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“How to Be
Happy: The Limits of Positive Thinking” My words with you this morning are the third part in a three-part sermon series on being happy. Three weeks ago, my sermon was titled “How to be Happy: The Big Picture,” and two weeks ago, my sermon was titled “How to be Happy: The Power of Positive Thinking.” In those two sermons I talked about what really makes us happy in life, and I made the bold claim, based on gobs of studies by social scientists, that how we think about our lives - - whether we are grateful for what we already have, whether we like ourselves and are confident in our own abilities, whether we are optimistic about the future - - is often far more important to our happiness than the actual circumstances of our lives - - for example, how attractive we are or how accomplished we are or how much money we have. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be,” and in those two sermons I heartily endorsed Lincoln’s philosophy. I also have to tell you that I at least try to practice what I preach, and during the past several weeks, I’ve been trying to think more positively. To tell truth, it doesn’t always come easily to me, but I’ve noticed that when I’ve tried to think more positively, I’ve actually felt happier myself, and it’s not a bad place to be. However, while positive thinking may be good for us in moderation, like many things that are good for us in moderation, the “power of positive thinking” has often been extremely overestimated and even exaggerated, especially here in the United States. In fact, one might say that in this country the purveyors of the power of positive thinking have popularized its appeal with such panegyrical and persuasive panache that it persistently, perversely, and perniciously pervades and permeates every person’s personal perspective, that some people may even think of it as a panacea for all problems, and that any who questions the power of positive thinking risks becoming a pariah. One might say that, though I wouldn’t recommend saying too fast, and if fact, this is what I want to do this morning - - question the power of positive thinking and talk about its limits. You might say that my words this morning are the fine print to the bold claim I made two weeks ago, or at least a caution against seeing positive thinking as a panacea to all problems. But what do I mean by the limits of positive thinking? First, thinking positively may make us feel better about our own lives, but I don’t believe it can change external reality, though this belief is quite common in our country. As some of you know, one of the most popular ministers in the United States is a man named Joel Osteen, who is pastor of the Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. Its services are broadcast on television to millions of people every week. Osteen is one of today’s most popular advocates of what is called the “prosperity gospel” - - a belief that if we only believe in God and think very positively, God will bless our lives in all kind of incredible ways. Have you ever been in a crowded restaurant waiting to be seated? In this situation, Osteen says, all you have to do is to pray, “Father, I thank you that I have favor with this hostess, and she’s going to seat me soon.” This technique will also work for finding parking spaces. Most importantly, Osteen says, it can make you rich. Let’s put aside for a moment the fact that the prosperity gospel so contradicts Jesus’ teachings about what’s important in life, let’s even put aside the profound theological question of whether any God or gods pay attentions to prayers regarding who gets seated first at Dennys, and let’s ask, “Does it work?” I suspect that if it truly did, the religious groups with the highest median incomes in the U.S. wouldn’t be Hindus, Reformed Jews, and Unitarian Universalists. Another version of this kind of thinking that replaces distorted Christian theology with New Age beliefs appeared in the 2006 best-seller The Secret by Australian author Rhonda Byrne. To be honest, I haven’t read the book, but according to Newsweek Magazine, the book makes the explicit claim that “you can manipulate objective physical reality - - the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know you exist - - through your thoughts and feelings” and says this is possible because of quantum physics. Let’s put aside Byrnes’s very disturbing suggestion that natural disasters - - such as the 2006 tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the recent earthquake in Haiti - - only happen to people who are on the “same frequency” as these events and evaluate her claim that because of quantum physics, our thoughts and feelings do influence external reality. I know very little about quantum physics, but the Nobel prize-winning physicists Murray Gell-Man, who presumably does, has said that - - and I think this is a technical term - - this is “quantum flapdoodle.” Now while some of us may either openly scoff or be respectfully dismissive of claims such as Osteen’s and Byrne’s, only a slightly more secularized version of their thinking is quite popular in corporate America. How many of you have seen Up in the Air, the movie starring George Clooney as a person who travels around the country firing people? The experiences of people in that movie aren’t very far from the real experiences of the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs to corporate downsizing since 1980. What has corporate America’s message been to these millions of people who have lost their jobs or those left with jobs but now doing the work of several former colleagues? Just think positively. Corporate America has jumped on the positive thinking bandwagon, and every year spends billions of dollars trying to get people to think more positively instead of trying to get at the root of some of the problems it faces. In 1994, on the same day that it announced that it would lay off 15,000 workers, AT&T sent its San Francisco staff to hear a Christian motivational speaker whose message was, “It’s your own fault. Don’t blame the system. Don’t blame the boss. Work harder. Pray more.” The 1998 book Who Moved My Cheese was a best-seller, in part, because corporations bought the book in bulk to distribute to employees to help them think more positively about losing their jobs. In 2007, when the mortgage industry began to collapse, requests among mortgage companies for motivational speakers rose 20 percent. There’s been some backlash from all this corporate happy talk. If you go to the website, www.despair.com , you can buy parodies of some of the motivational products that many corporations use. One of my favorites is a poster of a bear standing in a river catching a salmon. The caption reads, “Sometimes the journey of a thousand miles ends very, very badly.” Here’s another limit to positive thinking that I wish weren’t true: Positive thinking can’t cure cancer or cure other life-threatening diseases for that matter. It’s true that incredible things can happen as a result of the relationship between the mind and the body. When I was a student chaplain in Chicago during my preparation for ministry, I was once called to the room of a woman experiencing unexplained abdominal pain. The medical staff had run lots of tests and couldn’t figure out what was wrong. A psychiatrist was called next and couldn’t explain the woman’s pain. Then a chaplain was called. A nurse explained the situation to me in a hallway, and I asked, “What do you want me to do, an exorcism?” Inside of the woman’s room, I asked the woman if she wanted to pray, which is what I did with many patients, but she did not. Instead, I said to the woman, “Let’s try a visualization exercise.” “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s an exercise in which you imagine yourself in a calm, peaceful beautiful place,” I said. The truth is, though, I had no idea what I was doing. I was completely winging it, which was actually pretty good preparation for ministry. I had no training in doing visualization exercises and had only seen one done once on a TV drama in the 1970s. After we had finished the exercise, I asked the woman how she felt. “Much better,” she said. “Ok, anytime you begin to feel pain, try the exercise,” I said. When I left the woman’s room, I had a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings about what I had seemingly done, but the woman was discharged from the hospital a few days later without any pain. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “All things are possible to him who believes,” and before and since then, so many have made claims about the mind’s miraculous ability to heal the body - - from Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, to Norman Cousins in his The Anatomy of An Illness, to Bernie Sigel in his Love, Medicine and Miracles. Many recent claims have been made about the link between the emotions, the immune system, and life-threatening diseases. But how many of these claims are true? Here’s the best I’ve been able to find out. Numerous sophisticated scientific studies show that thinking positively, specifically having hope, has the possibility of tempering both pain and fear, and people with less pain and fear may seek out, risk, and better endure more aggressive medical treatments than those with more pain and fear, which may, in turn, positively affect their recovery. However, according to the most recent studies, while positive thinking may improve the quality of life of people diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, by itself, it doesn’t do anything to extend their length of life. But does it hurt? A psychiatrist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, recently suggested that the emphasis on positive thinking has put another “undue and inappropriate burden on patients, saying: I would find patients coming in with stories of being told by well-meaning friends, “I’ve read all about this - - if you got cancer, you must have wanted it…” Ever more distressing was the person who said, “I know I have to be positive all the time and that is the only way to cope with cancer - - but it’s so hard to do. I know that if I get sad, or scared or upset, I am making my tumor grow faster and I will have shortened my life.” As the social critic Barbara Enhrenreich says in her book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America - - and some of the examples I’ve mentioned up to now come from her book - - believing that positive thinking alone can make us rich, solve our job situation, or even make us well are all more recent examples of a phenomena that has been around for a long time in this country - - individualizing social problems, sometimes called “blaming the victim,” and this is dangerous. If positive thinking is the secret to getting rich in this country - - either through prayer or quantum physics, then nobody has to worry or do anything about the other causes of the growing divide between the very rich and the very poor. If positive thinking is the key to solving the problems of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, then President Obama doesn’t have to worry about creating jobs programs or even consider any more regulations that might prevent future economic collapses of corporations. If positive thinking is so important to curing life-threatening diseases, then nobody has to worry about studying the link between environmental carcinogens and cancer or funding more research for AIDS. Let me switch gears here, and talk about some of the more modest claims made about positive thinking. Two weeks ago, I did say that thinking positively - - about our life circumstances, about ourselves, and about our futures - - will help us be happier, but even here, I want to suggest a degree of moderation in thinking positively about bad events in our lives. What do I mean? Some people say believe that no matter what happens in life, it is somehow for the good. “All things work together for the good,” Paul says in Romans in Christian scripture. Some people believe that no matter what happens in life, at least some good comes out of it. Some people even believe that we need adversity and suffering in our lives to help us reach the highest levels of personal development and fulfillment. No pain, no gain - - physically or spiritually. But should we always to think positively, and even be grateful, for every bad experience that happens to us? Studies show that when bad things happen to us, we benefit in three primary ways: First, adversity can change the way we can think about ourselves. Most of us are stronger and more resilient than we realize and when we are experiencing difficulty, we often discover hidden resources within ourselves for coping. Having survived something terrible, we sometimes live with less fear and more hope and confidence about future challenges. Paul says, again in Romans, “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Nietzche said, “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” The Dalai Lama said, “The person who has had more experience of hardships can stand more firmly in the face of problems than the person who has never experienced suffering.” Adversity also sometimes opens us up to deeper relationships with other people. Adversity also sometimes help us to re-organize our priorities. There are many stories of people facing some adversity and, as a result, waking up to “what is really important in life” such as enjoying every day, spending more time with family and friends, or finally deciding to follow their heart’s passion in some direction that they had previously put off. Yet do these things always happen? Or instead, let’s say that somebody already is hopeful and confident. Let’s say somebody already has deep and close relationships with other people. Let’s say somebody already does a good job of living his or life according to “what is really important.” How should this person think about being diagnosed with a potentially life-threatening illness, or even about something more mundane such as having a tree fall on their car in their driveway? Robert Mesle is a professor of philosopher and religion and he suggests there are five things we might say after something bad has happened to us: “(1) It was horrible! Nothing can ever make up for the suffering I endured and still endure. (2) It was a terrible experience. I have learned to live with it and have tried to use it as a learning experience, but it will always be something I deeply regret. (3) Well, I’ve learned a lot from that experience, and I’m a better person in some ways because of it. But if I had a choice, I still wish it hadn’t happened. (4) It was a difficult experience, but I think it was for the best. (5) I’m glad it happened! However painful at the time, that experience taught me a great deal and led me to explore whole new ways of living. That lessons I learned from that event have far outweighed the problems.” Studies suggest that the more we can talk about the negative experiences of our lives as learning experiences, as being for the best, the happier we will be, but I also want to suggest that there are some things that happen in our lives and in the world which do not work together for the good, that have no redemptive value - - things like the Holocaust come to mind. Sometimes life is sad, unfair, and even tragic, and to deny this and to deny ourselves and others a chance to sometimes express fear, anger and grief or to try to force ourselves to think positively about something tragic seems not only unwise but uncompassionate as well. I want to suggest too that we even use moderation in thinking too positively about ourselves and our futures. What do I mean? I’ve got some bad news here, and that is, most of us are somewhat deluded about ourselves. According to studies, most of us see ourselves as more attractive, more intelligent, more interesting, more logical, fairer, and in general, more competent, than average. Think about this 90 percent of drivers consider themselves to be safer than average, and ninety-four percent of college professors consider themselves to be above-average teachers. I don’t even want to think what the percentages are for ministers and their preaching. Many people tend to think they will live longer, stay married longer, travel more often than is statistically likely. Fewer people believe they will get venereal disease, develop a drinking problem, develop gum disease, break a bone, or have a heart attack than is statistically likely. And the happier people are, usually the more deluded they are about themselves and their futures. The bad news is that the people who have the most accurate view of themselves and their futures are moderately depressed. When I reflect on this, on the one hand, I think to myself, what’s wrong with a little self-deception, especially in the name of happiness? On the other hand, I think to myself, I wonder what it would be like if 90 percent of drivers considered themselves to be “below average.” I wonder if more people just thought they were average if they wouldn’t drive a little slower and talk less on cell phones while driving. If more people thought they were just average, I wonder if they would exercise more, brush more often, and practice safer sex - - though not while driving. exercising more often, brushing more often, and practicing safer sex. I wonder if fewer college professors thought of themselves as above average if they would work a little harder to improve their teaching skills. If all of us heeded Jesus’ advice to pluck the log out of our own eye before picking the speck out of our neighbor’s eye - - in other words, thinking a little less positively about ourselves - - would we be less judgmental and more forgiving of others? Too much positive thinking can really get dangerous when people are in positions of power. For example, let’s consider the War in Iraq. Whether one supported the war in Iraq or didn’t support the war in Iraq, I think that the vast majority of Americans agree that it could have gone better than it did. Why didn’t it? According to Bob Woodward, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice failed to express some of her worries about the war in Iraq to President Bush because, she said, “the president almost demanded optimism. He didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing, or doubt.” Let’s also look at the current financial crises. Who said this about the secret of success? “Trusting your instincts, trusting your judgment, believing in yourself, and making decisions on the back of that trust is a remarkably powerful thing.” Answer: Joe Gregory, former president of the former investment company, Lehman Brothers. Interestingly, many Wall Street analysts who were not as rosy about the economy before it took a turn for the worse in 2007 were told by their employers to “improve their attitude,” or were simply fired. Many of us have heard that the Chinese character for “crisis” includes symbols for both danger and opportunity, and this specific belief and a broader culture of optimism is so pervasive in corporate America that when Eric Dezenhall gets called - - Dezenhall is a “crisis manager” in Washington D.C. whom individuals and organizations call when they are facing a potential public relations nightmare - - the first thing Dezenhall has to tell many clients is, “I’m going to tell you something you’re not going to like: ‘A crisis is not an opportunity.” I can’t help but wonder what the world would be more like - - how much more money would be in our retirement accounts, how many more people would have jobs, how many more American soliders and Iraqi civilians would be alive - - if some of our nation’s leaders optimism and been mixed with just a dash of pessimism. Now please don’t understand me to be suggesting that I now believe “doom and gloom” is the way to go. Just like I said two weeks ago, I still think positive thinking is not only a good thing, but a great thing, but what I’m striving for in my own life is what you might call a “mature positive thinking.” What do I mean by this? “Mature positive thinking” doesn’t mean thinking magically or thinking that positive thinking is the solution to every problem. Mature positive thinking doesn’t say that everything that has ever happened to us in our lives is good or even a blessing in disguise. Instead, mature positive thinking leaves room for the reality of tragedy, and for fear, anger, and grief and adopts the more nuanced view that while truly bad things happen to all of us, that overall, life is still good despite its limitations. Mature positive thinking doesn’t say that we should blithely accept all the circumstances of our lives without ever doing anything about them. Instead, mature positive thinking says that with persistence and patience we can change some of the circumstances of our lives Mature positive thinking doesn’t say we always do everything well, that we never make mistakes, and that we never hurt other people. Rather mature positive thinking says that even when we make mistakes and fail, we are still worthy of love and respect, and that we have the ability to learn from our mistakes. Mature positive thinking certainly doesn’t say we should complacently ignore suffering and injustice in our wider world, telling ourselves if others would just think more positively too, they’d be happier too. Rather, mature positive thinking says that working together with others, we have the ability to create a world that is more compassionate, just, and lasting. Mature positive thinking doesn’t say that nothing bad will ever happen to us in the future. Rather, it says, “Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. It says that if we act with intelligence and occasional caution, we may be able to prevent many bad things from happening to us. My friends, all things in moderation, and between the extremes of doom and gloom and unrealistic reckless optimism, may you find a path that will lead you to happiness and long life. So may it be. Amen. My sources for this sermon include The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness by Jerome Groopman, Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medeicine by Anne Harrington, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt, The Pursuit of Happiness by David G. Meyers, Process Theology by C. Robert Mesle, and Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. |
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