How to Pretend to be Positive

When my sister and I were kids, my mum had the infuriating habit of making us say positive things when we just wanted to be grumpy. For example, if I said:

"I hate school and all my classes are crap."

She might respond, feigning a sweet voice: "Now say that in a positive way (?)"

Of course this wouldn't instantly change our mood. Often we might shout something like:

"I positively hate everything and I positively don't want to talk to you."
Sometimes though, it might change to "I didn't like English today, because I got told off for talking." and then (having been coaxed out of the angry mindset) adding "...but Physics was ok... and we had pizza for lunch."

Now, years later, I've suddenly found myself bothered by people who tend towards looking on "the dark side" of situations (that's not a Star Wars reference, I mean the opposite of "the bright side"). I sometimes try to invite them to look at their situation more positively, but more often I'll just zone out and let them get on with it.

The problem is that, in the end, the tendency to look at things in a particular way starts to seep into your unconsciousness unless you actively avoid it.

Now, I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a really positive person. But I realised that I might have an advantage, because my mum's "annoying habit" taught me the ability to notice when I'm using negative language. Many people, I guess, don't even know when they're saying negative things.

In fact, I've always thought of my mum as a generally positive person, and many people would agree with me, so it was a surprise to me to find out the other day that she viewed "everything as a problem" for most of her life. When I was about 6 years old, she actively made a decision to stop using negative language.

But if we say negative things, does that mean that we are a negative person?

Is is possible that by changing what we say, we can change how we feel, even if we don't initially believe what we're saying?

Time to break out the research.

According to cognitive studies, (described in some fascinating articles by Lera Boroditsky of Stanford here and here) the language we use has a huge effect on how we view the world. One lovely example she gives is the Pormpuraaw aborigines of Northern Australia, who describe all spatial concepts in terms of compass direction. So instead of saying "My right leg hurts" they would say "My south-east leg hurts" if they were facing north-east, and "My west leg hurts" if they were facing south.
  She explains that this linguistic difference not only means that they can always tell you what direction is north, but also changes their perception of "the direction of time". When asked to arrange, for example, a series of pictures showing the growing stages of man, they will always arrange the pictures so that the sequence goes east to west, whatever direction the person is facing. Perhaps this is be because the sun travels east to west.
  Boroditsky concludes that even arbitrary quirks in the differences between languages can dramatically alter how the speaker perceives the world.

This suggests that language has a huge effect on our internal experience.

We're used to the idea that what we say "out loud" reflects what we feel "inside", but we're less familiar with the possibility that the arrow of causality might go the other way.

But how does that effect positivity?

By consistently using negative language, our view of the world will eventually change, become more negative. It won't happen overnight, but gradually so you might not even notice.

Maybe you pick up the habit of saying "I don't think so" as a response to people's suggestions (I don't know anyone that does this, it's just an example). You maybe don't really believe that everyone's suggestions are bad, it's just a verbal tic which you've unconsciously picked up.

The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people are uncomfortable holding contrasting beliefs in their self at the same time. So, people will naturally change either their internal beliefs or their actions in order to reduce the contrast. The theory is now generally accepted, but even competing theories all seem to agree that our actions and our thoughts tend towards some sort sort of "happy medium".

Basically, we can't have both a positive disposition and a negative way of speaking, nor vice versa. Eventually we will think more negatively or we will talk more positively, or perhaps somewhere in the middle. You'd start to think of people's suggestions as worse, simply to align with your unconscious catchphrase "I don't think so".

Speech is an action, a social action, and so one way to avoid negativity is to surround yourself with positive people (as many people suggest), but can't we be a bit more pro-active than that?

Perhaps a good place to start is just to start noticing how we use language. We can actively practice saying positive things instead of passively accepting a negative mindset. Even if you don't believe the positive things you say, the mere act of changing the way you speak will start to change how you think, as our friends from cognitive research suggest.

If you fancy starting right now, here are some exercises in positive rephrasing. It's interesting that a lot of the phrases are "don't think of a black cat" phrases. For example, the phrase "Don't be afraid to fail." includes the phrase "be afraid to fail" so on an unconscious level you will still react to the instruction to be afraid of failure even though the sentence supposedly says the opposite.

To finish up, I'll just give you this nice little list, adapted from here:

Negative phrasing:

• tells the listener what cannot be done
• has a subtle tone of blame
• includes words like can't, won't, unable to (which informs the listener what you cannot do)
• does not stress positive actions that would be appropriate, or positive consequences.

Positive phrasing:

• tells the listener what can be done
• suggests alternatives and choices available
• sounds helpful and encouraging
• stresses positive actions and positive consequences that can be anticipated.