Why Positive Thinking Doesn't Work

I have been concerned for a while about the sweeping influence of "The Law of Attraction" on the field of coaching, especially personal coaching or life coaching. I have literally watched this simplistic belief system stop people who were on a path of change, striving towards goals they had set after self-discovery and a lot of planning. This spiritual belief system means, to some, that you don't really have to expend any effort to get what you want.

I've asked questions politely and offered soft challenges. I will be told, "No, you don't understand. That's not what it means." But then the explanation pretty closely restates what I understand to be the simplicity of the beliefs. So whether it's the true "dogma" of The Law of Attraction or not, the populist dogma brings up a lot of concerns.

One belief is you don't have to pursue what you want. You just think on it, make a picture board, and feel good feelings about it and you will bring it into your life. Lest any of you think I'm oversimplifying the idea, in the movie The Secret a boy yearns for a specific bike and thinks about it every day. He doesn't mow yards or do chores or sell his older toys and clothes in a garage sale. He just yearns. One day, an elderly gentleman puts the bike on his porch. Voila!

I hear from people who are so certain the law of attractions works they will not put effort into their goals. I hear from people who are so certain it works they will not take time to explore their own deepest wishes to develop a life plan. They just wait around for the universe to deliver the right thing for them, which of course they will recognize immediately because it will resonate in their souls.

Why won't they strive? Why won't they make effort? Because "going after something" feeds into their view of "scarcity thinking" or "poverty thinking." The idea that you have to work at something, that you have to strive, becomes equated with what they consider a "false" belief that there is scarcity in the universe. Scarcity thinking is the false belief system that keeps us from "manifesting" everything we want. Believing some things are difficult is scarcity thinking. Believing you have to pursue something and put a lot of time and effort into it is scarcity thinking.

This actually worries me. It gets close to frightening me. Believing that you are stuck in a low-pay, low-joy life because very few people get to enjoy life is "scarcity thinking." Believing you have to expend a lot of time and energy to learn new things, improve yourself, or start a new career as a self-employed person is REALITY. If you want to be a seven-figure consultant, you have to figure out the focus of your business. You have to develop products and services. You have to market to people. You can't just feel wonderful assuming you have the right to be a wealthy consultant and wait for checks to show up in your mailbox.

Even one of the people in The Secret, I think maybe the Chicken Soup for the Soul co-developer Mark Victor Hansen, talked about "manifesting" checks in the mailbox. At one point of financial struggle he focused on big checks showing up in the mailbox. But he didn't sit around waiting! He went out and helped start a publishing phenomenon. Of course the story ends with "big checks" showing up "in the mailbox."

There's a similar story about Jim Carrey. Early in his career he supposedly wrote a check to himself for $10,000,000. On the memo line he wrote "for acting services rendered." Years later, when he got the role in Dumb and Dumber his salary was -- $10,000,000. But in between he was working hard in comic acting and making a name for himself, doing anything but manifesting and simply waiting.

I have encouraged people to consider "The Law of Intention" instead of The Law of Attraction. When you put something in your mind by writing about it, thinking about it daily, talking about its importance to you, and setting real goals for it, you energize your own mind. You have more focus and a magnificent filter for sifting through all the information flowing around and finding what is relevant to your goal, your heart's desire.

The Law of Intention suggests that by meditating or yearning or creating a visual "wish board" we can focus on what we are pursuing. But the focusing doesn't substitute for the pursuit. It augments the pursuit, the way a supercharger and computer-controlled timing augment an engine. Intention amplifies your efforts.

I got off on this near-rant after reading Michael Masterson's article in "Early To Rise" today. Click on this link and scroll down to his article. He briefly reviews research on positive thinking, then moves on to point out that the true source of confidence in our abilities is success.

The process he describes is the process of mastery in developmental psychology. We start with something new and struggle to do it. Because it is important we keep at it as we slowly get better. If we don't get blocked or frustrated, eventually we master the skill, like walking or talking or interacting in social situations.

With more specific things, like learning to market successfully, there are more obstacles, greater frustration, and many more messages that tell us it's okay to give up because we probably can't do it. You don't conquer the uncertainty and the difficulty of the task by saying, "Oh yes I can!" You conquer it by moving at a comfortable pace, one skill at a time, until you can manage it and move to the next. Your success moving forward a little bit is the confidence to take on the next small challenge.

"Oh yes I can!" has to be rooted in evidence for most of us, especially those of use who don't think and feel positive things automatically. For us, it is important to accept that we will struggle and not be good for a while, but through continued effort we can slowly improve. Success will give us the confidence that positive thinking alone never can.