Comments on: If you think you can, or you think you can’t… who cares what you think!

By: CJ

CJ — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:39:56 +0000

Gee, I am with you. Happened upon this page when looking up the source for “If you think you can ..” quote. Little did Henry Ford realize that his postive attitude had nothing to do with his success.

Amazed and amused by the contrarian voices. Norman Vincent Peale would spin in his grave! We are all free to live our life with as much positive or negative energy that we care to extend, after all, Attitude is a Decision to quote yet another postive affirmation.

By: sashen

sashen — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 00:45:09 +0000

Hi Gee… the problem with your disagreement is that it’s based on flawed evidence.

What I mean is that while we believe the ONLY thing we can truly trust is our own experience (or our memory of experiences), what cognitive research has shown, over and over, is that this is the LEAST reliable data we have. We cherry pick our memories (and often CHANGE our very memories) to support our theories about how life works… and we have NO IDEA that we’re doing this.

I won’t go into the details about how the SKILL of misrepresenting our own experience was a valuable thing to have… 100,000+ years ago (think about how coming up with superstitious ideas about cause-and-effect could have kept you alive).

But in the present, it leads to all manner of unnecessary beliefs about what’s required for achieving things we want, or things we *think* will make us happy.

I’ve got an upcoming blog post about this: When we see optical illusions, we think, “Wow, that’s weird.” But they should send is SCREAMING FROM THE ROOM! They’re telling us that our primary mechanism for interfacing with the world is fundamentally flawed and often wrong. They should engender something akin to terror that we can’t even trust our PERCEPTION, let alone our interpretations of perception.

Anyway, continue to enjoy the belief that “I can” somehow leads to things you want, even though you’ve probably never tested the opposite (nor could you do a REAL controlled test, since you don’t have a clone with which you could compare). But, if you find, one day, that “I can” isn’t cutting it for you, give me a call

By: Gee

Gee — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:56:26 +0000

Given the choice of can or can’t, I’ll take can everytime. I’ve been a consultant for 25 years who has received most of my jobs by thinking ‘can’ when logic (no previous experience, no previous skill, etc) would suggest I think ‘can’t’. I got these jobs and (very quickly I might add) learned what I needed to do a good job. In most cases, the company hiring me for the contract would try to hire me as an employee within a few months.

Sorry to disagree with you guys

By: sashen

sashen — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:49:04 +0000

LOL… I love “it’ll never happen”

There’s a bunch of research showing how “pessimists” are more accurate in their assessment of outcomes and, therefore LESS likely to be depressed when things don’t work out.

Too bad they left the word “Positive” in “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking”… it would have been better without it

By: Jeanne

Jeanne — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 22:23:43 +0000

I think that in place of the thought, “it could be possible”, I’d rather use “it’ll never happen”. That way I’ve taken all pressure off myself.

Actually I often aced tests in school after repeatedly thinking, “Oh God, I am going to fail this test.”

Ya know, there’s a book out there called “The Positive Power of Negative Thinking”.

By: sashen

sashen — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:33:40 +0000

OH! Thanks for reminding me… I forgot to mention http://www.despair.com which is where you can find those posters.

And, of course, my T-shirts that make fun of inspirational sayings as well — http://www.delightenment.com

By: Ed

Ed — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 03:57:48 +0000

I assume you’ve seen the posters that make fun of this, that are entitled “Failure” and “Discouragement” and so on, but with the same sweeping inspirational pictures. Sometimes I think they deserve more wall space than the originals.