In “The Delusion of Positive Thinking,” by Barbara Ehrenreich states that positive thinking does not help us succeed in life. Ehrenreich begins by mentioning that majority of the american people believe that we “are a ‘positive’ people”. Ehrenreich then states some positive aspects of being positive which are that being in a positive mood will helps us live longer, and smiling will help “generate positive feelings within us”. However, happiness can not measure positive thinking becauses different cultures have different definitions of happiness. Americans tend to associate positive thinking with happiness, yet, our nation is 23rd in being happy since, antidepressants is a common drug in America. In fact, positive thinking is just an “ideology” …show more content…
However, we do not know for certain that the outcomes will be positive or negative, so the author shifts into the realism perspective. We need to assume the worst, so that we can encounter problems more openly. This type of thinking parallels with how in school, we do not promote positive thinking, but critical thinking which enhances to be more skeptical to prone situations. We need realism to guide our lives better in order to survive, and Ehrenreich goes on to provide an example of this show in animals, who are always alert from any intrudes or predators. Lastly, Ehrenreich explains that happiness is not permanent but temporary and it does not depend on our positive thoughts. I agree with Ehrenreich’s message that realism should be seeked because positive thinking is an ideology which does have some benefits, but in the end, it is just a perspective like negative thinking through which we think has a control over …show more content…
Whenever my uncle called to update us on her health, my dad would always say, “Be positive, nothing is going to happen to her.” My mind was also clouded by my dad’s judgment, perhaps, she will survive the cancer. However, my aunt thought differently, she knew she was not going to survive because her doctor told her she does not even have a 10 percent chance to survive. The cancer had spread to her lungs and it was eating away her lungs like the ants eating a pile of sugar. My dad would always say, “Tell her not to think negatively,” to my uncle, but my dad was just being sympathetic because he wanted my uncle to stop crying and worry less about my aunt. My aunt died last year in November. So, this example clearly shows that we have conformed to the idea of positive thinking because it fools our brain that our lives are perfect in this not-so perfect world. Our life is not the opposite of positive either, it is just the reality, Ehrenreich states that we just have a hard time conforming to reality because we can not let our brains be free of living in a world where we have the power to control everything around us. In fact, positive thinking has the power to fool our minds, but not the reality which is
Newman and Randy J. Larsen’s article “How Much of Our Happiness is Within Our Control?” claims that we have much less control over our happiness than positive psychologists uphold. This shows that you let things that happen in your life control if you are happy or not. These psychologists argue that you cannot make yourself happier. This is saying you can never attain everlasting bliss and that you get used to all the negatives factors in your life. I do not believe this statement is true because I think you can always put a positive spin on every negative factor in your life and that your positive factors in your life can last as long as you want them to. Therefore, I disagree with Newman and Larsen because I believe you are the only one that has complete control over your own happiness. They state that the influential environmental variables in our lives are just as uncontrollable than our genes. However, the reactions to the uncontrollable environmental variables is what controls your mood and happiness. Although there beliefs are different they still have some common ground. The authors of both articles agree that the people who are happier tend to always have particular behavioral characteristics such as gratitude, kindness, positive relationships,
He seems to imply that happiness is simply a relative state, which is entered by seeing one of the more positive aspects of a situation. Overall, Gilbert argues a strong case for happiness comes from our interpretations of our experiences. However, happiness also takes into account a wide range of other aspects of our lives, including our thoughts and actions, and even genetics. Therefore, happiness should be defined as the amalgamation of how we think and act, and how we interpret our experiences as positive or negative. What this means is that in order to become happier, we must simply force ourselves to become more optimistic.
She argues that a positive outlook will not make one cancer free, give one a job, make one wealthy or do you constantly happy. The beginning of the book made me realize that the balance of positive and negative thinking is the most important life lesson. She shows the readers how staying positive through her battles of cancers is going to make it easier, but Ehrenreich is trying to explain to the readers that it is okay to be negative. Ehrenreich gives the readers more of a negative side and thinks being positive is beginning to harm us. I can understand why she was thinking so negative while she was battling cancer, she was told by a cancer patient, “I know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster and it will have shortened my life” (Ehrenreich 43). Ehrenreich sure did give the audience a way of understanding as to how people rely too much on positivity. She tells us that one will need to
In Martin Seligman and other’s article “A Balanced Psychology and a Full Life,” he states that the definition of happiness, “Is a condition over and above the absence of unhappiness” (Seligman et al 1379).
In the chapter “ The Upside of Dreaming” from her book Rethinking Positive Thinking, Gabriele Oettingen explains how positive fantasies are beneficial. Oettingen started out with a story of a college graduate. The college graduate Rachael was dealing with a heartbroken experience with seeing her boyfriend going to jail for selling drugs. Rachael felt as if she had a stay by her boyfriend’s side. She dreamt that the judge or the prosecutor was saying something bad about her boyfriend, Tim and giving him a lot of time in jail. Rachel wanted to defend him, but she knew couldn’t help him.Tim finally went to jail.
At what point does social stability outweigh human nature? There needs to be a balance between physical and actual happiness, and where the proper balance should be is questionable. Huxley doesn?t have the answer, but he leaves the reader with an idea of why balance is so hard to find: ?Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery? (Huxley 221).
How can one distinguish happiness from unhappiness if unhappiness is never experienced? It's the bad that makes the good look good, but if you don't know the good from the bad, you'll settle for what you're given. Can people judge their feelings without a basis or underlying "rubric" to follow? Such rudimentary guidelines are established through the maturation process and continue to fluctuate as one grows wiser with a vaster array of experiences. Aldous Huxley creates a utopia filled with happiness, but this is merely a facade to a world which is incomplete and quite empty since the essential "experiences" are replaced with "conditioning." Perhaps this fantasy world was distinctly composed to be a harbinger of our future. An analysis of an "exclusive utopia" designed to heed the present world from becoming desensitized to freedom and individualism and to warn against the danger of an overly progressive scientific and technological society.
John Stuart Mills, in chapter five of his autobiography, “A Crisis in My Mental History: One Stage Onward,” (1909-1914) argues that happiness doesn't come from thinking negative it comes from thinking positive and happy. He supports his claim by first explaining that those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness then he uses the happiness of others, then on the improvement of mankind, and finally he explains that people find happiness by doing what they enjoy to do. Mills purpose is to try to get the people to see that doing stuff for others can also make you happy. In order to accomplish this he wrote this article. He creates a informative tone for the Harvard students.
Throughout, the excerpt Ehrenreich reveals “how they (the doctors) attempted to recruit me into positive thinking” (Ehrenreich, 2010, p140). She explains how her negative perspective wasn’t appropriate for breast cancer. They say the effects of a positive viewpoint will help with the cancer treatment. She complained to people about the effects of the chemotherapy and the money grubbing insurance companies. Ehrenreich, being forced to be positive, I can relate to this. I was forced at a time in taking anger management classes as a way they’d “control my anger”. Apparently I wasn’t friendly enough toward society. In turn spent two months with an anger management class, discussing my feelings and how to be more positive. Sadly I don’t believe it worked.
At the end of the experiment I will complete the last two steps in the scientific process. I will analyze the data gained and will formulate a conclusion. I don’t think much research has been done of the effects of Positive Psychology on those people with a higher than average level of happiness, since the catalyst for this research came from the desire to augment pathological treatment for depression. It will be interesting to see the impact, if any, on my current level of happiness.
In the article, “Happiness: Enough Already”, all the content we have to say that depression is a deadly disease, that if we let it control us, it can lead us to the grave. Eric Wilson argues that only by experiencing sadness can we experience the fullness of the human condition. Happiness and sadness are part of us in part of our life that is why we are human, we need the sadness to be happy in our daily life a clear example is the evil, good needs evil and evil needs good so that there is life. The drawbacks of constant, extreme happiness should not be surprising, since negative emotions evolved for a reason. Fear tips us off to the presence of danger, maybe the reason for all this is called Euphoria, this means that it is a pathological phenomenon that possibly affects the nervous system, even mentally, when there is euphoria promoted by some medicine or drug is very frequent that the person who presents the state of euphoria as opposed to receive some benefit, suffer damages in his body as much physical as psychological and emotional, such as the anxiety, depression and paranoia.
“The optimism bias stands guard. It’s in charge of keeping our minds at ease and our bodies healthy. It moves us forward, rather than to the nearest high-rise rooftop.”– Sharot. In this quotation, Sharot shares her belief that we have a tendency to overestimate positive events that will happen in our life, this is the optimism bias; and this tendency keeps us living. It is also a long-term effect and not a short term one. Researchers have long discussed the question of why we still have an unrealistic optimism even though reality throws events at us that could change our view and believes. They have found that indeed, people tend to be optimistic about themselves, they also accept an information that has positive implication for them more easily that one that has negative implication for them. But do we have evidence that people have an unrealistically optimistic view of themselves; in other words, do they never predict that something negative will
In the United States 20% of the adult population report that they are living a flourishing life (Keyes, 2002). However, a high percentage reports feeling as if they are ‘‘stuck’’ or ‘‘want more’’ and are yet not diagnosable with a mental disorder (Fredrickson, 2008). Because happiness has been found to be the source of many desirable life outcomes e.g. career success, marriage, and health, it is of importance to understand, how languishing individuals can reach this ideal state: How can well-being be enhanced and misery reduced (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). Over the past decade, research in the field of positive psychology has emerged to provide evidence-based methods to increase an individual’s psychological well-being, through so called positive psychology interventions (PPI’s). PPI’s are treatment methods or intentional activities used to promote positive feelings or behaviour. PPI’s vary from writing gratitude letters, practicing optimistic thinking and replaying positive experiences. A meta-analysis of 51 independent PPI studies demonstrated significant results in the effectiveness of PPI’s increasing well-being (49 studies; r = .29) (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009).
When we are young children, we are introduced to the concept of "living happily ever after". This is a fairy-tale emotional state of absolute happiness, where nothing really happens, and nothing even seems to matter. It is a state of feeling good all the time. In fairy tales, this feeling is usually found in fulfilling marriages, royal castles, singing birds and laughing children. In real life, an even-keeled mood is more psychologically healthy than a mood in which you frequently achieve great heights of happiness. Furthermore, when you ask people what makes their lives worth living, they rarely mention their mood. They are more likely to talk about what they find meaningful, such as their work or relationships. Research suggests that if you focus too much on trying to feel good all the time, you’ll actually undermine your ability to ever feel good because no amount of feeling good will be satisfying to you. If feeling good all the time were the only requirement for happiness, then a person who uses cocaine every day would be extremely happy. In our endless struggle for more money, more love and more security, we have forgotten the most fundamental fact: happiness is not caused by possessions or social positions, and can in fact be experienced in any daily activity. We have made happiness a utopia: expensive, complicated, and unreachable.
The world is made up of optimist and pessimists, and the survival of human beings and our well-being requires a balance between optimism and pessimism. Disproportionate pessimism makes life unbearable; however, too much optimism can advance to dangerously hazardous behaviors. The Optimism and pessimism approach is expecting a positive or negative future outcome, a recognizable way of reasoning is best conceptualized as continuity with many amounts of optimism and pessimism. Successful living requires a great balance between optimism and pessimism. Too much optimism may embolden one to take uncalculated risks that will lead to inadvertent and reckless behaviors, which may conclude in a catastrophe. On the contrary, worrying too much about