Under siege by “positive thinkers”
Right from the get go, I am all for positive attitude, optimism, joy and happiness, personal growth and fulfillment. And I do believe coaching can help achieve all of that and more.
With that disclaimer out of the way, I can now go ahead with my rant without having to look over my shoulder. Here is the issue:
It appears that true positivity comes from within, as it is discovered by each individual on his or her own path of self awareness and self reflection. And somehow people who seem to have achieved that state of personal growth don’t flaunt their accomplishment, scream about it at every opportunity, or teach others how to live their lives without being asked. Those self-aware individuals don’t constantly bombard the world with their admonitions of how to be happy and force feed the public with their cocktail of “positivity” and “empowerment.”
There are others, however, who radiate “positivity” at Chernobyl levels. ☢
And those are the types I am going to talk about.
Every time I join an online group frequented by “coaches” or “mentors,” follow those types on social media or subscribe to their newsletters (to size up the competition of course), I know I’ll be flooded by all sorts of memes, quotes or home cooked statements that are supposed to impart good vibes, energy, make my day rock or teach me how to celebrate me being myself.
But… but… but what’s wrong with that?
It’s not up to me to decide for everyone whether it’s right or wrong to take a daily dose of “positivity” and in what amount. If you enjoy all that stuff and need your regular fix, by all means! Swallow the pills as indicated on the packaging! Or take it in liquid form under the KA brand. All I want to say about all this overwhelming “positivity” is that I believe
It’s fake!
Just look around. How many people do you know who you consider well-grounded, wise, confident, happy, down to earth, fair, self-aware and who possess other qualities that would make you believe that person is an evolved human?
Now, how many of those are exalted beings from another world incessantly spewing out exhortations, singing kumbaya and spending their days in the woo woo land?
And who would do such things?
- Someone trying to resolve their own issues through autozombification. Perhaps they believe in the “fake it till you make it” mantra and are following it religiously.
They have invented this make-believe persona, a better version of themselves and then hope to mutate into that image. So they constantly shed tons of affirmations and mantras.
- Someone as in the above example who in addition experiences the need to control others or validate themselves through others.
That need to control could manifest itself by all sorts of behaviors ranging from simply fishing for social media “likes” and comments to trying to recruit others into a mini-sect.
- Someone who uses feel-good messages for commercial exploitation. Positivity is for sale everywhere you look by anyone from world-renowned gurus to 20-somethings looking for an easy buck doing “coaching.” (A money-saving tip: Your uncle Bob who read a couple of self-help books and discovered the mysteries of the Universe can offer the same for free with no loss in quality).
Chances are you are hearing nothing but a canned message tried and tested by a big guru’s marketing department and designed to push the right buttons for maximum profits. It is then copied and regurgitated by minor league gurus, coaches and mentors who don’t have a jumbo marketing research budget of their own.
Are canned positivity messages always useless?
Of course there are always people out there for whom attending a guru talk can serve as a turning point in their lives. Some reach success due to other factors but erroneously attribute it to a guru who, upon closer examination, didn’t do squat for them. Even the timing may be off. But perception is everything.
For most, however, it’s just a feel-good drug that wears off pretty quickly. Some come back for another fix and pay big bucks. Pay your hard-earned $1000 or more for a weekend seminar or an online course, feel like the most powerful and interesting woman or man in the world for whom even the sky is not the limit, and then return to your drudgery cubicle come Monday.
One-size-fits-all messages are mostly feel-good drugs
They can’t reach the deepest levels of consciousness because they are not specific to that person’s situation. Messages that the mind creates for itself are much more believable. What you come up with yourself becomes your truth. It doesn’t matter if it happens to coincide with a recycled quote next to a guru’s photo promoted by their enormous marketing machine. What matters that it’s yours. It’s internal.
Another reason I believe exalted “positive thinkers” are fake, intentionally or otherwise, is my experience with attitudinal assessments
When I look at attitudinal assessment results, I sometimes see a huge discrepancy between the attitudes on a happy day and in situations when SHTF. A nice official way of describing this is to say that person is not well grounded. My own, less PC way of interpreting is that the person has created a fantasy that’s easy to maintain on a good day convincing oneself of one’s own enlightenment knocking on the doors of nirvana.
Unfortunately that fantasy instantly crashes and burns when something goes wrong. Anger and victimhood mindsets instantly kick in. The ability to fake it evaporates! And the “enlightened” may never make it until they dump the fantasy, mute their zombie mantras, roll up their sleeves and get to real work.
Why escaping from the siege by “positive thinkers” may be a worthwhile effort
Some may become so dependent on regular infusion of the positivity cocktail they may never want the treatments to stop. Even if there is no forward motion in their lives. They just enjoy the hallucinations.
And for those who don’t, here are the reasons why this zombie therapy may not serve their best interests:
Bombardment with the feel-good messages made by someone else and for someone else takes away an individual’s power of choice. The choice of the timing, the focus, the specifics and even the wording of his or her own message. Power comes from within (yes, this sounds like just another zombie statement and still). It’s not pounded into one’s head by a pile driver.
Canned messages don’t address underlying issues; instead, they push them deep down even farther
Someone constantly exposed to the guru-mentor-coach chorus may become overwhelmed and even feel inadequate compared to all those supreme enlightened beings. At the very least, all this overexposure to wisdom-for-sale may lead someone to just tune out and lose faith in the very idea of personal growth.
And don’t expect those fountains of goodness to turn off the spigot and lift the siege. It’s too dear to their hearts and often their accounts receivables. Plus they’d just overflow and burst endangering the surrounding communities… But you can dig your way out of it if you are motivated enough.
As mentioned at the top of this post,
Personal growth does lead to more positivity, optimism and life satisfaction
But how do you want to get there? Fake it and hope to make it? (And who exactly will you be trying to fool or fake by the way?) It’s totally up to you, and what you’ve just read is just a private opinion of one individual. If this a article made you think about your own approach to personal growth, here is one more point to add to the thinking list:
