The Power of Motivated Positive Thinking

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Good news for the “if you can dream it you can do it” folks. Another vote in favor of positive thinking comes from Heidi Grant Halvorson. That’s right. She joins the wisdom traditionalists like the annoying Florence Scovel Shinn and Louise Hay, the spiritualists like Deepak Chopra, the businessmen like Mr. Dale Carnegie and Norman Vincent Peale, and the “success scientists” like Matthew Syed, who wrote Bounce, in touting the importance of positive thinking in reaching your goals. 

But, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, the type of goal you’re aiming for and the type of positive thinking you do about it influences your chances of success. First of all, you’ve got to be motivated. There’s a fancy theory psychologists named about motivation called the Expectancy Value Theory, which means, according to Heidi Grant Halvorsen, “people are motivated to do anything as a function of (1) how likely they are to be successful (that’s the expectancy part) and (2) how much they think they will benefit from it (that’s the value part.)"

So if you’ve got your motivating goal, then go ahead and visualize achieving it. But, readers, you must also remember that your goal should be difficult, specific, and you can’t simply visualize breezily zipping over the finish line through the ribbon to claim your laurel wreath. You must visualize all the obstacles you might have to overcome, and visualize overcoming those, too. 

Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? And in fact, H.G. Halvorson has a distressing passage about weeding out unrealistic goals, by considering if the obstacles you envision are too great. Which seems to beg the whole question of achieving your dreams, if you really think about it in a certain type of depressing way. 

Nevertheless, if you can visualize both those obstacles and overcoming them, then you are set to go go go for it, because people who do that have the persistence and are willing to put in the planning and effort required. Those of us who prefer to imagine “podiuming” (in the immortal words of that adorable snowboarder Shaun White who won the gold in the last Olympics ) are more likely to be unprepared for the difficulties we will inevitably encounter on our runs down the mountain. 

If it all seems too exhausting, consider that question of motivation. I know there have been times when I’ve hardly noticed the hard work I put into achieving a goal because I was so motivated to achieve it.For example, the year after college (an excellent time to learn a life lesson), my friend Cathy and I wanted to move to San Francisco. We got out there, and my handsome friend Phil offered to take us around to look at places. He borrowed a VW bus from his friend Eddie, a former Buddhist monk who was at the time laid up in a Silicon Valley hospital with two broken legs from hang-gliding. Phil drove us all around the city. It took all day. We looked at 20 apartments. When we finally found one we liked and could afford in Haight Ashbury, we had to beg and plead with the landlord to take a chance on us. My friend was unemployed and waiting to hear from the Peace Corps, and I had a job as a paralegal. 

We got the apartment. 

It was only after handsome Phil rumbled off in Eddie’s bus that I realized how exhausted I was. And I learned a lesson that day, readers. The lesson was, that if you really, really want someone--I mean something--then the work involved doesn’t bother you at all. 

Suggestible

The inevitable moment has arrived. I've collected a small stack of self-help books on Success. I had to, after all. Research. The thing is, I'm not sure I'm ready for them. I'm afraid.

What if, when I open them, I discover that everything I'm writing about has already been written in them? More important, what if, when I read them, I learn that I actually possess some quality that would eliminate the possibility of my success. What if I fail the checklists? I know they're going to tell me I have to have faith in myself, or some similar pablum. Well, hello? Need I say more?

And then there's the other fear, the one I really don't want to admit to my tens of readers. The fear that after reading these books, I will become an INSUFFERABLE self-promoter with a falsely inflated ego. You see, I am suggestible. I know that. I've read some self-help books in my time. Louise Hay? I've affirmed. Julia Cameron? I've tried to believe in G.O.D. and ask the universe for whatever I need.

Once, I borrowed a guided relaxation/self-improvement tape from a housemate who was relentlessly pursuing escape from herself. In the tape, I had to picture myself in a lovely place, yadda yadda, picture myself relaxing in a comfy seat in this lovely place, yadda yadda. Then I had to imagine a young child coming into view, approaching my maturer self, and offering a gift to the older me. The tape told me to accept this gift. Well, I pictured, for some reason, the young child handing me a gold ring, and then, although the tape didn't tell me to, swallowing it. Strange, I thought, I am swallowing this symbolic gift from my symbolic inner child. Hmmm.

Nevertheless, I felt one hundred percent relaxed afterwards.

Later on that day, I told a friend who happened to be a very religious Christian about this experience. She said that I had to be careful with these sorts of visions, because the Devil can come to people that way.

Now I don't believe in the Devil, but I am suggestible. I was disturbed enough by her reaction to mention it to the professional I was then seeing twice a week. Dr. B, a nice, Jewish professional in a beautiful house in Weston, MA, laughed--laughed, at me-- and said, "You're very suggestible."  If your shrink tells you that, you know it's true.

So am I ready for Dale Carnegie and that guy who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? I think I have more prep work on my own definition before I swallow theirs.