If you type ‘Why positive thinking is good for you’ into your internet browser, links to literally hundreds of articles appear - each telling you why you should think positively and the repercussions if you don’t! But what if positive thinking might actually be holding you back?
Be More Kid
Whilst overall we do agree with research that people who have a positive outlook on life are less stressed and overall healthier, it’s important to realise that for some, positive thinking can actually have a negative impact. Therefore, it’s essential to know when positive thinking is helping you and also when it isn’t. Here are four ways positive thinking could be holding you back:
1. Positive thoughts lead to positive feelings…
It’s frequently said that if you think positive thoughts, you will feel positive - and yes that can have its merits. However, one of the major downsides to this is failing to acknowledge your feelings.
When we experience negative emotion, it’s often a sign that there has been a breach of our personal values. In other words someone has stepped over the line in relation to something that’s important to you.
If you continually ignore your feelings by putting on a brave face and thinking positive thoughts you are doing yourself a huge disservice, effectively what you are saying is that everyone else is more important than you.
Failing to acknowledge your feelings can have a negative impact on your health and mental wellbeing and if you don’t explore the root cause of those feelings, you could inadvertently be living in an environment that isn’t supporting your success. Whether that’s at home, in the workplace or amongst your network of friends.
2. Learn from mistakes…
Positive thinking may also be denying you the opportunity to learn when something doesn’t go to plan. By putting a positive spin on a negative outcome, it may help you to feel better in the moment, yet you can easily find yourself repeating unhelpful patterns of behaviour that are not even in your awareness. As Oprah Winfrey famously said "Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness."
Although we don’t believe in dwelling on mistakes, understanding how a situation occurred gives a fantastic opportunity to learn from the experience - and if you are learning, you are growing.
3. Motivation to do better…
The biggest motivators in life happen when we don’t want to experience something anymore. Whether that’s around health, money or something else. For example, if you have ever been heavier than you wanted to be and you then went on to lose weight, what was it that motivated you to do that? Chances are it was because something didn’t fit or you didn’t like the way you looked or felt.
Same with money, if you have ever been motivated to earn more, it’s probably because the salary that you were earning was stopping you doing the things that you wanted to do.
Both are examples of being motivated by something you didn’t want anymore and this gives enormous momentum to take action.
Although continual ‘away from’ motivation, as we call it, comes with its own challenges longer term, it is definitely something that fires us up to make changes and so is helpful for that reason.
Being continually optimistic that things will be okay can breed complacency and removes that initial trigger to take action.
Without motivation, there is no driver to make changes, leaving people settling for a life that isn’t fulfilling or meaningful for them.
4. Accepting responsibility…
One of the greatest traits of a leader is accepting responsibility. If you’re looking for promotion at work or striving for a leadership role, then it’s worth examining whether you are doing too much positive thinking.
Everyone enjoys working for someone who has a positive, optimistic outlook on life, yet being a leader often calls for taking off the rose tinted glasses and accepting a situation as it is, particularly when the result isn’t what you had hoped for. There is a need to own up to the part that you played in what went wrong and the decisions that you made. Without that happening, the same mistakes will occur again.
Someone who reframes every negative into a positive isn’t demonstrating those essential leadership skills and much to their surprise, is likely to be overlooked when suitable candidates are being considered for new roles and promotion.
Start now…
As we said at the beginning, positive thinking is important when used appropriately. Why not use lockdown to reflect on patterns you have been running in the past where positive
thinking has been holding you back. Doing this now will give you a head start in making 2021 a positive year for all the right reasons.
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