Why Positive Thinking Can Be Dangerous?

The Problem With Positive Thinking

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The Tale of Positive Thinkers

1. In my college days, I had a former classmate who, before taking up the big board exam, he believed that he was predestined to pass the said exam. He felt that the universe will conspires in favor of him. For that, he assumed that he will got a good score because all questions that will be asked will be in favor to his knowledge. So he skipped reviewing and was easy-go-lucky. He believed also that praying will do the job, and that got him to stay positive all the time. Let's call him Jerk. (Sorry for the name, seriously, I don't mean to be mean. I named it that way because his name sounded like "jerk".)

2. In my working days, I had an architect coworker that he felt that he was the best on what he does. He tends to believe that he is like a very good hammer and everything on the way will be like a simple wooden nail that gets pounded easily. But the downside is that he often procrastinated due to his positive belief. Let's call him "The Beast."

3. In my poker days, I remember a friend of mine, who, before going to poker sessions, he had this ritual of building up his confidence. His self-mantras were like: "I'm going to win big. This is my lucky day. I'm gonna bust them out!" And it sounded like a genuine confidence and radiates positivity. Let's call him "The Main Man."

4. When I got in a hospital, there was this medical doctor who works in an Emergency Room Department. He had talked and assured to the family members of a certain patient to stay positive for the condition of the patient. But the patient is very critical. The patient had rushed to the hospital due to a fatal car accident. And yet, he assured that everything's gonna be fine. As far as I knew of the doctor, he advocated in the doctrine of having a Positive Mental Attitude.

Now, can you relate to these real life experience of mine?

Can you guess what happened to Jerk, The Beast, the Main Man, and the Doctor?

Please bear with me as we can all learn a lesson here.

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The Results of the Tale

(1)

Jerk, had never passed the big exam. Not once, not twice, but thrice that he failed.

One day, I was along with my two former classmates. We already passed the exams. And then, Jerk had accidentally met us in the hallway and said to me, "Hey dawg, how come you passed the exam even that you didn't go to church and pray with us after review classes?"

I was shocked by such accusation. If it is your case, you will be shocked too, right?

So my kinda reply to him is this: "you wanna know the problem, dawg? The problem with you is that you always go to church and pray, but you didn't find time to review. You even got your board exam pencil dipped in the holy water. That's not gonna do the job."

Yep, that's the problem. He believed on his made-up predestined fate so blindly too much. For him is like "hey, I will gonna pass the exam no matter what." He denied the existence of failing. And that lack of fear of failing or lack of anticipating failure produces him more harm. He didn't put up the required effort to produce a good result, because for him, there is no way that he will fail.

(2)

The Beast is very positive that he believed that he will finish all the work a day before the deadline. But that never happened. That resulted to missed deadlines and work done poorly.

This is due to his optimism that he can get the job done in just a matter of minutes. He is certain of his capabilities. But for me, he got overconfident. In my honest opinion, it is right that he is good on what he does. But because he felt that way, he skipped work over some pleasurable activities. He watched some downloaded episodes of Walking Dead and Game of Thrones , and played DOTA first than doing the job. In other words, he procrastinated.

And as a result of missing deadlines, he is regularly getting fucked-up reprimanded by the boss. And he blamed the boss for a thousand reasons: for being not supportive, not able to acknowledge his talents, and so on and so forth.

But those reasons were not true.

Wanna know what is true?

He got paid higher than those other employees that produces good results with no delays. Yeah, that's Mad World, right?And I find it kind of funny, I kind it find of sad. (Spoiler alert on my next article.)

(3)

For those uninitiated, poker is a game that while luck is involved, a good set of skills will get you winning in the long run. It's a matter of making good and bad decisions.

The Main Man, well to be honest, he got this set of skills of having a good read on other players and computing pot odds and calculations.

But the problem is: his good skills are overshadowed by his too much positive thinking, and add some superstitious beliefs.

Some players that does not know him well think that he is way too cocky. You knew, that guy who wear eye shades, chew gum and listen to LL Cool J music with his headset? That's him. That's why he is the Main Man, retarded, counting toothpicks that fell on the floor. (I'm sorry, it's the Rain Man, instead of Main Man).

Yet, he felt like he is the Rain Main that counts cards that can beat the game.

I knew him very well, and I knew of his mantras. When we got ourselves into a certain discussions about poker plays, he thinks that he knew it all and never accepts defeat even against a good argument.

His argument is that he had asked the Universe to conspire in favor of him to win. And that got him an unwavering faith. "I will win no matter what. Today is my lucky day. The cards and chips will fall on what I wanted. I will be playing the best poker of my life."

But this resulted for him to make bad decisions. He loses big pots after big pots. He even pushed through those hands that have low chances of winning because he felt that he will "suck-out" those other players.

And that was because he believed on his lucky day.

That trait is the opposite when it comes to one of our friends named Wacky (this time it is a real name, as odd it may seems). Wacky acknowledged that he is some average player, that he is not entitled to be lucky, he knew he can surely lose, that he's no sort of an alien that got some ESP — but sure does, he ended up winning frequently for the most of our numerous poker sessions.

(4)

The Doctor

On that day (I believe it was the final week of October 2007), I was also in that hospital due to painful stomach cramps. But in retrospect, I thank my stomach cramps because I had witnessed something that what will be an eye opener for me.

The patient had died in the ER. The family, of course, was in emotional distress. But what perpetuates the pain of the family is that because they were upset on what the doctor had told them that "everything's gonna be fine." A family member, I believed the wife of the patient, had said to the doctor while she was heavily crying and in anger, "I hope that you didn't said that everything's gonna be fine!"

I understand that the family was upset during those times. But if you look at grand scheme of things, if the doctor was gonna be just honest that the patient will not gonna make it, then the family does not gonna expect more.

The doctor may even be blamed for, as it sounded that in his professional knowledge, that everything's gonna be okay. But what eventually happens? Some may suspect the doctor: if everything's gonna be okay, then what happened? He may be accused of medical malpractice because on what he had said "positively" to the patient.

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The Moral Lesson

As the rapper Eminem had said, "Snap back to reality, oh there goes gravity." The reality is that no matter how you continuously think of being positive, there are gonna be some setbacks along way, hence the gravity. That's the truth. One must work his way and withstand these setbacks in order to achieve the desired end result.

If we failed to acknowledge the reality, it may result to harmful consequences. As in the case of the doctor: not everything is gonna be okay.

If we failed to acknowledge the possibility of failure, or the negative, we may end up like Jerk who thinks there's no way he can fail.

If we believed in ourselves too much because of positive thinking, we may end up like The Beast that we may neglect to act.

If we believed that the Universe will conspires in favor of us, we may end up like the Main Man who ended up making bad decisions and lost eventually.

There's nothing wrong in being positive per se. But as the saying goes, anything that goes beyond the normal range is harmful. Thus, being too much positive is disastrous.

Thanks for reading my blog! If you like it, please follow, upvote, follow, and/or especially comment because I acknowledge that what I had said in this blog may be right or wrong. In that way, we can humble ourselves and that's more than being positive. Again, thank you!