Even though I add smiley faces to my notes and emails, (it's a former teacher "thang"). I've find the "you must always be positive" message cloying and frankly, wrong. Thinking positively isn't a bad thing; but only doing that is. Taking action, however small the step, is what works. This was confirmed in the interviews I conducted with people who "turned straw into gold" for How To Create Your Own Luck . They all may have had positive attitudes but the key is that they did something!
Author Barbara Ehrenreich found that her breast cancer diagnosis brought out the the positive thinking brigade and that made her mad; thus the premise for Bright Sides: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America. She's not a pessimist and neither am I, but being practical is preferable. We cannot "smiley face" away our woes, job loss, diseases, economic difficulties. We can visit the doctor, stop smoking, go to a job search workshop, cut up our credit cards and reduce our spending to alleviate difficulties. And we should keep our senses of humor and be positive ---as long as we are DOING something to help ourselves. A conversation with my friend, an ovarian cancer survivor, confirms what Ms.Ehrenreich encountered. Some days the positive thinking palliative is positively drivel.
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