The Anatomy of Delusional Positive Thinking and How to Stop It
Thinking positive is always better than thinking negative. However, delusional positive thinking is, well…delusional. Being delusional is the act of contradicting reality.
In many situations the reality may be that there is truly nothing to be positive about. For example, getting a flat tire that causes you to miss a once in a lifetime event. Or breaking a bone the day before you are set to compete in the Olympics. Or struggling to pay bills and put food on the table for your family. These are situations where being positive in those moments would likely require being delusional.
This is not to say that bombarding your thoughts with negativity is better than having delusional positive thoughts. But the anatomy of delusional positive thinking is still negative because not facing reality prevents you from coming up with a plan to control the things you can control.
Thinking positive is never delusional when you have a plan to control the things you can control. Even if it’s a bad plan. On the other hand, thinking positive when you have no plan or when you are trying to control things you don’t control is just plain delusional.
When you have no plan, you must abandon positive thinking. Instead, it’s time to orient your thinking to be neutral.
I learned the neutral thinking mindset from renowned mental skills coach Trevor Moawad. He does a fantastic job breaking down this mindset in his book It Takes What It Takes
Being Neutral Over Being Positive
In short, neutral thinking is being a realist without letting the negativity of what you can’t control impact the reality of what you can control. To put it another way, when you approach an undesirable situation with neutral thinking, you focus on sticking with the facts. Facts that are not positive or negative, they just are. Then you deal with those facts by doing whatever it takes to move forward with the time and resources you have available in that moment.
The benefit of training your mindset to default to neutral thinking rather than positive thinking, is that you never risk being delusional in your thinking. The problem with positive thinking is that sometimes you have to fake it to truly be positive. Your inner-self knows when you’re faking it and this minimizes the benefits of not being negative.
Moawad provides a great example of this referenced below:
One of Moawad’s go-to examples of neutral behavior is Wilson’s language in the 2015 NFC Championship Game. The Seahawks trailed Green Bay 16-0 in the second quarter and 19-7 late in the fourth after four interceptions by Wilson. They scored 15 points in the final two-plus minutes to force overtime, in which Wilson threw the winning touchdown to cap an improbable comeback.
“If Russell is positive in that situation, he’s constantly talking — ‘We’re going to beat Green Bay. We’re going to beat Green Bay’ — because much of positive thinking is connected to outcomes,” Moawad said. “Neutral thinking is truth-based thinking focused on behaviors, and Russell’s language is all about competing. There’s time. He’s not pretending that he didn’t throw four picks. But what he’s being very clear of is there’s still five minutes left. And that’s the truth, and even the most skeptical people recognize that five minutes has not happened yet, so how are we going to play those five minutes? And we don’t have to concede those five minutes because of the first 55 minutes.”