RE: Magical Optimism: There's no Secret
I often wonder the same thing.. do people really believe that being positive will change make things work out better for you, just because you think positive?
I don't see how they could believe that.
I get what they mean.. my wife were talking about this recently...weirdly enough, about a parking space.
I have 4 options when going to the gym: Walk, drive, Uber, or bus. Bus is free, but I never know when it's coming; I don't want to pay for an Uber, Walking eats up an hour of my time, and when I drive, I never know if i'm going to find a parking space because there is such limited parking in the city.
In my negative thoughts, i'm going to drive down there, not find a parking space and have to park in a garage where I have to pay more than if I took an uber. Or the parking spot will be so far away that I might as well have walked.
In her postive thinking: If you look for a space, you will eventually find one.
And she is right... I could go down there, drive around, look for a spot and eventually one would come.
If I had a negative view about parking, and I didn't try, then I wouldn't find one.
If I was positive and looked for one, eventually, odds are I would find one.
BUT... I could also drive down there, angry and bitter, with a negative attitude and still find that same parking spot.
But I agree.. . no.. God, or "the universe" does not care about your positivity. If it did, the saying "Nice guys finish last" wouldn't be a saying.
I have no doubt that many do believe this. I work with them, and I'm married to one. :)And there's a large publishing industry that feeds off of it.
In most cases I think it's a belief akin to a superstition - like walking under a ladder is bad luck. That superstition is grounded in a certain amount of reality: there may be someone on top of the ladder who accidentally drops a hammer on your head as you walk under it. So it's probably a good idea to avoid walking under a ladder. However, somehow this reasonable note of caution has mutated into a superstition, where walking under a ladder could mean you have a worse chance of winning the lottery later that day. It makes no sense.
Just try talking about death and your co-worker's parents, or something like that. You'll see a queasy look on their face, or they'll say something like, don't talk like that! Why? Because their instinctual belief is that talk about a loved one's death could lead to that death. That same logic gets fed into "positive thinking".
Like the ladder example, as you noted, positive thinking is grounded in a certain amount of reality. Positive thinking will affect your actions and the actions of others. It just has no effect beyond that.