
GOAL: Write a novel
OBSTRUCTION: Not writing
WHY MIGHT THAT NOT HAPPEN?: Not taking the time to write, not finding a place to write, etc.
GOAL: To lose 800 pounds
OBSTRUCTION: Love of all things cookie
HOW TO KEEP AWAY FROM THE COOKIES: Do not buy the cookies! Do not go to cookie places.
GoalCast writes, “Make a list of excuses you commonly give yourself as to why you can’t or don’t want to workout and think up a counter-argument in advance. You could also establish a few measures to make it as easy and effortless as possible to wake up in the morning if you’re working out in the A.M.”
Clear himself writes on his site,
“Inversion is often at the core of great art. At any given time there is a status quo in society and the artists and innovators who stand out are often the ones who overturn the standard in a compelling way.
“Great art breaks the previous rules. It is an inversion of what came before. In a way, the secret to unconventional thinking is just inverting the status quo.
“This strategy works equally well for other creative pursuits like writing. Many great headlines and titles use the power of inversion to up-end common assumptions. As a personal example, two of my more popular articles, “Forget About Setting Goals” and “Motivation is Overvalued”, take common notions and turn them on their head.”
I did that in my headline here. Did it work? We’ve got to wonder why, right?
One of Clear’s many points is that you can learn a lot by understanding what doesn’t work, rather than just thinking of what might work. You can learn focusing on how not to fail just as much as you can by focusing on how to succeed. He has the great example of the band Nirvana, which stripped down its music, created an album, did everything the way you weren’t supposed to do it at the time, and made an album that resonated.
Inverting your thought process can help you focus, think about problems and wants and needs in different angles. And sometimes those angles? They can create epiphanies. They can create change for good.