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Why Positive Thinking is Bad for You

2021-09-29 · Long video (solo, talking head or whiteboard) · Ali · recording, 10:54 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Mindset, motivation and happiness · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: Evidence-based framing, Lesson from a book, His medical past, Sponsor segment present

Ali argues that positive thinking has been taken too far: it eases anxiety, but the progress paradox, the thirst effect and the ironic effect of affirmations can make it backfire, while thinking negatively, through mental contrasting with the WOOP framework and defensive pessimism or Stoic premeditation of adversity, may help reach goals more easily.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Positive thinking taken too far: The Secret and the three reasons ahead

  • ★★ Ali thinks we have probably taken positive thinking too far. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali says Rhonda Byrne's film The Secret, which popularised the law of attraction, has several examples and quotes suggesting that diseases such as cancer can be cured by positive thinking. — 00:00:00
  • ★★ Ali gives three reasons why positive thinking might be a bad thing: the progress paradox, the thirst effect and the ironic effect. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Where positive thinking helps: anxiety and the King's College London study

  • ★★ Up to a point, Ali says, positive thinking helps reduce anxiety and intrusive thoughts: since the subconscious brain apparently cannot tell real from imagined, visualising positive outcomes reduces worry and adds joy. (hedged) — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Ali cites a King's College London study of 102 people with generalised anxiety disorder: after a month of thinking positively, either about their specific worry or in general, both groups had significantly less anxiety. — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — The progress paradox: his book research and Upton Sinclair's past-tense book

  • ★★ Ali describes the progress paradox: thinking about, explaining or visualising an outcome enough tricks us into feeling we have achieved it without taking any actual steps towards the goal. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Ali is in the middle of writing his book and finds it easy to feel productive while spending two hours on mindless research and an hour browsing Twitter for writing inspiration, none of which puts words on the page. — 00:01:27 · Twitter
  • ★★ Ali's advice to himself against the progress paradox is to stop thinking about making progress on his book and actually make progress on it. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ Ali retells from Ryan Holiday's Ego Is the Enemy how Upton Sinclair, running for governor of California in the 1930s, wrote a whole book in the past tense about what he accomplished as governor, then lost interest in his campaign and lost the election. — 00:01:56 · Ryan Holiday
  • ★★ Ali thinks Upton Sinclair probably ran out of steam because he visualised his future as governor so much that he did not do the work to get there. (hedged) — 00:02:40

00:03:10 — The thirst effect and the ironic effect of self-affirmations

  • ★★ Ali cites experiments in which thirsty people who visualised drinking a glass of cold water lost energy and motivation to get a drink, though they were still physiologically thirsty. — 00:03:10
  • ★★ Ali says positive thinking gives a false sense of security that we are doing well and achieving things. — 00:03:10
  • ★★ Ali cites a study of the self-affirmation "I am a lovable person": people who already had low self-esteem felt even worse about themselves after repeating it. — 00:03:39
  • ★★ Ali explains this by what psychologist Daniel Wegner calls ironic effects: as trying not to think of a polar bear brings one to mind, someone with low self-esteem who repeats an affirmation conjures up counterexamples and feels worse. — 00:04:08

00:04:37 — Mental contrasting: useful anxiety in exams and his course, and the WOOP framework

  • ★★★ Ali proposes reframing negative thoughts and even embracing negative visualisation: thinking negatively about the future rather than positively might help us reach our goals more easily. (hedged) — 00:04:37

    “thinking negatively about the future rather than positively might actually help us achieve our goals more easily.”

  • ★★ Ali names two ways of thinking negatively about the future: mental contrasting and defensive pessimism. — 00:04:37

  • ★★ Ali says visualising a positive outcome relaxes the body: it generally lowers systolic blood pressure and anxiety. — 00:04:37
  • ★★ For goals that need action, Ali says a slight sense of anxiety helps performance, and reducing it might even lower performance. — 00:05:15
  • ★★ Preparing for exams at medical school, Ali studied complacently for exams he thought would be a breeze, while slight anxiety about hard exams made him study harder and do better. — 00:05:15
  • ★★ A slight anxiety that no one will sign up or that the course is bad makes Ali put a huge amount of time into marketing the Part-Time YouTuber Academy and refining its material; without it, he says, the course would not be as good. — 00:06:00 · Part-Time YouTuber Academy
  • ★★★ Ali recommends the WOOP framework (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan): when planning a goal, think not only of the wish and the desired outcome but also of the obstacles and the plan to overcome them. — 00:06:29
  • ★★ Gabriele Oettingen (quoted): Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, who devised WOOP, writes in Rethinking Positive Thinking that mental contrasting circumvents the calming effects of dreaming and mobilises dreams to prompt directed action. — 00:06:59
  • ★★ Ali says it is fine to dream big and think positively, but we must contrast that mentally with the obstacles and a plan around them, because we will always meet obstacles. — 00:06:59

00:07:28 — Defensive pessimism, premeditating adversity and his own negative visualisation

  • ★★ Ali says the Stoics called negative visualisation premeditatio malorum, premeditating adversity, thinking through all the ways something can go wrong; today it is called defensive pessimism. — 00:07:28 · stoicism
  • ★★ Ali cites studies finding that setting low expectations and envisioning worst cases improved performance on tasks from dots (as heard) and maths problems to real-life goals. — 00:07:28
  • ★★ Ali cites a 30-year study of 10,000 Germans: older people who underestimated their future life satisfaction lived longer with better health outcomes, which he notes is correlation, not causation. — 00:07:57
  • ★★★ Ali calls negative visualisation great and uses it all the time: when making decisions he asks what the absolute worst case is and what could go wrong, and usually finds that a rejection, a failed YouTube video or a negative comment is not so bad. — 00:08:26
  • ★★ Having visualised the negative outcome of a decision, Ali can take steps to mitigate the risk of it happening. — 00:08:58
  • ★★ Citing the Stoic saying that we often suffer more in imagination than in reality, Ali says premeditating adversity, defensive pessimism and negative visualisation help us recognise the suffering we do in imagination. — 00:08:58 · stoicism

00:09:15 — Stoicism and his happiness, the Skillshare class with Sam, and the video of 10 Stoic quotes

  • ★★ Stoicism is the philosophy Ali most follows: he credits it for his very high baseline happiness and tranquillity and for being called unflappable, after about 10 years of it. — 00:09:27 · stoicism

Threads in this video

  • refine · Does positive thinking help you reach goals? — Ali proposes reframing negative thoughts and even embracing negative visualisation: thinking negatively about the future rather than positively might help us reach our goals more easily. (00:04:37)
  • restate · Does positive thinking help you reach goals? — Ali calls negative visualisation great and uses it all the time: when making decisions he asks what the absolute worst case is and what could go wrong, and usually finds that a rejection, a failed YouTube video or a negative comment is not so bad. (00:08:26)
  • refine · Should you set goals, and how? — Ali recommends the WOOP framework (wish, outcome, obstacle, plan): when planning a goal, think not only of the wish and the desired outcome but also of the obstacles and the plan to overcome them. (00:06:29)
  • restate · How do you deal with rejection and failure? — Ali calls negative visualisation great and uses it all the time: when making decisions he asks what the absolute worst case is and what could go wrong, and usually finds that a rejection, a failed YouTube video or a negative comment is not so bad. (00:08:26)
  • restate · How do you become happier? — Stoicism is the philosophy Ali most follows: he credits it for his very high baseline happiness and tranquillity and for being called unflappable, after about 10 years of it. (00:09:27)
  • milestone · Ali's first book, which a publisher asked him to write (2020) — Ali is in the middle of writing his book and finds it easy to feel productive while spending two hours on mindless research and an hour browsing Twitter for writing inspiration, none of which puts words on the page. (00:01:27)
  • refine · How do you stop overthinking decisions? — Ali calls negative visualisation great and uses it all the time: when making decisions he asks what the absolute worst case is and what could go wrong, and usually finds that a rejection, a failed YouTube video or a negative comment is not so bad. (00:08:26)

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: defensive pessimism · mental contrasting · negative visualisation · positive thinking · progress paradox

Also: People: Daniel Wegner · Gabriele Oettingen · Rhonda Byrne · Ryan Holiday · Sam · Upton Sinclair

Projects: Part-Time YouTuber Academy

Works: Ego Is the Enemy · How to Be Happier - A Stoicism Masterclass · Rethinking Positive Thinking · The Secret

Organizations: King's College London

Concepts: ironic effect · law of attraction · premeditating adversity · stoicism · thirst effect · WOOP

Places: California

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