
The Power of Negative Thinking - PaulMcCartney
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/the-positive-power-of-negative-thinking.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
======
JohnLBevan
We had an interesting experience at the start of the year where people were
being "encouraged" by the project managers not to be negative on the project.
It felt like being part of the Chinese Cultural Revolution where everyone was
getting over excited but with a foreboding sense of dread hanging in the
background. Myself and a few others continued to list cautions (normally I'm
the optimistic one - but this had gone past my limit) but were ignored and
treated as naysayers. It resulted in us putting a country live on a production
system without having completed regression testing for existing countries,
done any negative testing, or having done any testing with security and
workflow configured in a production like way. The next couple of months were
absolute hell, and only now are we beginning to recover from it. That said, to
get the system stable everyone went out of their way, working
overtime/weekends without break or compensation to keep the project on track
(and losing one of the team from the project due to stress), which allowed the
project managers to say "see, putting you under pressure meant you got it to
work", without seeing the chaos they'd caused. People should be encouraged to
do realistic thinking - aim for the optimistic, don't say no before you try
something (so long as it's not clearly suicidal), but when you know things are
going wrong take time to reflect and reassess your situation.

------
dmk23
What the article unfortunately missed is in-depth explanation of why
firewalking works in most cases: <http://www.skepdic.com/firewalk.html>

Tony Robbins may be using it for psychological conditioning, but it can be
explained from the purely rational / scientific perspective.

~~~
quanticle
What I find wonderfully ironic is that the "positive thinking" that was
supposed to protect them from the fire probably increased the harm. As your
link points out, the sweat on the bottom of the feet protects the firewalker
from the hot coals. But, where does that sweat come from? In large part, it
comes from being nervous. The positive thinking that Mr. Robbins encouraged
could very well have reduced that nervousness, eroding the protection that his
students had on their feet.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
Theres an even more ironic possibility - similar to what the article mentions
about positive affirmations, the positive thinking served only to remind them
of their fears rather than alleviate them in any way, making them even more
nervous than they would have been otherwise.

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vog
There's a lot of truth in this article, and it reminds me on what Tom DeMarco
writes in this book "Waltzing With Bears" (ISBN 9780932633606):

DeMarco argues that having detailed, quantified information about your risks
enables you to make more courageous decisions. But in order to be able to
quantify your risks, your company's culture must allow for critical and
"negative" thinking.

Otherwise, you won't be able to perform even the first basic step: identifying
your risks. Without having properly identified _all_ your risks, quantifying
those becomes a farce, and essentially boils down to missing one or two
elephants in the room.

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johnchristopher
How is it possible that there are people with enough money to afford a Tony
Robins seminary and yet they don't know that firewalking is a "trick" and has
barely anything to do with "motivation/self-awareness/whatevertheyareselling"
? It puzzles me.

~~~
confluence
You assume wealth is correlated with intelligence (it's actually like 0.03).

You're applying the "halo effect" to these unfortunately delusional people -
just because you are rich doesn't really imply anything else about you. It
merely indicates that you are, well, rich.

End of attributes.

~~~
johnchristopher
Ah, right. I tend to forget those psychological shortcomings :(

This one is rather strong and I easily fall for it, thank you for reminding
me.

------
malkia
Negative thinking prevents you from doing stupid things. Overly optimistic
people might create more problems for them, thinking they would succeed,
rather than go back and think about their real possibilities at the moment.

------
wcchandler
I hate to talk about this but it might be worthwhile... avoiding negative
emotions led me to depression and anxiety.

About a year ago I started noticing that my life, while looking wonderful from
the outside, was anything but. It was the subtle things -- eating pizza every
night for a month, playing video games to pass the time, looking for excuses
to avoid "living." Summer was just finishing up and one of my favorite
pastimes - swimming, was only sought out 2, maybe 3 times that year. Far from
par.

Emotions seemed mundane, thoughts were rarely provoking, and my opinions of
the world became overly moot. I was getting stuck in the drudgery and
monotony. Movies blended together. My driving habits were developing patterns.
Green light, green light, red. Yield. Lather, rinse, repeat...

I was becoming more distant with my wife. Her presence was something I rarely
cared for. Trying to connect on an emotional level was becoming increasingly
difficult. When her days would usually be interesting and we could talk for
hours about something as basic as an inkpen, it was difficult to stay focus
for more than 5 minutes on largest of issues. I was frustrating with myself,
my brain and especially my actions. While I was never abusive, I was distant,
and I was distancing myself from her. She could be traumatized and I wouldn't
be there. Her life became hard to understand, hard to relate to. And I was
clueless.

Once I started picking up that life wasn't the same, my instincts started
kicking in. It was fight or flight with my mind. This isn't something easily
overcomed. For the longest time my only logical approach to alleviation was a
frontal lobotomy. But that's not really practical. Or realistic. So there has
to be something else, right?

A lot of us have an inner desires to "fix things." Pipes leak and we replace
'em. A/C goes out and recharge it. Pants get ripped? Patch it. But what do we
do when WE are the problem? When our minds are the problem. And what do we do
when we can't be "fixed?"

Negative emotions are healthy. Sadness, fear, hate, anger -- they're all
emotions we tend to label as negative. It's society that associates negative
== bad. But instead of fighting everything, we should learn to accept that
these exist. They have always existed and will always exist. We can't flip a
switch and all the hate in the world will be gone. Instead we should
appreciate the Eastern (religion) approach to it -- keep everything in
moderation. Happiness, sadness, everything. Keep it equal and don't try to
fight it.

We also shouldn't go out looking for specific emotions. That'll only upset us
when it doesn't reach our expectations. Instead we should put ourselves into
situations where certain emotions naturally occur. Then we can observe them at
face value and embrace them with our true self.

~~~
billswift
>But what do we do when WE are the problem?

Find something outside yourself to focus on. Some quotes:

>The more I reflect on this question, the more convinced I am that man's
fundamental purpose is to achieve; in other words, the striving toward goals
is an end in itself. ... Viewed in that light, it would seem that striving
itself - the constant working toward goals - is man's real purpose.

\- - Robert J Ringer, _How You Can Find Happiness During the Collapse of
Western Civilization_

>In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not
always an easy sacrifice.

\- - fortune-cookie, no attribution

>The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

\- - William Cowper

>To be of use in the world is the only way to be happy.

\- - Hans Christian Anderson

>We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when
all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

\- - Charles Kingsley

And Eliezer's post on how having "Something to Protect" gives meaning to life,
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/nb/something_to_protect/>

Something to protect is the most significant from your comment's view, fear of
risk to your "something" is the strongest driver around.

~~~
bostonpete
> In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not
> always an easy sacrifice.

According to the internet, this is from "Illusions: The Adventures of a
Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach

------
jawr
Like with most things, anything to an extreme is dangerous -including possibly
positive thinking. People just need to learn moderation.

~~~
confluence
Even moderation is dangerous if the moderates let the extremists take over
society (rise of Nazi Germany). The converse is also true (inaction of
France/England on the rise of Nazi Germany).

Everything is dangerous.

~~~
jawr
That was extreme moderation.. also bad. :p

------
Supermighty
Positive affirmations can be detrimental if they're not realistic. You can't
say "I'm the best ever at golf" if you don't truly believe it. That's when you
will feel bad after using an affirmation.

You have to truly believe affirmations for them to expand positivity in your
life. "I did a good job taking out the trash, I didn't tear the bag." It's
rather boring, but saying something positive about something you know to be
true brings positivity into your life. It builds on your positive self image
and makes you better in all areas of your life.

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zzzeek
I'm not seeing how the understanding of science behind firewalking and feeling
good about accomplishing something scary (i.e., actually firewalking) need to
be mutually exclusive.

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malkia
Search google for nestinari - and you would find an old bulgarian tradition of
fire-walking. How they do it? I guess there is some trick - maybe not allowing
any air between the leg and the fire, or quickly walking - or the feet have
something on them... I dunno.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestinarstvo>

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ajuc
The trick of thinking about the worst possible scenario worked for me, when I
had problems with social anxiety in high school.

~~~
Monkeyget
If you expect the worst everything will turn out better than expected.

~~~
ajuc
Or exactly what you expected, and at least you can say "told you so" :)

But I've meant that the worst I could imagine when I had tried was't really
that bad to be so scared of it. So I realized I'm scared without sufficient
reasons, and that I have much more to win, than to lose, so I just went for
it. YMMV.

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hypnobuddha
Negative thinking is okay (I do it all the time LoL) but negative thinking
that's charged with emotion, especially about someone else, is not okay.

Emotion is what embeds thoughts into the mind. Emotion creates physical
grooves in the brain. If your going to be negative, be careful not to charge
it with emotional energy. Charge positive thoughts with happy emotions.

