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Both scholarly and popular discussions have questioned optimism, positive thinking, and more generally positive psychology, suggesting that they are responsible for much of what ails the modern world, including ongoing economic crises in the United States. Read More
Optimism
Bravo! Well argued; well said!
Monica
optimism
Great, as usual, Chris. When I find myself staring at the ceiling at 4 AM, worrying about what sort of world my children are growing up in, it is not an oversupply of optimism that concerns me.
Thank you
Christopher,
Thank you for addressing this issue. I can not tell you how many times in the last couple of weeks I've been on the net looking for something positive and am lead to someone talking about the Bright Side or is it the Brighter Side book and it's author and how positive thinking is undermining America.
Some people are fullish and keep putting things off because they are lazy and don't want to do the work and call it positive thinking because they are wishing good things to happen while not taking any action towards those goals, but this is not the majority. Positive thinking and optimism are hugely important to anyone's success. Bottom line is if you do not believe you can do a thing you will never do it.
Negativity has not produced any real winners that I am aware of. At least with positive thinking there comes hope and with hope there is somewhere to go, something to strive for. Isn't this really what America is all about. The pursuit of happiness and the ability to pursue your dreams. Positive thinking didn't undermined America it Built America.
Listening to your heart
Bill Gates, Mother Theresa and all listened to their hearts and followed their dreams. The timing was right for them and that's why it worked so well because their dreams, courage and actions were authentic. We can all apply this in our micro cosmos, even if it's just connecting with that one person that we know we want to connect to this holiday season.
Raymond Bokenkamp
Read my Blog
Founder of Health Panda : onnline Therapist directory for Philadelphia Online.
My issue with this post is
My issue with this post is this part:
"There is a third and fuzzy group of expectations, those that are neither correct nor incorrect at the present moment. They become correct or incorrect only in the future, depending on how we act in the present."
How would the correctness of expectations in the future depend on how we act in the present? To put in another way, what is the size and nature of the effect our actions now have on future outcomes? Certainly it depends on the specific situation. So, within your third group, there is a class of situations where certain actions, despite optimism, still would not be sufficient to achieve a desirable outcome.
You make a distinction between situations where "optimism" is 100% affective, 0%, and in between. You don't seem to think that it is possible to say anything more about the situations in between, but depending on the situation, I think it could be possible. Your argument is weaker if it is possible to be more precise. This says nothing about the size of the effect, or non-linearity of an effect (a tipping point).
Love the poetic ending.
Love the poetic ending.
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