Positive thinking isn’t always better

Negative thinking gets a lot of nasty looks - and for good reason. It has a very real effect on one’s psychology and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But, what about positive thinking? Is it all that it’s cracked up to be?

Now, don’t get me wrong. In a head to head battle, positive thinking will beat negative thinking almost every time. The psychological and physical health research supporting positive thinking is pretty convincing.

But, there’s also a downside to positive thinking that’s not always discussed and the key is in the second word: thinking. This downside is most detrimental when we’re initiating an action or trying to perform in intense pressure situations.

When we talk about high performance, it’s critical to recognize the importance of thinking LESS. Of getting out of your head and dropping into your body. Obviously, it’s not always easy to cease thought. We can, however, slow it down. We can reduce the number of thoughts by sticking to the facts and eliminating the stories. How do we cut down on the stories? We remove emotion. As soon as we attach valance to a situation, deeming it as positive or negative, we introduce the possibility of emotions. Emotions, as we know, have incredible power to pull us off center and catapult our mind into a stream of thoughts, which ultimately gets us out of the present moment and causes us to lose focus. Then, our performance suffers. So, whether we think positively or negatively, we’re potentially triggering an endless barrage of thoughts, which can absolutely affect our performance. 

So, what’s the key? On the way to mastering our mind and being able to trust our body to perform at its highest level, we can practice neutral thinking. Neutral thinking is still thinking, yes, but it has a better chance of preventing the emotion-laden stories that we become so accustomed to telling ourselves. 

The next time you have an opportunity to be aware of your thoughts, see if you can practice neutral thinking. Stick to the facts, accept reality as it’s happening in that moment, and prevent yourself from slipping into a tornado of performance-sabotaging thinking.