In his 2011 TED Talk, “The Happy Secret to Better Work,” Harvard professor and best-selling author Shawn Achor shared his findings on happiness and success: “If you can raise somebody’s level of positivity in the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage.” The “happiness advantage,” Achor says, affects intelligence, creativity, energy, and work performance.
His talk is a favorite among motivational workshops and industry conferences, and it remains one of the most-viewed on the TED online platform, with almost 20 million views.
Who doesn’t want to be happier? The prospect of a change in perspective altering your life’s course is alluring. Achor’s tips for promoting positivity aren’t bad either: practicing gratitude, journaling, exercise, meditation, and random acts of kindness. However, anyone alive can tell you that emotions come in so many more shades than good and bad, and that constant positivity is unrealistic. Attempting to enforce it (on yourself or others) could be toxic.
Enforced positivity ignores trauma and clinical depression, and it cheapens the inescapable and complex experience of being human.
A much less popular TED Talk, given by psychologist Susan David, extols “emotional courage” and embracing the complexity of the human experience. “Being positive has become a new form of moral correctness,” David says. “It’s cruel and ineffective.”
Achor belongs to a camp known as positive psychology. The school of thought was formally introduced 21 years ago as the new theme of American Psychological Association President Martin Seligman. He announced a new focus on “the good life” and what makes people happy, saying that for too long psychology dwelled on illness and disabling conditions.
The new psychological interest in what makes people flourish sparked unprecedented research and study of happiness. Proponents of positive psychology have maintained that the field is meant to complement previous understandings of pathology and depression instead of replace them, but critics of Seligman and his trendy dive into happiness research are skeptical.
Even if you’ve never heard of Martin Seligman or his psychological paradigm shift, you can probably recognize plenty of symptoms of positive psychology in everyday American life. But Dr. Barbara Held, author of Stop Smiling, Start Kvetching, rails against “the tyranny of the positive attitude” in professional settings across the country precipitated by positive psychology. “If people feel bad about life’s many difficulties and they cannot manage to transcend their pain no matter how hard they try (to learn optimism), they could end up feeling even worse,” she says.
Telling others to “cheer up” or “stop being so negative” can send the dangerous message that any sentiments other than eager delight should be repressed. Enforced positivity ignores trauma and clinical depression, and it cheapens the inescapable and complex experience of being human.
In her TED Talk, Susan David references her own survey of 70,000 people, a third of whom admitted to judging their negative emotions — sadness, anger, grief — harshly, if not ignoring them altogether. She warns, “When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.”
In the midst of our crusade for optimal glee, we ought to think of all there is to lose in relentless pursuit of the “happiness advantage” — namely, emotional honesty, character, and resiliency. Anyone who claims these can manifest from positive thinking is delusional.
*“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” —Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
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Comments
Balance is Human trait which needs to be inculcated to deal with advantage and disadvantage situations. Experience and Expression of Extreme Positive and Negative Emotions is the reason of distress and disease.
Reverend Gautam Buddha’s philosophy “Middle Path” may help to live Balance, Happy (Contenment) and Healthy life !
Try it ! Choice is ours!
Positivity definitely has a dark side in the way it’s being forced upon us today as written here, and another sick limb on the ‘political correctness’ tree going back 3 decades now. It’s all about how you must feel and what you can’t say.
It’s repression, censorship and above all, denial. The word “issues” is at the top of this sick, toxic dung heap replacing the real word problems and any and all other words that may be negative, yes, but need to be said. That word is so vile and patronizing that it has no meaning other than being the inappropriate ‘catch all’ joke word it is.
Families of people killed in mass shootings are said to be “having issues”. People who may be losing EVERYTHING (soon!) due to the government shutdown are said to be having “issues”. Yeah??? I think it’s a horrific, terrifying nightmare looming for them! But hey, what do I know?! We’re being told they don’t CARE about the money; only about the wall being built, no matter how many weeks, months or even years it takes. Any “issues” can be fixed with garage sales, dog walking/sitting, baby sitting etc.
So be happy and positive all you wet blankets that have had family members massacred and aren’t going to have any money comin’ in til God only knows when. Be thankful you don’t have any ‘problems’ (perish the word) when all YOU have are a few little issues! Why heck, it even rhymes with TISSUES! We all know tissues wipe issues away in seconds; the TV ads say so! Remember that now y’all, and it’ll turn that frown upside down sweetie pie, ’cause that’s not allowed in America today–EVER!