Michelle Bakjac* takes a swipe at positive thinking, saying that it’s not the cure-all for everyone’s ills.
Have you ever had that occasion where you are at work and your own personal Aunty Acid is roaring and your own internal critic is a little bit overwhelming?
As if this is not bad enough, some bright spark walks up to you and with a Cheshire Cat smile suggests that thinking positively will cure all ills.
Don’t you just want to slap them over the back of the head?
This line, ‘think positively’, sometimes just gives me the impression that if you cover the problem in pink cotton candy and exude butterflies and unicorns everything will automatically be ok.
I will be honest, speaking as a psychologist, that I think finding someone in a negative frame of mind and suggesting they ‘think positively’ is not the way to help them.
We are currently living in a world that values the concept of “relentless positivity”.
It brings with it the perception that this power of positivity can cure any ill we experience.
However, we need to recognise that our emotions contain data, and that data is information.
It is actually not a bad thing to sit with the data that the emotion contains and ponder on what that data means to you and subsequently work through the problem using the data as the basis for problem solving.
Always ‘thinking positively’ can actually remove the opportunity of working through this data…. understanding it and then subsequently resolving it.
We must recognise that given our negativity bias, experiencing negative emotions is actually normal.
Just think of the six primary emotions: Fear, anger, disgust, happiness, surprise and sadness.
How many of these primary emotions are positive?
Yep that’s right — only one (surprise is considered neutral as it can be either positive or negative).
So we have a natural bias when experiencing emotions to experience more ‘bad’ emotions than ‘good’ emotions.
So, negativity can in fact be considered normal.
I think we need to recognise that it is ok to show up and actually experience our grief, pain, anger sometimes and just sit with it.
Then move through it, process it and come out the other side.
This means that we need to develop the opportunity to enhance our emotional agility and manage through our thoughts and emotions.
In the book Emotional Agility by Susan David, she outlines four key steps.
Show up and recognise your emotions and confront them with curiosity and personal kindness.
Step out – a process of detachment and observation.
Walking ‘your why’ — involves identifying your core values
Moving on with the implementation of changes that are in line with your values.
When we are emotionally rigid, we don’t have the ability to adapt in our fast-paced world.
When we have emotional agility and sit with our emotions and work them through, we can often deal with complexity, can tolerate stress and overcome setbacks.
We have this idea that in workplaces we need to sideline ‘messy emotions’.
However, when we allow people to work these through and sit with them and problem solve (sometimes with some help) this could be a better option than pretending they don’t exist or brushing them off.
So let us have our occasional dark clouds.
We won’t sit in there long, but we are processing our emotional data and problem solving.
When we come out the other side, we will be very happy to marvel at all things pink with you.
*Michelle Bakjac is an Adelaide-based psychologist, organisational consultant, coach, speaker and facilitator. She can be contacted at [email protected].
This article first appeared on the Bakjac Consulting website.
