Be Careful What You Think – it might just come true!
2 Comments Published by Andrew Leigh June 7th, 2007 in Mind Power.| Creative Development for Artists, Writers and all Artistic Creativity |
Consider this – you focus on a task that makes you think about words associated with old age – words like wrinkled, grey and bingo. And then you finish the task, get up and walk away. Could simply having these words in your mind affect the speed that you walk away?
Well, according to recent studies you would walk significantly more slowly. Yes, merely having those age related words in your head has a negative effect on your walking speed.
And how about this?
A group of people are randomly split into two groups. One group is asked to imagine the mindset of a university professor. The second group gets stuck with the mindset of a football hooligan. You might reasonably expect that this would make a difference to your level of aggression or your belief in your own intelligence – but how about something as straightforward and concrete as your ability to answer general knowledge questions?
I’m sure you’ve guessed the answer already. The ‘professor’ group scored 60% on a general knowledge test – the ‘hooligan’ group only 46% on the same test. The only difference between the two groups was the mindset they’d been asked to adopt.
Hundreds of books have been published on the power of positive thinking, many of them making claims that verge on the magical. What I like about the examples above is that they make no claims whatsoever. They simply state the results of two scientific studies. In fact the book that cites these studies, Quirkology, The Curious Science of Everyday Lives
Nevertheless, the lessons from these two studies are enormous. They show clearly that what we think about can directly affect both our body and mind.
The amazing thing here is that neither study asked anyone to actually believe they were a professor, a hooligan or a stereotypical senior citizen. Imagine then the difference we can make by feeding ourselves with nourishing positive thoughts and observations instead of listening to and believing our poisonous negative thoughts.
So, for example, when your current creative project goes wrong do you think, that’s not like me – I’ll make sure I do better next time – or – typical! I really am as thick as two short planks?
If it’s the first – well done and keep up the good work. If the second – stop it now! It simply isn’t good for you on any level. Results of dozens of studies now make our knowledge on this area cast iron: negative thinking lowers your personal effectiveness, ability and happiness. Who wants that?
Positive thinking makes you more effective, more able, more confident and happier. That’s as true of your creative life as it is of your life as a whole.
Really, it’s a no-brainer. Be kind to yourself – give yourself the gift of positive thought today.
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Thanks for the great post! Not only were the studies cool and informative, you got me started on getting out of my own funk. I was in the middle of a self-pity party, feeling all bad and pathetic about myself and hating myself for it too, when I read your post. It was like a gentle wake up call to knock it off. So I wrote my own post to get all that junk out and so far, things seem to be improving.
Thanks!
That’s great news, Rachel. It’s surprising how the negativity can creep up on us and take over our thinking. And what’s worse is that it all seems to make perfect sense at the time.