The Positive Affirmation Dilemma
You think it's going to be an easy day, but then everything starts to go wrong. Maybe you spilled coffee all over your shirt and now you have to take a half hour detour home, or perhaps one of your kids called in sick this morning when they were supposed to be at school. You spend your day re-packing snacks in the lunchbox while listening to the dog howl from outside and feeling frustrated that things are not going as planned.
Maybe you're having a better day, but you feel it coming. You know that at some point the universe is going to throw a curveball at you and all your plans will go down the drain, like when you forget your lunch on the kitchen counter and arrive at work with a growling stomach. Or maybe it's even worse—you've had a great night and sleep, but then in the morning when you wake up, you realize that your car has been hit by someone who ran a red light, and now instead of going out with friends this weekend, it turns into another cost-and-upset-time-spending trip to the body shop.
Whatever your situation, there's something inevitable about life: no matter how many positive things happen in your day, you can count on something negative sneaking up behind you and knocking the wind out of your sails.
Positive thinking gurus tell us that all these unfortunate events are just the result of our negative attitude, and that if we adopt a glass-half-full mentality instead, we will be happier. It's all about staying positive, they say. If you think good thoughts then good things will follow. And when it comes to trying to change an ingrained habit like a negative attitude, this is sound advice for sure.
But the problem with adopting a positive mindset is that it doesn't naturally reflect real life. Our minds are naturally negative—we are wired to look for things that could go wrong, to assume the worst-case scenario, and to expect the universe to screw us over. And even when we try to tell ourselves "this won't happen," or "this will work out," we can't make our brains believe it because negativity is just easier.
When I was in college I started a new job at a local hospital where they asked me if I wanted to be trained as an emergency medical technician (EMT). I said sure, and became certified in the next nine months. It was an exciting job; I got to use the EMT bike and the stretcher and do CPR, so I thought it looked like fun. I did my training at night during the summer, spent 11 weeks learning all about heart rhythms, medications, and airways and how to stabilize patients while they were on a gurney until they were taken away in an ambulance.
One night as I was finishing up my training, we ran into another ambulance that had been hit by a car just as we were on our way out to pick up a cardiac patient that had been brought in by cab. We'd walked right into the accident without knowing it. I had never seen so much blood in my life; the street was just dripping red. The paramedics told me to stay back and help them get the cardiac patient into the ambulance while they took care of the other driver.
I knew that I wouldn't be able to wake up and go to work like everything was normal every day if I spent every night seeing things like this. It's one thing when you are reading about it in a book or seeing it in a movie, but something totally different when you have it right in front of you. So I chose not to take the job, even though everyone told me how great it would be and that I was crazy for walking away from a chance at such an exciting career.
I didn't want to look at the world through a glass-half-empty lens, because it's just too depressing. And I couldn't be the person who always looks for silver linings or thinks that nothing goes wrong; it's not realistic, and it would make me miserable. So I turned down one of the best jobs at a hospital to do something mediocre and mundane instead.
Now fast-forward ten years. I'm sitting in the same job writing computer software, but I'm eating lunch at my desk and looking out the window where I can see my dog playing with a group of kids who have just moved into the neighborhood. It's sunny outside, and I feel good about what I did that morning when I ran for an hour and then meditated for ten minutes.
I have had some pretty great things happen in my life that I never thought would happen, like getting married to a beautiful woman who supports me emotionally and teaches me how to be happy every day. But I've also had things go wrong, like when my father was diagnosed with cancer. It can be really hard to hold on to that positive perspective when your parent is dying, but the only choice I had was to accept it and make the best of it.
I'm not saying I'm in a great place right now—I just know that there are many positive things in my life and as long as I can look at them, then hopefully they will outweigh any of the negative experiences that come my way.
To be honest, this whole article started out as an exercise in creating a positive affirmation for myself. I wanted to write a positive mantra that I could repeat over and over or post somewhere to remind me that when something goes wrong, there are still plenty of good things in my life that outweigh the bad.
But how do you create something like this? It's difficult because no matter how many things you think of that can be considered "positive," there will always be some negative event or problem to spoil it. And if you start with a negative premise like "I want more positive events in my life," then what about the problems? They just go away? No, they don't; they're still there.
If I say "I am sitting at my desk with nothing going wrong," is it really true? Not really. I can't even say that sentence in my head without thinking "who's to say that something bad won't happen tomorrow?" It really doesn't matter if I try to create a positive mantra or positive affirmation or repeat a positive mantra over and over because either way I will be fighting an uphill battle.
The next time something negative happens, and it will happen, write it down in a journal so you don't forget it. Then when something positive happens, write that one down too. Over time it should even out—but don't bother trying to shift the ratio of good to bad events because it really is useless; any change you make might only last until the next time you get laid off or your dog dies.
Conclusion
I am not saying that positive affirmations don't work—they do, but they won't work for everyone. They are like a sword in the hands of a blind man—not one that will cut straight through every situation but one that will most likely result in deadly accidents.
So if you happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and have negative thoughts, try to come up with something more realistic and useful. The next time someone is rude or gives you a dirty look, ask yourself "would I give this person the same dirty look if we had met someplace else?" Then think about how much better your life would be if you did this instead of what you would do in your head.