What exactly is Positive Thinking?

Positive thinking is a popular catechism these days. Whenever you feel sad, think or talk about your doubts and fears about the bad circumstances in your life, pat comes the oft-repeated advice from your well-wishers: Think positively man! Everything will be OK-Don’t worry. 1.Positive thinking is not forcing yourself to ignore the realities A man has been badly hit by a speeding car. His leg has been smashed and the doctor has given a final decision. It needs to be amputated. It is natural for the man to feel worried about his life and future. There comes a well-wisher and offers the same advice: Think positively! He even narrates a story about limb amputations turning out to be boon in some cases. Here is a sample story. A man who had lost his hand was once walking alone in a forest. He was captured by a band of hefty people who were roaming in search of someone who could be offered as sacrifice to propitiate goddess to seek her blessing for fulfilment of the wishes of their chieftain. When they brought the hapless victim at the temple, the priest rejected him saying that the goddess wanted a complete and not a mutilated person for sacrifice. The man was let off to freedom. What is the moral of this story in terms of positive thinking? Should a person seek solace in thinking that even the loss of limbs can prove a blessing in disguise? Would this kind of thinking be positive? 2.Positive thinking is not harbouring wishful expectations Here is how the Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson, tried to force himself and probably his admirers to believe in when he wrote in his In MemoriamrnOh, somehow good will come out of the evilrnOh, yet we trust that somehow goodrnWill be the end of all ill, …………rnThat nothing walks with aimless feet…..rnI can trust that good shall fall….rnRemember Wilkins Micawber in Charles Dicken’s David Copperfied who always said: “Something would turn up”. Interestingly enough, nothing turns up in all his life even in fiction. This is quintessentially the common wishful refrain about positive thinking that most so-called thinkers and well-wishers come out with when they offer meaningless words of empty solace to the victims of misfortunes. 3.Positive thinking is not about cherishing unrealistic dreams Positive thinking should not mean forcing oneself to believe that spring always follows winter. Sometimes, you are caught in perennial polar winter of your life. How about the congenitally disabled people? Positive thinking does not mean nourishing empty dreams that can never come to materialize. What then is positive thinking? Positive thinking means accepting life as it comes without cribbing. It means trying to chant the mantra: I have to face it. Better face it calmly, cheerfully and even bursting out in contagious guffaws of laughter. I have to make the most of whatever situation I am destined to be in. Feeling depressed in such circumstance is negative thinking as it would mean inviting more troubles, both physical and mental and deteriorate the situation further. If you are a believer in the theory of Karma, you have to accept the reward /award of your actions performed whether in the present or in the past life. Since most of us cannot easily accept the life as it comes we wishfully build hopes and dreams of bright future. We have to remember that our proposals may also be disposed of adversely. If positive thinking means unrealistic wishful thinking, it would be better to avoid it as it may bring in greater and painful shocks. Positive thinking means continuing to move on knowing full well that our next step, howsoever carefully taken, may sometimes go wrong. Nonetheless, we have to keep walking with vigour and gusto.