"The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking"
By Julie Norem

Julie Norem explains that there is a strategy called "defensive pessimism", which could look like negative thinking.

The author says: "Defensive pessimism is more than just pessimism".

Deffensive pessimists tend to run their minds through all possible things that could go wrong on a specific task or situation.

Then, they work to make sure that if things did go wrong, they would have everything into place to cope with events. Preparing for negative and improbable events could seem like a waste of time, at first sight.

However, Julie Norem run experiments that demonstrated that strategic optimism does not help negative thinkers.

In ensuring that everything is in place to cope with negative events should they ever happen, defensive pessimists find a way to deal with anxiety.

Julie Norem says: "Defensive pessimism involves learning to tolerate negative emotions in order to get things done".

In the end, "defensive pessimists, in contrast to other pessimists, have hope".

The wrapping of the content

It is well written, but it is also slow. Its weakest point, to me, is that it has an academic tone to it, which made it boring at times.

I recommend this book to you if you are interested in defensive pessimism. Perhaps it could help you, if you tend to think about what could go wrong in certain scenarios.

However, if you are a natural optimist, I don't find that "The positive power of negative thinking" would be very useful to you.

Julie Norem quotes Bob Dylan:

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