Lunchtime post: The power of positive thinking

[chanaleh]

I've started taking books out of the library again, since I now work not too far from the Yorkville branch of the NYPL.

Last week, among the books I randomly picked up was The Secret, which you may recall got some amount of Oprah-type buzz back in 2006 when it was published.

The principal idea is that you create everything in your life, literally drawing it to you, by visualizing it -- believing that you not only will get it but indeed already have it, in that timey-wimey "past, present, and future all coexist in their entirety as simultaneous dimensions" mind-of-God kind of way.

It's kind of a mind-fuck, in the sense of "if you're holding any skepticism in your mind, of course it isn't going to work for you, you aren't believing hard enough! Even when you think you totally believe, if it still fails to work, it means your subconscious is skeptical!" Or as one Amazon reviewer put it: "when this program works it's because the secret always works, but, on the off chance it doesn't work, well, that's your fault."

In particular, I think that the notion "people subconsciously create all the bad stuff that happens to them" is a damaging one. (This is different from the notion that I've picked up from oneagain and others that existing psychic wounds can literally attract psychic predators who then inflict additional damage. But more on that some other time.) Also, I have to say that their constant invocation of "the law of attraction" as "like attracts like... LIKE A MAGNET!" is hurting my brain.

However... I think there are some ways in which this book has valid stuff to say.
(1) It is important to be clear on what you really want, and helpful to calmly ask the universe for it.
(2) Positive energy (including trust) draws positive energy; negative energy draws negative energy.
(3) Meditation is a powerful mind-releaser.
(4) Gratitude is a powerful mind-shaper. (paging jessruth!)

I've been experimenting on and off with meditation over the past several months. I've now started some experiments with visualization. To help me commit to them, I will be posting them as private entries (I've done one). Not sure if I'll be able to report on any results I happen to see, but I will ponder them in my heart.

This also reminds me that when I was in, oh, junior high school we rescued a bunch of books from my grandmother's house, including a set by Lloyd C. Douglas, whose best-known work is probably The Robe which some of y'all might have read if you are into Christian fiction. But he also wrote Magnificent Obsession and a series of related works in much the same vein as The Secret, namely, a little-known (yet hinted at by sages from time immemorial, particularly Jesus) system for building personal power that in its fullest form allows you to essentially work miracles. His is a different "secret", but also kind of cool, to my mind.

On the whole, seriously, things are generally feeling very good for me right now, with the exception of a phonecall I was sorry to get yesterday afternoon (nothing serious, just more food for thought, interpersonally), and the handful of commitments I am kinda procrastinating on. Gotta get on that.

Comments

[navrins]

I find in a lot of contexts that the idea that we are responsible for what happens to us creates a lot of tension between the helpful, forward-looking consequence that we have the power to take action to improve our lives, and the unhelpful, depressing consequence that the bad things we have experienced are our own fault.

I find, for me, that keeping a distinction between the past and the future helps. So does keeping in mind that we are *partly* responsible for what happens to us, but not entirely. The toughest things are when I *know* I could have done better, but didn't, and now I'm anticipating the consequences of past-me's mistakes.

If you'd care to say more about your view of gratitude as a mind-shaper, I'd be interested.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

In general, the theory goes that regularly focusing your attention on the things for which you are glad/grateful puts you in a happier and more productive frame of mind.

The version in The Secret goes that you have to have positive feelings in order to attract more positive experiences, and focusing on gratitude fosters that. Moreover, in the magical-thinking portion of the exercise, the goal is to produce in yourself a state of gratitude for already having the very things that you want to draw to yourself, as a fait accompli.

By contrast, one of the creativity exercises (which may or may not have been drawn from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way) in the writing class I just took was a "gratitude/wish" list: Divide your page in half, and fill one half with things for which you are grateful (however big or small), and half with things you wish or hope for (ditto).

I am honestly not sure why it is gratitude, per se, that seems to be the signal. I suspect it has something additional to do with creating the framing context of being grateful to something larger than yourself, whether God or the Universe. I invite further comment from jessruth, who is a particular votary of this concept. (Cf. hakarat ha-tov, literally "recognizing/acknowledging the good", which is probably the closest Jewish equivalent to the notion of "gratitude", especially in Orthodox circles.)

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

In particular, I think that the notion "people subconsciously create all the bad stuff that happens to them" is a damaging one.

I completely agree. In fact I may agree so much that I think it would be a bad idea to believe in *even if I thought it was true*, which I don't, because I think it creates a cycle of self-blame and victim-blaming which is the furthest thing from creating positivity in one's own life or others'.

That said, I do think visualizing what you want can sometimes help make it an emotionally real possibility. And that that is sometimes useful, because if you don't believe in it, you can sometimes either fail to recognize it or fail to trust it when it does happen.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

This is reminding me of some of the stuff I've heard from friends who've gotten sucked into The Forum.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

I took the Forum in 1996 and found it a decidedly mixed bag. There's a solid core of truth in it: that we need to tell the difference between the things that happen to us and our stories about what those things mean. While I was taking one of their seminars, I called up one of their mentors one day to talk about some small thing that I'd gotten myself into a snit over. He summed up the situation thusly: "Your upset is located in your story that it should be different." And really, that's the valuable part of the Forum, in a nutshell.

But there's also a lot there that's not helpful, such as their constant yammering at you to bring "guests" to seminars, their so-called "guarantees" (which are worded broadly and vaguely enough to be virtually meaningless, and what seemd like an insistence that "pressure" is nonexistent. Of course, those are all things that serve *them*. (And I know virtually nothing about them since 1997).

[spinrabbit.livejournal.com]

"Your upset is located in your story that it should be different."

What does this mean? I fail to parse it.

[moria923.livejournal.com]

The Forum uses the word "story" to signify the meaning we attach to a thing or event, as opposed to the thing or event itself. For example: Event: Someone in the T station called me "honey". Story: The person was condescending to me and/or putting me down. This guy's point was that what was upsetting me wasn't the event I was telling him about; it was the meaning (story) I was attaching to it. That meaning was that the situation *should* have been different. In the particular case at that time, it wasn't self-evident that thorbol should have told me the thing I was upset at him for not telling me. Therefore, it doesn't necessarily follow that I should have been upset at him for not telling me. (And, in retrospect, I think being upset then was a bad idea.)

Of course, many things in the world really *should* be different, and recognizing this is often what leads to activism. But for many of the snits that hang us up on a day-to-day basis, the Forum philosophy does have something going for it. Did I clarify?

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

I am very bothered by stuff like "The Secret". This sort of thinking blames the poor for being poor, for just not wanting enough to be rich. While the author of the book... gets rich.

This kind of thinking also blames people born into homes with physical, sexual and emotional abuse as somehow "wanting" those things to have happened to them. That small children, before they were born, would have chosen to be born into homes where they were abused is so far beyond f*ed up I don't have words. Survivors should not be told that this is true, non-survivors should not be told this about survivors, and no one should make money off of selling these messages about survivors.

Positive thinking is important in life. It does help good things to happen. But taking it to extremes is absurd, and can also be dangerous.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Also, I do not know that the book "The Secret" says this about sexual abuse survivors per se, but I have seen this said in other places using similar logic. "They chose this for themselves before they were born so their spirit could grow from it." What.

One has to acknowledge the power of positive thinking and creating clear plans for achieving one's goals, and yet be realistic that larger societal inequalities exist, the kyriarchy exists, victim-blaming is bad, and selling internalized victim-blaming is also bad. One has to find a healthy balance. All the positive thinking in the world does not erase sexual violence against women and children, racism, ableism, homophobia, etc.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

The Secret does not get into such topics as abuse and survivorhood. At all. A fairly glaring omission in terms of its professed philosophy, but then the whole book is a pretty glossy little marketing package rather than a serious exploration.

Also, kyriarchy -- wow, great word.

[spacehawk.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's a great word!

[dpolicar]

I have often found myself in situations where I am in fact responsible for some piece of crap in my life, either historically or on an ongoing basis, but I go through long periods of not believing that I'm responsible for that piece of crap.

I suspect most people experience that, from time to time.

And in those situations, the experience of coming to acknowledge my responsibility for that piece of crap is [i]incredibly[/i] powerful. Once I do that I can often fix it. Until I do that, I usually can't.

Of course, there's a huge difference between "There exist things for which I am to a significant degree responsible, and where I can change my world for the better by accepting that responsibility." and "For all things, I am to a significant degree responsible and can change my world for the better by accepting that responsibility."

But I can understand why people routinely confuse one with the other.

And I can certainly understand why people feel responsible for things they do not have significant responsibility for, and why people deny responsibility for things they are responsible for.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Some of it is pablum -- There's always money to be made salving people with the thought that the could be [whatever] if they really tried. Once they get puffed up with that pleasing thought, they go back to watching TV. Oprah seems to do well with that shtick.

Another version that is more useful is the traditional self-help attitude that the past is fated, something to learn from, etc., but the future is yours to create. If done right, that pair of semi-fictions frees one of recurrent emotional burdens of past bad things and motivates one to improve the future. A lot of the bad things that happen are about as meaningless as being run over by a truck, you just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got victimized, so blaming them on a bad idea stuck in your subconscious, or that white people are evil robots created by an insane scientist, or whatever, frees you from reflexively predicting that the future must be the same as the past.

A really useful version is if you have one central goal and you focus yourself on it, over the long term, you can achieve it. A lot of people have dreams that they emotionally label as being unachievable, so of course, they never optimize their lives to maximize the chance of achieving it. In bad cases, they don't pursue even obvious opportunities because they already know that failure is inevitable.

Of course the fine print in that contract is that you have to bend your life to move toward the goal, so you have to let go of other possibilities, life becomes less secure. It's hard to do that if you don't deceive your subconscious with a chant that success is inevitable.

[laurens10.livejournal.com]

I have no patience for "The Secret" and other "think positive because of ... uh, magic" philosophies, just for the reasons you state. But one thing along those lines that has some science behind it is that people who think of themselves as lucky are able to spot more opportunities.