Jacqueline Ashby

Negative Thinking

“Positive thinking, we’re told endlessly, is absolutely essential at every minute if we hope to lead happy, successful lives: only through positive thinking will we achieve our ambitions and be winners instead of losers. Cartloads of self-help books, well-paid motivational speakers and lifestyle gurus all emphatically promote this drive to focus always on positive thinking. ‘It’s necessary to get losers out of your life if you ever want to live your dream,’ says self-help guru Les Brown, presumably eschewing all losers and living his.’ Positive thinking, we’re told endlessly, is absolutely essential at every minute if we hope to lead happy, successful lives: only through positive thinking will we achieve our ambitions and be winners instead of losers. Cartloads of self-help books, well-paid motivational speakers and lifestyle gurus all emphatically promote this drive to focus always on positive thinking. ‘It’s necessary to get losers out of your life if you ever want to live your dream,’ says self-help guru Les Brown, presumably eschewing all losers and living his.

We’re likewise endlessly told that negative thinking, is a definite no-no, only for wet blanket losers. But is this true? Is it true that positive thinking is always the best approach, or could it be, in fact, that some good old negative thinking might actually enable us to live our lives more effectively, efficiently and happily than optimism will? Well, apparently, it does! It turns out this full-tilt drive for constant positivity is being somewhat mis-sold us. So cheer up, wet blanket negative thinkers, if you dare! You may actually have got it right!

Negativity, this radio series explains, is a better spur to suitable action than unwarranted, blind hope, and can prove enormously constructive. Instinctive emotions like fear, anxiety and self-doubt serve an important, positive purpose, just as long as self-doubt is tempered by self-compassion. Self-doubt brings greater flexibility and consideration to plans and actions with a willingness to change tack instead of a moving in a headlong, inflexible rush, while pessimism can actually spell success. The very best, most successful lawyers and surgeons are, the presenter tells us, pessimists – those who examine a job from every possible angle, suspicious that any little thing could go wrong at any moment and get ready for it.”

THE TRUELOVE

There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,

and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them

and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love

so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

by David Whyte.

Artist Norman Laliberté.

MY COURAGEOUS LIFE

has gone ahead

and is looking back,

calling me on.

My courageous life

has seen everything

I have been

and everything

I have not

and has

forgiven me,

day after day.

My courageous life

still wants

my company:

wants me to

understand

my life as witness

and thus

bequeath me

the way ahead.

My courageous life

has the patience

to keep teaching me,

how to invent

my own

disappearance,

and how

once gone,

to reappear again.

My courageous life

wants to stop

being ahead of me

so that it can lie

down and rest

deep inside the body

it has been

calling on.

My courageous life

wants to be

my foundation,

showing me

day after day

even against my will

how to undo myself,

how to surpass myself,

how to laugh as I go

in the face

of danger,

how to invite

the right kind

of perilous

love,

how to find

a way

to die

of generosity.

…

My Courageous Life

A new adaption of ‘Second Life’

in STILL POSSIBLE

Poems by David Whyte

Architect of Your Future Self

“The first piece of advice I have is if you accept the idea that you’re going to be a different person in 30 years’ time, you should play an active role crafting the person you are going to become. You should be the curator of your future self. You should be the architect of your future self.”

~ Shankar Vedantam

The Selfish Gene

“To quote The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, on the subject of the relationship between evolution and survival mechanisms: ‘A duck is a robot vehicle for the propagation of duck genes.’ This is but another way of making Darwin’s point that if emotions are that widespread across both human and animal kingdoms, they have been proved, evolutionary, as crucial to the process of survival, and are inextricably linked to the origins of the species.” ~ Candace B. Pert, Ph.D.

Crossing the Unknown Sea

“A good work and a good, dedicated life, almost always in the end … after all the seemingly necessary cover ups … means visibility… it means coming out of hiding.

It is all very well having a dream, but the moment we put the dream to hazard, we have the possibility of failing. How many times have we kept a hope or dream in abeyance because the possibilities of failure were too much to contemplate? If we failed at that central, precious thing then who would we be? Could there be any one left at all? Far better to choose something smaller, something we don’t care about, or some logistical task we don’t mind getting wrong, something we could recover from, something where we are, in effect, really invisible, to ourselves and to the world. Better to choose a world where things don’t matter. Better not to appear fully on life’s radar screen. But making ourselves visible is to arrange for the possibilities of a different kind of disappearance – into the work, the task, the audience, the life that opens up, where the fearful one who first dreamt is burned away by anticipation and a living contact with a future we might want to call our own…making ourselves visible enables us to be found and then invited in by the world we desire.”

~ David Whyte

Mindfulness & Reflection

“Executive function (EF) skills are essential for academic achievement, and poverty-related stress interferes with their development. This pre-test, post-test, follow-up randomized-control trial assessed the impact of an intervention targeting reflection and stress reduction on children’s EF skills. Preschool children (N = 218) from schools serving low-income families in two U.S. cities were randomly assigned to one of three options delivered in 30 small-group sessions over 6 weeks: Mindfulness + Reflection training; Literacy training; or Business as Usual (BAU). Sessions were conducted by local teachers trained in a literacy curriculum or Mindfulness + Reflection intervention, which involved calming activities and games that provided opportunities to practice reflection in the context of goal-directed problem solving. EF improved in all groups, but planned contrasts indicated that the Mindfulness + Reflection group significantly outperformed the BAU group at Follow-up (4 weeks post-test). No differences in EF were observed between the BAU and Literacy training groups. Results suggest that a brief, small-group, school-based intervention teaching mindfulness and reflection did not improve EF skills more than literacy training but is promising compared to BAU for improving EF in low-income preschool children several weeks following the intervention.”

More on Mindfulness Plus Reflection Training: Effects on Executive Function in Early Childhood via Front. Psychol.

The Truth Effect

“Repeated information is often perceived as more truthful than new information. This finding is known as the illusory truth effect, and it is typically thought to occur because repetition increases processing fluency. Because fluency and truth are frequently correlated in the real world, people learn to use processing fluency as a marker for truthfulness. Although the illusory truth effect is a robust phenomenon, almost all studies examining it have used three or fewer repetitions. To address this limitation, we conducted two experiments using a larger number of repetitions. In Experiment 1, we showed participants trivia statements up to 9 times and in Experiment 2 statements were shown up to 27 times. Later, participants rated the truthfulness of the previously seen statements and of new statements. In both experiments, we found that perceived truthfulness increased as the number of repetitions increased. However, these truth rating increases were logarithmic in shape. The largest increase in perceived truth came from encountering a statement for the second time, and beyond this were incrementally smaller increases in perceived truth for each additional repetition. These findings add to our theoretical understanding of the illusory truth effect and have applications for advertising, politics, and the propagation of ‘fake news.'”

The effects of repetition frequency on the illusory truth effect via Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications.

Cues to Deception

The best lie is a half truth.

“Do people behave differently when they are lying compared with when they are telling the truth? The combined results of 1,338 estimates of 158 cues to deception are reported. Results show that in some ways, liars are less forthcoming than truth tellers, and they tell less compelling tales. They also make a more negative impression and are more tense. Their stories include fewer ordinary imperfections and unusual contents. However, many behaviors showed no discernible links, or only weak links, to deceit. Cues to deception were more pronounced when people were motivated to succeed, especially when the motivations were identity relevant rather than monetary or material. Cues to deception were also stronger when lies were about transgressions.”

More on Cues to Deception via Psychological Bulletin.
Art: Dark Krystal by Laureth Sulfate. Photographie et art numérique, 2020.

ආයුබෝවන්

Ayubowan (Sinhalese): Lit. ‘long life’; salutation, wishing someone health, happiness and longevity; used as a greeting or parting.

via The Positive Lexicography Project.