Interesting article.

Whilst optimism should always be tempered by realism, I refuse to believe that anything other than a positive mental attitude is the way to go.

Who wants to sit around being miserable, dull, negative and cynical?

I do not believe greed, arrogance, over-confidence and hubris equate to positive thinking.

I do believe that if you align your thinking about yourself, your goals, society and the people around you in the most pro-activley positive mode possible, generally you will have a happier and more successful life, and be someone held in high esteem by your friends and family.

I'll examine the quote used by the article author;

“Everywhere, he or she hears the same message - that you can have all that stuff in the mall, as well as the beautiful house and car, if only you believe that you can. But always, in a hissed undertone, there is the darker message that if you don’t have all that you want, if you feel sick, discouraged, or defeated, you have only yourself to blame.”

Actually I do believe that anyone can have pretty much anything they want if they align everything do around achieving that. However most people are not willing to make the tradeoffs that achievement would require. The key is knowing what can be achieved, and how to achieve it.

I also actually agree with the second sentence. No-one would blame misfortune or reduced circumstance on any-one, but how you mentally respond to illness or some other trauma surely affects how well you will recover from it.

I can't envisage any situation where feeling negative, or sinking into despair, will improve the situation more than being positive and proactivly trying to improve the situation in any manner possible. Or am I missing something.

gw

Happiness coaches are part of the great conspiracy that began 15 years ago when CEO’s , hedge fund managers and bankers discovered if they outsourced jobs to China and India it would increase the bottom line and they would all get rich. If they could not outsource they discovered another way. They terminated half the workforce and piled the work on those who remained. They followed this by bringing in the happy coaches to put smiles on these overworked underpaid miserable employees. Remember “smile or your fired”. Executives, bankers and hedge fund managers don’t need happy coaches. I wonder why?

Read—
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Negative-Influence-of-by-william-czander-091020-724.html