When you walk through the self-help aisle of any bookstore, you are likely to see plenty of books based on the notion that positive thinking is the key to getting what you want. The message is clear: if you want to achieve something, just keep telling yourself  “I can!” and envision yourself accomplishing your goals. Success will surely come your way.

Not so, says years of psychological research. Certain kinds of positive thoughts, known in the research as fantasies, can actually be detrimental to performance.

When we fantasize, we idealize our futures. We imagine all the wonderful things we can achieve and the ease with which we can achieve them. Fantasies are not based on past experiences, meaning that we can have fantasies about achieving things for which we have no training or practice. They are also not at all based on what we believe will happen. We are fantasizing when we talk with our friends about what it might be like to win the lottery or be an NBA superstar.

Fantasies are different than having positive expectations about the future. Expectations are based on past experience and future probability. For example, I might have a positive expectation that I will do well on my next statistics exam because I have done well on my homework assignments and because I have studied hard. Because they are based in reality, positive expectations are associated with better effort and performance. So it’s not that all positive thoughts about the future are detrimental, just certain kinds.

4 Perils of Fantasizing

To understand why fantasies are a type of harmful positive thinking, let’s take a look at four negative consequences of them.

1. Reduced energy

Generating positive fantasies about desired outcomes can sap energy. For example, researchers asked undergraduates to imagine that they won an essay contest. In the positive fantasy condition, they asked participants to imagine that everything about winning the contest went really well; in the other condition, they told participants to imagine that winning the contest was not as great as initially anticipated. Those who fantasized about positive outcomes reported that they felt less energized than those who did not fantasize. In a similar study, fantasizers also showed decreases in systolic blood pressure (interpreted as decreases in energization) whereas the non-fantasizers did not.

2. Mental, but not actual, attainment

Indulging in thoughts about a bright future can lead to “mental attainment” of that future: thinking as though you have achieved it. This can leave people with little motivation to achieve their goals in reality. In one study, participants who generated positive fantasies about an outcome (e.g., being more focused at work) evaluated outcome-related words in ways similar to people who have already accomplished a goal. It was as though participants were thinking that they had achieved their goals without really doing so. Importantly, this means that they had less motivation and were not thinking about the steps needed to reach their goals.

3. Bad planning

This one’s pretty simple: if you only think about how positive your future might be and how easy it will be to get there, then you don’t plan for obstacles that might be in your way! For example, if I fantasize about getting my dream job, I might not consider how to deal with tough coursework, data that aren’t perfect, or rejection of my papers. If I have no plans for how to deal with these roadblocks, then I’m much less likely to get past them.

4. Pursuit of unfeasible goals

One problem with positive fantasies is that they don’t help people distinguish between feasible and unfeasible goals. When people fantasize about a positive future, they show levels of goal commitment that are independent of their expectations for achieving those goals. So even if they think they are unlikely to reach a certain goal, fantasizers remain committed to the goal.

Though you might see this commitment as beneficial, I would encourage you to imagine all the resources and time you might waste if you continually pursued goals that were just too far out of your reach. Much better to consider your talents and opportunities and put your resources toward goals that align with them!

Unfortunately, research shows that this is something people who fantasize about a positive future are unlikely to do.

Hopefully these four consequences of fantasies have convinced you that positive thinking might not always be the answer to motivation and success. The next time you find yourself fantasizing about how great it would be to get a promotion at work or to date the hottie next door, snap out of it! Thinking realistically about how you can achieve those goals might be better than imagining you already have.

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The Power of Repeated Affirmations

Thinking is usually a mixture of words, sentences, mental images and sensations, also called affirmations. Thoughts are visitors, who visit the central station of the mind. They come, stay a while and then disappear making space for other thoughts. Some of these thoughts stay longer, gain power and affect the life of the person thinking them.

It seems that most people let thoughts connected with worries, fears, anger or unhappiness occupy their mind most of the time. They keep engaging their mind with inner conversation about negative situations and actions. This inner conversation eventually affects the subconscious mind, making it accept and take seriously the thoughts and ideas expressed in those inner conversations.

It is of vital importance to be careful of what goes into the subconscious mind. Words and thoughts that are repeated often get stronger by the repetitions, sink into the subconscious mind and affect the behavior, actions and reactions of the person involved.

The subconscious mind regards the words and thoughts that get lodged inside it as expressing and describing a real situation, and therefore endeavors to align the words and thoughts with reality. It works diligently to make these words and thoughts a reality in the life of the person saying or thinking them.

This means that if you often tell yourself that it is difficult or impossible to acquire money, the subconscious mind will accept you words and put obstacles in your way. If you keep saying that you are rich, it will find ways to bring you opportunities and push you towards taking advantage of these opportunities.

The thoughts that you express through your words shape your life. This is often done unconsciously, as few pay attention to their thoughts and the words they use while thinking, and let outside circumstances and situations determine what they think about. In this case there is no freedom. Here the outside world affects the inner world.

If you consciously choose the thoughts, phrases and words that you repeat in your mind, your life will start to change. You will begin creating new situations and circumstances. You will be using the power of affirmations.

Affirmations are sentences that are repeated often during the day, and which sink into the subconscious mind, thereby releasing its enormous power to materialize the intention of the words and phrases in the outside world. This does not mean that every word has the power to make changes. The words have to be said with attention and with feeling, in order to trigger the subconscious mind into action.

Affirmations have to be phrased in positive words in order to be effective. Consider the following two sentences:

1. I am not weak anymore.

2. I am strong and powerful.

Though both sentences seem to say the same thing in different words, the first one is a negative sentence. It creates in the mind a mental image of weakness. This is a wrong wording. The second sentence awakens in the mind a mental image of strength.

It is not enough to say an affirmation a few times, and then expect your life to change. More than this is necessary. It is important to affirm with attention, as well as with strong desire, faith and persistence. It is also important to choose the right affirmation for any specific situation. You need to feel comfortable with it; otherwise the affirmation may not work or may bring you something that you do not want.

Affirmations can be used to strengthen the process of creative visualization, and they can be used on their own. They are of special importance for people who find it difficult to visualize. In this case they are a substitution to creative visualization.

Instead of repeating negative and useless words and phrases in the mind, you can choose positive words and phrases to help you build the life you want. By choosing your thoughts and words you exercise control over your life.

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Everyone has heard “Just look on the bright side!” or “Happiness is a choice—so choose to be happy!”

The idea that you can be happy if you simply choose to be has been integrated into the military, classrooms, workplaces, to improve coping skills, performance and mental health. But as the positivty movement’s popularity grew, it started being used to shame people who saw his scam for what it is.

Studies conducted by Karin Coifman and colleagues, concluded that when people acknowledge and address negative emotions toward their relationships or chronic illnesses, it helps them adjust their behavior and have more appropriate responses. Those negative emotions, in turn, benefit their overall psychological health. Another study, conducted by Elizabeth Kneeland and colleagues, concluded that people who think emotions are easily influenced and changeable are more likely to blame themselves for the negative emotions they feel than people who think emotions are fixed and out of their control.

While these studies are important, they aren’t the first to suggest that this “positive psychology” bullshit can be dangerous. For years, psychologists have been studying emotions and how they affect our everyday life, success and self-esteem. These studies found that even though positive psychology can help some people achieve happiness, it can be extremely harmful to others, leading to feelings of failure and depression.

Despite these recent findings and years of research pointing out the negatives of positive psychology, the infatuation lives on. Some experts believe bombarding people with these bromides and self-help books that implicitly say they are at fault for not being happy may be a factor in the rise of depression rates all over the world.

Positive psychology’s approach to mental health management has its roots in the humanistic psychology developed by Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers in the 1950s. The term “positive psychology” first appeared in Motivation and Personality , Maslow’s 1954 book, as the title of a chapter that states, “The science of psychology has been far more successful on the negative than on the positive side; it has revealed to us much about man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his full psychological height.

It is as if psychology had voluntarily restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the darker, meaner half.”The tenets of positive psychology were codified in the positive psychology movement, established in part by former American Psychological Association President Martin E.P. Seligman in 1998.

Since 2009, the Penn Resilience Program, run by the U.S. Army’s Comprehensive Soldier and Family Fitness program, has been widely used to help soldiers and family members develop coping skills and behaviors, increase capability, ensure education about and promotion of preventive measures that encourage self-awareness, deter high-risk behaviors and support healthy alternatives that produce positive outcomes. The Penn Resilience Program has trained more than 30,000 Army soldiers on how to teach the resilience skills to tens of thousands of other soldiers.

Seligman runs the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center, which is the training hub of the program’s Master Resilience Training program for noncommissioned officers.In 2012, psychologist Neil Frude co-founded a company called the Happiness Consultancy to help boost levels of happiness, well-being and resilience in company workforces. Over a year, every member of a company working with Frude does a four-week course in positive psychology. Frude told Fast Company Inc.’s Co.Create site that positive psychology has been adopted as a management tool by many Fortune 500 companies in recent years.

The adaptation of positive psychology for business management and the armed forces has helped the approach spread into popular culture. But as it’s grown more and more popular, positive psychology has taken on a new tone—one with a more simplistic message of “positive thinking.”

Badly executed studies published in the name of positive psychology started showing up in many places after Seligman coined the term. Most of these claimed that optimism and positive thinking led to a happy life. But, as social psychologist Carol Tavris has argued, most of these studies have been shot down by better studies.

In my opinion this simplistic form of positive psychology can do more harm than good. It’s gotten to a point where we are terrorized by a meriad of bullshit “positive attitudes” and dozens of “kumbaya” messages it’s becoming a tyranny of the positive attitude.

Culture has little tolerance for those who can’t smile and look on the bright side in the face of adversity. Even in cases of profound loss people are supposed to get over their sadness within weeks, if not sooner.

A 2012 study undertaken at the University of Queensland and published in the journal Emotion found that when people think others expect them to not feel negative emotions, they end up feeling more negative emotions. A 2009 study published in Psychological Science found that forcing people to use positive statements such as “I’m a lovable person” can make some feel more insecure. Further, New York University psychology professor Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues have found that visualizing a successful outcome, under certain conditions, can make people less likely to achieve it.

Researchers have also found that people in a negative mood produce better quality and more persuasive arguments than people in a positive mood, and that negative moods can improve memory.

Norem is working to understand why some people don’t respond well to positive psychology and respond better to negativity—an attitude she calls “defensive pessimism.” Her studies show that by thinking about everything that could go wrong and processing these negative possibilities, defensive pessimists relieve anxiety and are often able to avoid those pitfalls. Several studies suggest that forcing optimism or a positive mood on an anxious defensive pessimist can damage performance on tasks ranging from solving math problems to playing darts.

Catchphrases like “It’s all good” shut down conversation about how people are really feeling. If they’re having a bad day, it would really help to talk to their friends about it, but this whole idea of “We have to be positive all the time” has saturated society, and there’s no audience.

Another potential hazard of positive thinking is denial, refusing to see things for what they are and in turn operating in a bubble world, a dream world of their own, we see that a lot right now.

Positive thinking becomes a way of avoiding necessary action, that’s what attracts so many people to that “philosophy” the lack of brutal action they would have to take. People might say everything is fine even when it isn’t and avoid fixing the problems in their lives.

The best way to combat this Bullshit philsophy is to acknowledge that there are no simple answers to the complex problems we face—especially the all-encompassing and ongoing pursuit of happiness.

Most important, people need to realize that there is absolutely nothing wrong with feeling bad when life takes dark turns. It’s perfectly fine to not to be positive all the time, and it’s unrealistic to believe that you can be happy every moment.

Hope you enjoyed this article and as always thanks for reading.

P.S. If you liked this post then you’ll like my books as well. You can get them on Amazon.