THE TRUTH ABOUT POSITIVE THINKING

Positive thinking doesn’t work for most people because of one simple truth and that is – Thinking is a skill. And most people haven’t mastered The Art of Thinking. Just because you can inhale air in an out of your lungs doesn’t necessarily mean you know how to breath effectively, remember how as a  kid when the doctor instructed “breathe in” and you would actually make a whizzing sound when in haling because you wanted to indicated that they are breathing, because you clearly knew there was more to it.  So you see, it actually is a skill.

I was inspired to write this article tone because of a post someone had forwarded to me. It said…

“…Positive thinking is offered up in the U.S. as a cure for cancer, a path to untold riches, and a sure-fire way to engineer your own success. Indeed believing that success depends upon one’s attitude is far preferable to Americans than recognizing that their success is the outcome of the tilted scales of race, class, and gender. As Ehrenreich puts it, “If optimism is the key to material success, and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure.” But, she continues, “the flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility,” meaning that while capitalism produces some people’s success through other people’s failures, the ideology of positive thinking insists that success depends only upon working hard and failure is always of your own doing … We know better of course in an age when the banks that ripped off ordinary people have been deemed “too big to fail” and the people who bought bad mortgages are simply too little to care about… In “Bright-sided” Ehrenreich uses the example of American women’s application of positive thinking to breast cancer to demonstrate how dangerous the belief in optimism can be and how…”

Which I responded “But there is more to positive thinking than just being optimistic or reciting or mimicking positive affirmations to dupe oneself of the reality..   There is a lot more underneath  the power of  positive thinking than what has been portrayed.

The reason why positive thinking doesn’t work for most people it is  because it is not positive thinking at all, but rather the counterfeit of it which I will call Evasive Thinking, meaning thinking “positive” thoughts in order to cover your eyes from what’s really going on; To avoid the subject of the “matter”.. (Matter (physical matter) is a subject of thought, more on that later.) Most people who are using positive thinking techniques don’t succeed in bringing much change because there is more to positive thinking than just simply thinking positive. There is always more to what appears to be simple, and that MORE is what positive thinking hinges on and that is The Art of Thinking.

Thinking is a skill, it requires practice. Just because you can string a few good feeling thoughts through your head doesn’t mean you have mastered the art, the world is perfect example for that. Most people advocating  positive thinking never completely succeed in  altering the conditions of the patient or the friend in distress because they do not touch on the true core of  things.  There is still much more to positive thinking than just being optimistic about things, or reciting some affirmations to dupe yourself of the reality of things. This motivational speakers won’t tell you because they themselves, although having gotten the results and changes that they wanted with positive thinking, are oblivious to the true reason behind everything – Vibrations.

The Practice of Vibrations of thought is what determines what outcomes you are promulgating.. When you think you are setting forth electromagnetic signals or vibrations which draw things that with similar frequencies, and when you are practising The Art of Thinking, you are practising the Art of Tuning and Training your vibrations. Positive Thinking is not effective most of the time because for most people they are still hung on to the residual vibrations of the circumstance they do not desire. And thus there is little or no progression despite the offering of good sounding thoughts.

A friend of mine once expressed to me about her anxiety that was brought by a conversation (argument) she was having with members of her family about her flying alone to China for the first time. And the  members of her family kept barraging her with all the stories  of what happens at the airports in China and the worst case scenario s of the plane crashing and she really really got upset about it. And as she was telling me what had been said to her she then said, “But Simphiwe you know after the awful argument I had with my family I then started googling about flight to China and heard of an incident where the planes roof came off and people were flung out.  And then she quickly said, “Oh flip I know shouldn’t talk about that, I shouldn’t focus on negative stuff because I know you’ve told me about the Law of attraction.” In which I said, “There is no ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ when we talk about the universe you got to understand that. And also, no don’t deny or brush of your concern about the possible negative things that could happened that your family pointed out or you googled because clearly you are feeling it. I am not a motivational speaker, I don’t say things in order to motivate you to feel good. I am a teacher; hence I don’t think it would be wise to ignore that reality. What we are teaching (there are many of all over the world doing this) is to learn/practice and remember a way of approaching life without any trepidation.” You need to understand what gives birth to reality.

There reason why people  go to motivational seminars or listen to positive speakers it is because of the Built-In Knowing that life is supposed to be good. Everyone who goes to listen to powerful speakers is being drawn to the underlying knowing that “The true nature of life is good. It’s Pure Positive Energy.” That is why motivational speakers come and go because, even though they are advocating positive thinking they don’t fully tap into the truth-back of it all. People search throughout the world and get hook on someone else’s words and suggestions on Positive Thinking because it Activates Something Within… And there is the rub… It is something within you.  Not on the outside, not in the words spoken in favourof positive thinking but words that tickle The Thing within You. And the thing within you is Power Consciousness that seeks unleashing, and all you have to do is to go within. That is all. It resides within you. And you activate it by mastering The Art of Thinking.

and as I said in the beginning, there reason why Positive Thinking may not work for people is because its not really positive thinking but the counterfeit of it. Positive thinking is not positive thinking if it doesn’t feel positive. Period!  If you looking a situation you really don’t want but with a “positive” outlook as it been advocated, yet still feel a knot at the pit of your stomach then it is not Positive thinking but Evasive Thinking, You are trying to deny what is. You are trying to fool yourself that you are looking at the bright side of life yet you can’t understand why you still feel awful or the hurt. And you can’t change what you deny, you can’t alter what you “claim” doesn’t exists. Denial is the worst form of Positive Thinking because it not only disempowers you from being able to do something about it, but it also keeps you trapped where you don’t want to be.. Optimism is deadly if used with naivety and exclusion of common sense. And that is why I am not an advocate of Positive Thinking as it has been commonly portrayed but still not understood by a lot.

The Art of Thinking revolves around the awareness and the ability to notice life in Totality and embracing its wonderful diversity of experiences and outcomes without any trepidation, and thus becoming a Master of One’s Self. To realise that life is unfolding as it is unfolding due to your expectations and beliefs about it and that you are the one who places labels upon the events of life. What is happening is simply what is happening, what you think about it is what determines your experiences. As Epictetus said, "Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them." and Shakespeare echoed it as well when he said "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." So don't only aim to think positive, aim to Think! And look within yourself for true guidance.