
Yes, I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking - AndrewWarner
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1909019,00.html
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Radix
The articles thesis is ok, but the hook sucks. When was positive thinking ever
about blind optimism? I thought it was about altering your perspective to
realize your assumptions aren't clear and obvious. "I'm good enough, I'm smart
enough, and doggonit people like me!" was never the point. The point was that
your negative perspective is often relative.

You might think, "this cruise isn't as fun as I thought it would be." Which
can either lead you to think "this sucks" or "maybe if I take this elevator
below the passenger decks, hey a ping pong table... why are their Mexicans
lined up along the wall... maybe I should go back up." (sorry, I have a better
example from when I used to be a bit depressive, but I can't remember it.)

Also, I expect that what works has a lot to do with the personality type you
match.

[addendum: It's as the guy who moved to speak to a new person every day for
thirty days. I doubt he tells himself he sucks at talking to girls. More
likely he recognizes the fear, chooses it is something he wants to do, and
speaks. (Boy that can be hard.) Huh, I'm struggling to point out the article
title and hooks betray none of the nuance.]

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snitko
Weird, but lately I've been telling myself I suck. It was partly a joke,
partly a reaction to other people, when they happened to be a lot better at
something than I am. Surprisingly, this approach really helps concentrating
and actually doing something to not suck anymore.

So the thing is to tell yourself you suck - having in mind, that at least you
know you do. Because most people don't.

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jberryman
Thought I would post a blog entry written by my mother (a psychotherapist and
new blogger) on the same subject:

[http://www.manageangerdaily.com/mad-blog/the-pitfalls-of-
pos...](http://www.manageangerdaily.com/mad-blog/the-pitfalls-of-positive-
thinking/)

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ehsanul
I'm don't think I would call this "self-help". Sure, it seems that people with
low self esteem feel worse if overly complimented, but how can people like
that raise their self esteem if they think they're no good? Isn't that the
real problem, and not how they feel at any one time?

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fingergunslngr
I'm not sure how prudent or productive it is to insult yourself - ostensibly,
it's a recipe for a lifetime of needless anger and self esteem issues, but it
is certainly a novel approach, if nothing else. Although, in my experience,
acknowledging shortcomings and understanding them, sans insulting self-talk,
has been fruitful - maybe a bit of honesty and self-awareness, coupled with
the occasional crack binge, is more productive?

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onreact-com
While this might be true to some extent, I don't care. I still prefer the
ambient positivity of classic self improvement. When you tell yourself that
you suck you actually do suck then. When you tell yourself you're great you
got at least a chance to become great.

~~~
J_McQuade
I don't know - I find that telling yourself you're great just leads to
ambiguity; I mean, what exactly are you great _at?_

As an observation (and whether or not it's right), we tend to view the world
in terms of people who 'are' great or people who 'suck at' things, if you see
what I mean. As such, "I'm so great - why can't I write this parser" becomes a
much less helpful notion than "I suck at writing parsers" because the former
implies failure whereas the latter implies a much greater scope for
improvement.

I admit that it's all a bit hand-wavey, but by and large I find that my
positive thoughts tend to be general ("Ain't life _grand?_ ", "Man, this world
is _awesome_ ") whereas the negatives often settle on specifics ("My
handwriting is _embarrassing!_ ", "I don't comment my code _nearly_ enough") -
I think we can all agree that knowing specifically where things are going
wrong is far more useful than knowing were they're going right in general.

