No One is Positive All The Time — On Positivity Practice and the Danger of Extreme Positivity Culture

If you’ve been in my training before, I’ve probably spoken to you about positivity. I’ve probably expressed how important it is to think positive, because the world has a funny way of giving us what we expect. When we go into something anticipating a negative outcome, it usually becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can also observe the contagion of emotion — how one negative salesperson can spread their negative vibes to everyone else in the team; and how one person in a great mood can inadvertently offer their joy to everyone around them. I even vaguely recall one study that suggested when you put a delinquent student into a room of high achievers, it is the high achievers who are brought down and not the delinquent who is brought up. We have all heard the phrase ‘one bad apple ruins the bunch’, and when it comes to mindset this seems undeniable.

However.

I am becoming increasingly concerned with the way the well-intentioned message of positivity is being presented and executed. There seems to be this abruptness; this dismissal of all things negative. It’s almost like we are being encouraged to become positivity robots, who think in rainbows and sunshine, never feeling any sense of self-doubt, uncertainty, frustration or sadness. ‘Just be positive!’ ‘Don’t be negative!’ ‘Think good thoughts!’ This new rhetoric is to me a kind of extreme positivity culture, touted often by motivational speakers, trainers, managers…