'The Positive Power Of Negative Thinking' By Julie Norem
'The positive power of negative thinking' is a book not so much about negative thinking as it is about a way for pessimists to deal with anxiety.
Julie Norem explains that there is a strategy called "defensive pessimism", which could look at first like negative thinking.
Defensive pessimists tend to think through all the 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 in place to cope with events.
Preparing for negative and improbable events could seem like a waste of time; however, Julie Norem run experiments that demonstrated that strategic optimism does not help negative thinkers.
Defensive pessimists find a way to deal with anxiety when they ensure that everything is in place to cope with negative events should they happen.
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".
Is this book for you?
'The positive power of negative thinking' is a very well researched book, and it includes many examples and shares experiments that the author conducted - definitely good information.
However, the academic tone that it has may put you off or make the content appear boring. You also may not find this book useful if you naturally tend to be an optimistic person.
I would however recommend 'The positive power of negative thinking' to you if you tend to worry about hypothetical situations and you want to learn new strategies to cope.
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"A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do."
Bob Dylan
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