Positive thinking is negative

Read this in the papers and made me think "Are we all in denial?"

Do we all think SO positively that we deny the truth and reality? Anita whacks the nail right on the head...

Optimism has made the world miserable, says author.

By Anita Singh

The modern “tyranny” of positive thinking is the true cause of the global financial crisis, an American author claims.

The belief that everything will turn out all right in the end if we remain optimistic is “delusional”, says Barbara Ehrenreich.

What began as a 19th-century “quack theory” has become the dominant mode of thinking in America, she says. It influences everything from business decisions to cancer treatment.

Ehrenreich’s book, Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World, sets out to demolish the “distinctive American ideology of positive thinking.”

“Delusion is always dangerous and the big example I would give of that is the 2008 financial meltdown. There are many things that fed into that. Many people got way over their heads in debt – ordinary people. And in what frame of mind do you assume large amounts of debt?

“Well, a positive frame of mind. You think that you’re not going to get sick, your car’s not going to break down, you’re not going to lose your job and you’re going to be able to pay it off.

“Mostly, though, I blame the top levels of corporate culture which, by the middle of this decade, were completely in a bubble of mandatory positive thinking.”

Ehrenreich referred to the “cult-like atmosphere of high-fives” at Countrywide, the mortgage lender that became one of the biggest casualties of the crisis.

She said executives who sounded warnings of impending financial disaster at Lehman Brothers were dismissed as “negative” thinkers. “Corporate America has gone into this bubble of denial,” she said.

Ehrenreich began investigating the “positive thinking” industry after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000.

She was dismayed by “the cheerfulness of breast cancer culture”, with its “sappy pink ribbons” and thousands of websites and blogs urging sufferers to see their illness as life-enhancing.

The writer and sociologist challenged the notion that a positive attitude increased chances of survival.

“There is a widespread idea that your immune system will be boosted if you are thinking positively,” she said. “Well, there’s not a whole lot to support that.

“And, more to the point, it’s not clear that the immune system has anything to do with recovery from cancer or with whether you get it.

“When I was diagnosed, what I found was constant exhortations to be positive, to be cheerful, even to embrace the disease as if it were a gift, take me off your Christmas list.”

In the course of her research, Ehrenreich interviewed motivational speakers, a major industry in the United States.

“They are brought in to corporate meetings and the message is, again and again: You can have whatever you want so long as you focus your thoughts on it,” she said. “I think that’s nuts, frankly.

Despite the premise of her book, Ehrenreich said she was not a miserable person. “I am not against having a nice day or smiling at strangers,” she said.

© The Daily Telegraph UK 2010