Positivity alone will stop you from doing the necessary work of real improvement
The title is 100% accurate. It’s not enough to be think positively if you want to improve your circumstances and self-esteem. Can it help? Sure. Will you get better results from being positive as opposed to being negative? Of course. Positivity can influence the course of events that happen in your life. But this isn’t enough to provide lasting changes.
If someone is lacking in self-esteem and needs a boost in self-confidence, being positive is not enough. If someone’s belief system is preventing this person from getting the results that he or she wants out of life, her efforts to be more positive will not be enough. The belief system is a large cause, and somewhere in his or her mind, there will be a mental voice that will say “yeah, right” when the effort is made to think positive thoughts. This is because this is not authentic to what they really think.
Take action and challenge the beliefs that hold you back
How do we go about changing the belief systems? A big part is taking different actions as a result of pinpointing what beliefs are holding us back and actively challenging them. This will involve work, and this work cannot be avoided. Often people will eat up the idea that positive thoughts or a positive attitude alone will create the results for them, and this will take the place of doing the necessary work to changes their faulty belief systems. This is a temporary band aid solution at best, and a destructive roadblock to authentic change as worst.
What happens when you get the results you wanted, as a result of purely positive thinking or taking on a positive demeanor and don’t change the fundamental beliefs that hold you back? They will impact your success sooner or later, as a result of self-doubt or self-sabotage. This is where the “imposter syndrome” comes into play – your belief systems will tell you that the results that you experienced shouldn’t have happened.
This all leads back to the $100 question – how do you begin to change those belief systems outside of positive thinking? You need to pinpoint what beliefs that you have that hold you back, and you need to examine them rigorously. Think of this as conducting a sort of scientific experiment with some of these. For example, if you think that people are generally rude, start making small talk with random people that you encounter in your daily life. Maybe try asking the time or making a comment about the weather with a cashier at the store. Make a note of the outcomes, and take a sample of conversations to determine which ones were pleasant and which ones weren’t. Don’t just use your own experiences – look at the conversations between other people.
Also, start taking actions that scare you. This is where the work comes in. No amount of positive thinking will override beliefs that you have which hold you back. You have to get out there to change the root cause, not just treat the symptoms with positive thinking alone. The work cannot be neglected. This is why I don’t focus on positivity; I would much rather give people the real tools they need to succeed. I’ve experienced enough hardship to know that band aid solutions don’t work and never will. Tackling the real root causes and doing the work are the keys.
3 thoughts on “Positivity Alone Will Not Improve Your Life”
Good article.
Thank you. I’ll be getting deeper into this in the near future.
Good post!! A lot of truth here. People always being told about how “being positive” will always help you succeed, as though that’s all you need. And what happens when things don’t go the way people want…? They lose most of that “positive attitude”, because they believed it when they were told that it was enough. It’s never enough by itself.