Mental Fitness Now™

One of the basic skills for dealing with stressful situations and becoming more mentally balanced (and therefore more mentally resilient) is to know how to balance positive thinking with a healthy sense of realism. In order to do this one of the keys is to understand that both positive thinking and realism have a higher expression and an extreme or imbalanced expression.

Positive thinking

The higher expression of positive thinking involves:

• Seeing the positive side of every situation
• Thinking and envisioning the best possible outcomes
• Thinking from a senses of fullness rather than lack
• Taking responsibility for the situation and our role in it (see previous article on personal power)
• Ensuring that what you think and say about a situation are framing it in a helpful and constructive light, and not a negative one that will sabotage a potentially fruitful outcome.

 The lower, imbalanced or negative expression of “positive thinking” involves what is commonly called the Pollyanna complex the characteristics of which are:

• Turning a blind eye to the very real drawbacks, risks and dangers of a situation due to naiveté, underlying fear or just because we believe we can just think our way to a positive result
• Choosing to trust people, groups or aspects of ourself who are really not reliable. Sometimes this is naiveté, sometimes we have become attached to an outcome that causes us to not want to see what is really there
• Confusing realistic risk assessment (necessary) with negative thinking that will sabotage our positive thoughts and visualizations (unnecessary and dangerous).

Healthy realism

The higher or positive expression of realism involves:

• Being able to take a good hard look at a situation and make an objective or scientific assessment of the real risks or drawbacks of the different courses of action that we might choose to engage with. If you doubt the objectivity of your own perspective, get someone else’s
• Not being attached to outcomes. Attachment to outcomes blinds us to risks and drawbacks
•  Without being cynical, knowing when others are not revealing the truth about a situation, or when we may be hiding the truth from ourself.

 The lower, unhealthy extreme or imbalanced expression of realism involves:

• Undue cynicism
• Being a victim of circumstance
• Thinking the worst due to fear or anger
• Any time where there is undue or unhealthy emphasis on the worst case scenario 

So, in conclusion Mastery of this aspect of transforming stress involves

• Combining the higher expression of positive thinking and healthy realism together
• Avoiding imbalanced extremes of either. 

© Toby Ouvry 2010. You are welcome to use this article, but you must seek Toby’s permission first! Contact info@mentalfitnessnow.com