Positive thinking in a terrible job situation by David Yamada Its one thing to make the best of a bad workplace, but its quite another to engage in a sort of forced mode of positive thinking as a response to a terrible job situation. In a piece published on AlterNet, Alexander Kjerulf examines 5 Ways Positive Thinking Makes You Miserable at Work: 1. Faking emotions at work is stressful 2. Positive thinking makes things even worse for people who are unhappy at work 3. Negative emotions are a natural part of work 4. Positive thinking can contribute to quelling dissent and ignoring problems in the workplace 5. Trying to force yourself to be positive, makes you unhappy He offers extended explanations for each of these points. I recommend the full article to anyone who wants to understand more of he nuances between relentlessly negative and relentlessly positive attitudes at work. While endorsing the idea that people can change their mood and outlook through conscious effort, Kjerulf takes on the notion that you can always change your thinking in any situation, and that external circumstances dont matter, adding that telling someone in a really rough life situation that they should think more positively is incredibly condescending and a terrible way to trivialize their pain. He also does a nice job of distinguishing positive thinking from the field of positive psychology, the latter of which he generally endorses. Related posts If this general topic interests you, then these two earlier blog posts may be worth a look: Dealing with a bad workplace: Getting to tolerance (2014) -- What do I mean by “getting to tolerance”? It means being able to deal with the undesirable aspects of your workplace without them constantly taking you down a notch, or at least bouncing back after a bad day there. It means being able to do your job well, perhaps even with some enthusiasm and satisfaction, despite the negative aspects of your work environment. It means not taking the bad parts of work home with you every day. It also means being able to develop and weigh future options in a constructive and hopeful way. Beyond happiness: Founder of positive psychology movement expands his vision (2011) -- Perhaps the most articulate critic of the “happiness movement” in America has been Barbara Ehrenreich, political and social critic extraordinaire, who took happy talk to task in her 2009 book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In a sub-chapter titled “Managing Despair,” Ehrenreich excoriates corporate use of motivational speakers and team-building exercises to “inspire” workers in the midst of layoffs and pay & benefit cuts.... David Yamada | August 14, 2014 at 7:50 pm | Tags: happiness, Psychology at Work | Categories: happiness, psychology and work | URL: wp.me/poKbk-4Ht
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:57:26 +0000