The illusion of positive thinking
The illusion of positive thinking There are so many approaches out there that say they can support you to think more positively. The growth mindset movement has made its way into schools teaching children that they can have power over what they think and that they can change up negative thoughts for positive thoughts. The issue is that this whole system is built on the belief that we have power over what we think and that it is us doing the thinking!! I sat in a session the other day with a child who was telling me about how she had a poster in her classroom with an image of a tree. On one half of the tree were positive thoughts with a green background and on the other half of the tree were negative thoughts, with a red background. Now this interested me, and as we sat there and drew out the image of the tree with the thoughts on either side to represent positive and negative, I watched her response as I explained how thought functions. I explained that thought is like the pendulum