“
Success is not final, failure is not fatal.
- Winston Churchill
We live in an era of overindulgence. While the media
likes to turn the spotlight on our junk food and
computer game–addicted youth, our overindulgence is
not confined to the physical (or lack thereof).
Today, our psychological lives are also characterised
by relentless positivism and happiness delusions as we
strive to create a perpetual mono-emotional state, such
that we can never be truly sated.
”
Of course, there are a number of reasons for this. It is
in our natures to err towards optimism. Hope is quite
possibly the most powerful drug we have ever injected
into our cerebellums and many of us have an addiction
so acute that we will sacrifice almost everything to
satisfy it.
One of the problems with our overindulgence in the
positivity and hope fantasies touted by much of the
self-help school is that they inform so many of our
strategies in business, and in life for that matter. Added
to this is the fact that they’re not especially helpful if we
want to achieve actual results.
Now we’re certainly not suggesting that optimism
underscored with effort is a bad thing — quite the
contrary. What we’re talking about is the baseless
optimism that dominates so much of our social
commentary and leaves us impotent in the face of
reality. More importantly, we’re asserting that one of
the consequences of this kind of optimism is that we
court failure by not accounting for it.
Sure they’re entertaining and they temporarily
make us feel good (selfhelp’s comparison with rock
concerts is well earned: you leave on a high, buy the
merchandise and a month later it’s all gathering dust).
But the motivation industry’s almost religious status has
convinced many of us to abandon our own cognitive
processes and ‘follow our bliss’: trust the universe
and invest in a cork-board! (It’s important to note at
this point that there is a huge distinction between
affirmations and mental rehearsal.)
We act as if we are generous, bold and intelligent all
the time, and as a result we adopt hope as a strategy.
We shun criticism as pessimism and at the first sign of
negativity, we put our fingers in our ears and chant,
‘I’m not listening, I’m not listening’. Or else, we
double down on a positivity bender and cavort like an
evangelical congregation reciting cheery affirmations
laced with doubt and desperation: ‘I am rich, thin and
successful … I am a preciously unique snowflake filled
with abundance’, and the like.
Consequently, great ideas, extraordinary te