The Power of Positive Thinking or Sheer Luck... You Make the Call!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the power of positive thinking lately. I have had scads of people constantly lecturing me about it for quite a while now. But it seems in the last few weeks I’ve been bombarded.

Is it a sign?

I know it’s hard for you all to believe, but I have been a life long member of the Skeptics Club, the Cynics of America, the Sarcasm Society, and the Snarky Retort Masters. I’m Irish; we are cursed with the negativity gene. Well hell, if your people had lived with centuries of political and religious oppression, you might be a little pessimistic yourself. Did you ever read “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt? Ok, case closed then. I’m not excusing it, I’m just saying it’s hard to change when it has become a way of life for myself and all I’ve ever known, as well as for generations of my family.

I mean, I know it can’t hurt, to be more positive. What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll be less inclined to be whiney and bitchy, and honestly people don’t really enjoy that. I know, big surprise. Also positive attracts positive. I think I will be more inclined to meet happy, positive, successful people, which in turn will make me more happy, positive, and successful. You are what you surround yourself with, right? Well, you are also supposed to be what you eat, which I guess would make me a giant bowl of broccoli, but that’s another topic for another time…

However, as I delve deeper into this positive thinking thing, I find there are more concepts that are involved. I have people tell me that it is absolutely necessary to visualize things and ask for what you want. It sounds like good things will only come to people who buy into this “enlightenment”. But is that really true? Haven’t you ever had a blessing come to you in a time of despair? When you were down in the dumps and didn’t think things would ever turn around, did you ever get what you needed? Were you ever confused and something fell in your lap? Maybe that dream job? That dream man or woman? A cure for an ailment?

Let’s talk about relationships for a minute. I am really curious, have all of you only ever gotten into a relationship when you were in a clear, positive thinking state of enlightenment and visualized what you wanted? How many of you met a great person while you were dating someone else? How many of you met someone when you were reeling over someone else? How many of you may have been on a miserable breakup with someone and you were crying constantly over and they finally came back? I personally know a guy who met a woman while going through a really crappy divorce, and 15 years later they are still together and had 5 kids together. You tell me…

I just have trouble thinking that good things only come to you when your positive thought planets are aligned. I do feel things happen when they are supposed to or perhaps just out of sheer happenstance. But I don’t know if I buy into this, it only happens when you visualize and think positively. I do know a woman that has seemed to have willed things to go her way, but then… how much of that is hindsight or revisionist history? I don’t mean to be a skeptic, like I said I do think positive thought is good, I’m just not sure that certain things ONLY happen when and if you achieve and internal nirvana. And that has nothing to do with Kurt Cobain; if it did that would be a disaster.

So, I’d really like to hear your feedback. Have you ever achieved something great without being in a great place first? I’m eager to hear your thoughts…