I used to have a positive mental attitude. Then I realized that I was totally wrong about that, too…
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Maybe you’re doing it, but you don’t realize it? The job interview, for example, is a whole lot easier if you expect it to go well. That expectation is a kind of visualization, even if you’re not chanting along with your spirit animal. Conversely, if you’re busy imagining how wrong it might go, that can be a self-fulfilling prophecy - especially if you talk yourself into giving up before the battle begins.
I’m sorry but “You’re visualizing it, but don’t realize it” strikes me as irrefutable, untestable, magical-thinking nonsense. You can’t make the proposition you’re trying to prove ‘positive thinking is the key to success’ and then insist that if someone succeeds without it that they’re actually doing it without realizing it.
I rarely imagine all the ways something like a job interview can go wrong, either. Usually for social-related situations I imagine all the ways it could turn out well… I might not EXPECT it to go that well, but what I visualize is the good, not the bad. And it usually doesn’t work out that way. So maybe expectations are what matters, and not visualizations? But, there’s the trap… how do you consciously change what you EXPECT to happen? Isn’t that typically based on your experience?
Perhaps a lot of the claimed benefits of positive thinking are confusing cause and effect: that people who do well are going to DEVELOP a positive attitude and tend to visualize and expect success when they do things, because it’s what they’re used to. But it’s not the visualizing or expecting that leads to it.
Well you beat the shit out of those straw men, didn’t you? Good job!
If I mischaracterized your opinion somehow, I apologize. Perhaps rather than a snarky and dismissive dig, you’d like to correct my mistake directly, because I genuinely don’t see any point where I attacked an argument I didn’t feel you were making.
Well, the ‘magical-thinking’ bit probably went over the line (it’s an attitude I didn’t mean to ascribe to you personally, I was more trying to get across that it’s the type of reasoning that defends magical-thinking a lot: “God didn’t help me, I did everything myself…” “Oh, didn’t He? He works in mysterious ways!”), and maybe I accidentally suggested you feel that it’s true in EVERY case (the second sentence I was using the ‘you’ in a more general sense, rather than personally addressing you, although I absolutely see how it can be unclear), so I apologize for those completely. But I still think “Maybe you’re doing it and not realizing it” is a rather silly thing to say in a discussion like this (it’s rather more offensive than honestly misreading somebody’s opinion to suggest that what they report about their thought processes is mistaken, and, IMHO adds nothing because it can’t really be debated; if it’s not true, I have no way to prove it to you beyond my self-reporting that you’ve already discounted as potentially unreliable, and even if it were true, by definition, I won’t realize it), and I feel conflating expectation with visualization is problematic for a number of reasons that I partially tackled in the second paragraph of my earlier reply.
Again, if I’m misrepresenting your opinions, I apologize, but I genuinely do think those are things you’re arguing. If they’re strawmen, damn my eyes, they look a lot like the men you put forward, please correct me. (If you don’t think you can get through to me, just visualize it beforehand! ;))
Don’t forget testicular torsion.
You really read a ton of hostile stuff into what wasn’t meant that way at all. For one thing, I started with a “maybe,” because I don’t know you and I can only speculate.
It’s clear that when you hear the word “visualize,” it implies to you some dreadful new-age woo. To me, it means something as ordinary as imagination. We have to imagine a thing before we do it, in most cases, right? Nothing magical there at all.
One thing I would point out is that you absolutely can consciously change your own thinking. If you can’t control your mind, who can?
Actually, I didn’t read very much hostile stuff at all. I just said that I thought it was nonsense… I might have been a bit too vehement about how MUCH I thought it was nonsense, but I didn’t think you were attacking me (until you did with the ‘attacking strawmen’ crack, which I did take a bit personal (and made me think a bit more about, how, if I thought about it, telling me that what I said about my thinking process wasn’t true is kind of offensive as well), but if you thought I was attacking you, fair enough, I guess I earned a strike back. But again, I honestly didn’t mean to attack you personally, though. (Sorry, that paragraph probably looks awful… I have a bad habit of long and nested parentheses, comes from learning LISP at an impressionable age 
))
You’re wrong about what I hear along with the word ‘visualize’, though. I get simply the process of consciously creating a visual mental image, and, in the context of ‘positive thinking’ discussions, a deliberate effort to create a visual mental image of successful completion of a task. So yes, it’s much the same thing as imagination, although a little more conscious and deliberate (and possibly sustained over longer periods of time). But you’ve hit on my major problem with it. Either ‘visualize’ gets defined in a way that makes all its claims of being helpful seem suspect, except for a few limited areas (visualize making a basketball shot, okay, that might not be woo, but visualize successfully getting a job, still not convinced, again, in areas like that I find I do better without that, and most of my major strengths are areas where I don’t visualize in advance), or it gets defined in a way that’s so general and ubiquitous (such as ‘expectation is a type of visualization’) that it’s hard to imagine anybody NOT doing it, for nearly ALL endeavors, failures and successes alike. There doesn’t seem to be much middle ground, although if you have one you think works, let me know. Right, there’s nothing magical about plain imagination. Are there people who wouldn’t employ plain imagination to some degree (maybe even to such a minor point that they won’t even be aware of it) in almost every task, such that “you should try some visualization” becomes useful advice and not something like “You should probably try to eat at least a few times while you’re going through college, it really helps you succeed?” Maybe. But it’s hard to imagine (ha!) for me, and if there are, then it seems to put the lie to the claims of the power of visualization even more, because I constantly do that, to the point that it’s a surprise somebody doesn’t… and I’m not especially successful at all.
Anyway, I’ve not been entirely dismissive about visualization or powerful thinking, as I’ve said, I allow there are limited benefits and in some areas, more than that, I just think it’s value is far overstated by it’s adherents. It’s a tool, but like all tools, it doesn’t work in every situation, or the same for everyone. (Except duct tape which works the same for everything!)
Regardless, I apologize again if I came off harsh to you, even if I disagree with the ideas.
I can consciously change some aspects of my thinking. I can’t consciously change my beliefs, my expectations, and many other minor things that are part of my mind, except through new experiences or new evidence. I’ve tried, force of will alone doesn’t do it. I don’t choose if I’m going to believe in God, or faeries, or the power of visualization and positive thinking, or what I expect is going to happen at work tomorrow, or whether I expect somebody will like something I’ve written, I just evaluate the evidence I have available and the belief or expectation just develops emergently. I could (and have) try positive thinking for a short time, and see if it works, but I can’t just believe it will, otherwise any change would be easy, I could just decide to believe whatever I want to change is the best thing, and easy to boot! If you have that ability, you’re lucky, and you should treasure it (if you don’t, choose to! I’m sure it makes life more fun!) but I don’t think it’s all that common.
theres a big step between allowing yourself to try to achieve something above your skill level, and thinking you’re such hot shit that you can’t fail. delusion seems to result from over doing it. No one should be all negative or all positive. there is “bad” positivity and “good” negativity.
one’s predicament is theirs to deal with, and thinking “is there an opportunity for food that I’m not finding” is going to work better for you than “theres no food”
Gun. Problem solved.
You’re welcome! (Stated in advance, because my PMA suggests you will thank me.)
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