I think most everyone has come to appreciate the benefits of positive thinking as opposed to negative thinking.
However there has been some criticism of positive thinking over the years.
The criticism sometimes sounds like:
- You are wearing rose-colored glasses
- You have your head in the clouds
- I don’t want to get disappointed/it hurts too much to get disappointed
- That’s just cheerleading
- That’s spiritual bypassing
When I heard those types of criticisms, I thought, ok, this person doesn’t quite get the nuance of how to think positively most effectively…
In the context of The Rules…We are reminded that “how things turn out” are not meant to be any of our emotional business, and that brings us to the distinction that is part of the core of this new terminology/concept that is being popularized of “Neutral Thinking”, attributed to late sports psychiatrist Trevor Moawad.
“Neutral thinking means accepting the idea that when something good or bad happens, it happens.” ~ Trevor Moawad
Moawad suggests not getting too down about negative things, and not getting too excited about positive things either: just keep it neutral. Then, when anything happens, just get back to the business of working towards the best outcome.
Keeping it neutral as a general rule helps you avoid the pitfall of losing emotional energy (resiliency) if something you judge as “bad” happens. You aren’t really spending any time, or emotional energy, judging things as “good” or “bad”.
Now, this may sound a little familiar, maybe like some Zen concepts, or Katie’s Loving-What-Is, or Stoicism, and you aren’t wrong!
Important concepts that work have a way of showing themselves over and over throughout history, expressed in different ways, in the language of the times, so that they can be newly understood.