Positive thinking

Dumping some conceptual notes from Obsidian. I write them for myself already, no reason not to share.

Watch after reading the summary

Naive positive thinking

• Substitute negative thoughts and feelings with positive ones.
• Instead of thinking “the weather sucks”, think “the weather is great”.
• It actually works; it makes you happier. Just holding a pencil sideways in your mouth forces you to smile and makes you measurably happier. Thoughts work even better.
• It works for a short time, and it’s very exhausting after just a day.
• Negates the usefulness of the negative thoughts — you are not motivated to fix things. If you just substitute “I suck at this” with “I’m good at this”, this will prevent you from improving.
• Suppresses bad thoughts, but they are not actually going away. This might be very unhealthy.

Reframing

• Don’t substitute the negative thoughts directly, but find a positive way to think about them.
• For example, “the weather will improve in the afternoon”, “I’m already getting better at this”
• Throw a quick idea to improve things — “I’m moving to a place with good weather year long!”, “I’m going to learn this, and it’s going to feel so good!” Both exciting and actionable thoughts.

Don’t ignore negative thoughts/things, put a positive spin on them, and go solve that problem.

Negative thinking

• Sometimes it’s necessary to recognize that there is a systemic problem, it’s not going away, and it requires hard work to fix or unpleasant truths to accept.
• The path you are trying to follow does not work out for you, and you should take a sober look and find something else to do.
• Don’t make this your default mode of thinking. You are not a brave realist. Most likely, you are just afraid to get your hopes up and see them crushed.