As fresh people advance in their speaking careers, what will be their message, the content of their speeches? No one ever answered this question or, as far as I know, raised it at the NSA convention, I think because the answer is obvious: they will give speeches much like those given here, insisting that the only barriers to health and prosperity lie within oneself. If you want to improve your life—both materially and subjectively—you need to upgrade your attitude, revise your emotional responses, and focus your mind. One could think of other possible means of self-improvement—through education, for example, to acquire new “hard” skills, or by working for social changes that would benefit all. But in the world of positive thinking, the challenges are all interior and easily overcome through an effort of the will. This is no doubt what freshly minted speakers will tell the audiences they manage to find: I too was once lost and overcome by self-doubt, but then I found the key to success, and look at me now! Some listeners will learn by example that there is a career to be made proselytizing for positive thinking and will end up doing so themselves, becoming new missionaries for the cult of cheerfulness.
The Menace of Negative People
The promise of positivity is that it will improve your life in concrete, material ways. In one simple, practical sense, this is probably true. If you are “nice,” people will be more inclined to like you than if you are chronically grumpy, critical, and out of sorts. Much of the behavioral advice offered by the gurus, on their Web sites and in their books, is innocuous. “Smile,” advises one success-oriented positive-thinking site. “Greet coworkers.” The rewards for exuding a positive manner are all the greater in a culture that expects no less. Where cheerfulness is the norm, crankiness can seem perverse. Who would want to date or hire a “negative” person? What could be wrong with him or her? The trick, if you want to get ahead, is to simulate a positive outlook, no matter how you might actually be feeling.
The first great text on how to act in a positive way was Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, originally published in 1936 and still in print. Carnegie—who was born Carnagey but changed his name apparently to match that of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie—did not assume that his readers felt happy, only that they could manipulate others by putting on a successful act: “You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Two things. First, force yourself to smile. If you are alone, force yourself to whistle or hum a tune or sing.” You could “force” yourself to act in a positive manner, or you could be trained: “Many companies train their telephone operators to greet all callers in a tone of voice that radiates interest and enthusiasm.” The operator doesn’t have to feel this enthusiasm; she only has to “radiate” it. The peak achievement, in How to Win Friends, is to learn how to fake sincerity: “A show of interest, as with every other principle of human relationships, must be sincere.” 4 How do you put on a “show” of sincerity? This is not explained, but it is hard to imagine succeeding at it without developing some degree of skill as an actor. In a famous study in the 1980s, sociologist Arlie Hochschild found that flight attendants became stressed and emotionally depleted by the requirement that they be cheerful to passengers at all times. 5 “They lost touch with their own emotions,” Hochschild told me in an interview.
As the twentieth century wore on, the relevance of Carnegie’s advice only increased. More and more middle-class people were not farmers or small business owners but employees of large corporations, where the objects of their labor were likely to be not physical objects, like railroad tracks or deposits of ore, but other people. The salesman worked on his customers; the manager worked on his subordinates and coworkers. Writing in 1956, sociologist William H. Whyte viewed this development with grave misgivings, as a step toward the kind of spirit-crushing collectivization that prevailed in the Soviet Union: “Organizational life being what it is, out of sheer necessity, [a man] must spend most of his working hours in one group or another.” There were “the people at the conference table, the workshop, the seminar, the skull session, the after-hours discussion group, the project team.” In this thickly peopled setting, the “soft skills” of interpersonal relations came to count for more than knowledge and experience in getting the job done. Carnegie had observed that “even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15 percent of one’s financial success is due to one’s technical knowledge and about 85 percent is due to skill in human engineering.” 6
Today, hardly anyone needs to be reminded of the importance of interpersonal skills. Most of us work with people, on people, and around people. We have become the emotional wallpaper in other people’s lives, less individuals with our own quirks and needs than dependable sources of smiles and optimism. “Ninety-nine out of every 100 people report that they want to be around more positive people,” asserts the 2004 self-help book How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life. 7 The choice seems obvious—critical and challenging people or smiling yes-sayers? And the more entrenched the cult of cheerfulness becomes, the more advisable it is to conform, because your coworkers will expect nothing less. According to human resources consultant Gary S. Topchik, “the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that U.S. companies lose $3 billion a year to the effects of negative attitudes and behaviors at work” through, among other things, lateness, rudeness, errors, and high turnover. 8 Except in clear-cut cases of racial, gender, age, or religious discrimination, Americans can be fired for anything, such as failing to generate positive vibes. A computer technician in Minneapolis told me he lost one job for uttering a stray remark that was never identified for him but taken as evidence of sarcasm and a “negative attitude.” Julie, a reader of my Web site who lives in Austin, Texas, wrote to tell me of her experience working at a call center for Home Depot:
I worked there for about a month when my boss pulled me into a small room and told me I “obviously wasn’t happy enough to be there.” Sure, I was sleep deprived from working five other jobs to pay for private health insurance that topped $300 a month and student loans that kicked in at $410 a month, but I can’t recall saying anything to anyone outside the lines of “I’m happy to have a job.” Plus, I didn’t realize anyone had to be happy to work in a call center. My friend who works in one refers to it [having to simulate happiness] as the kind of feeling you might get from getting a hand job when your soul is dying.
What has changed, in the last few years, is that the advice to at least act in a positive way has taken on a harsher edge. The penalty for nonconformity is going up, from the possibility of job loss and failure to social shunning and complete isolation. In his 2005 best seller, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, T. Harv Eker, founder of “Peak Potentials Training,” advises that negative people have to go, even, presumably, the ones that you live with: “Identify a situation or a person who is a downer in your life. Remove yourself from that situation or association. If it’s family, choose to be around them less.” 9 In fact, this advice has become a staple of the self-help literature, of both the secular and Christian varieties. “GET RID OF NEGATIVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE,” writes motivational speaker and coach Jeffrey Gitomer. “They waste your time and bring you down. If you can’t get rid of them (like a spouse or a boss), reduce your time with them.” 10 And if that isn’t clear enough, J. P. Maroney, a motivational speaker who styles himself “the Pitbull of Business,” announces:
Negative People SUCK!
That may sound harsh, but the fact is that negative people do suck. They suck the energy out of positive people like you and me. They suck the energy and life out of a good company, a good team, a good relationship. . . . Avoid them at all cost. If you have to cut ties with people you’ve known for a long time because they’re actually a negative drain on you, then so be it. Trust me, you’re better off without them. 11
What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the “negative people” from one’s life? It might be a good move to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the col
icky infant, or the sullen teenager. And at the workplace, while it’s probably advisable to detect and terminate those who show signs of becoming mass killers, there are other annoying people who might actually have something useful to say: the financial officer who keeps worrying about the bank’s subprime mortgage exposure or the auto executive who questions the company’s overinvestment in SUVs and trucks. Purge everyone who “brings you down,” and you risk being very lonely or, what is worse, cut off from reality. The challenge of family life, or group life of any kind, is to keep gauging the moods of others, accommodating to their insights, and offering comfort when needed.
But in the world of positive thinking other people are not there to be nurtured or to provide unwelcome reality checks. They are there only to nourish, praise, and affirm. Harsh as this dictum sounds, many ordinary people adopt it as their creed, displaying wall plaques or bumper stickers showing the word “Whining” with a cancel sign through it. There seems to be a massive empathy deficit, which people respond to by withdrawing their own. No one has the time or patience for anyone else’s problems.
In mid-2006, a Kansas City pastor put the growing ban on “negativity” into practice, announcing that his church would now be “complaint free.” Also, there would be no criticizing, gossiping, or sarcasm. To reprogram the congregation, the Reverend Will Bowen distributed purple silicone bracelets that were to be worn as reminders. The goal? Twenty-one complaint-free days, after which the complaining habit would presumably be broken. If the wearer broke down and complained about something, then the bracelet was to be transferred to the other wrist. This bold attack on negativity brought Bowen a spread in People magazine and a spot on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Within a few months, his church had given out 4.5 million purple bracelets to people in over eighty countries. He envisions a complaint-free world and boasts that his bracelets have been distributed within schools, prisons, and homeless shelters. There is no word yet on how successful they have been in the latter two settings.
So the claim that acting in a positive way leads to success becomes self-fulfilling, at least in the negative sense that not doing so can lead to more profound forms of failure, such as rejection by employers or even one’s fellow worshipers. When the gurus advise dropping “negative” people, they are also issuing a warning: smile and be agreeable, go with the flow—or prepare to be ostracized.
It is not enough, though, to cull the negative people from one’s immediate circle of contacts; information about the larger human world must be carefully censored. All the motivators and gurus of positivity agree that it is a mistake to read newspapers or watch the news. An article from an online dating magazine offers, among various tips for developing a positive attitude: “Step 5: Stop Watching the News. Murder. Rape. Fraud. War. Daily news is often filled with nothing but negative stories and when you make reading such material a part of your daily lifestyle, you begin to be directly affected by that environmental factor.”
Jeffrey Gitomer goes further, advising a retreat into one’s personal efforts to achieve positive thinking: “All news is negative. Constant exposure to negative news can’t possibly have a positive impact on your life. The Internet will give you all the news you need in about a minute and a half. That will free up time that you can devote to yourself and your positive attitude.” 12
Why is all news “negative”? Judy Braley, identified as an author and attorney, attributes the excess of bad news to the inadequate spread of positive thinking among the world’s population:
The great majority of the population of this world does not live life from the space of a positive attitude. In fact, I believe the majority of the population of this world lives from a place of pain, and that people who live from pain only know how to spread more negativity and pain. For me, this explains many of the atrocities of our world and the reason why we are bombarded with negativity all the time. 13
At the NSA convention, I found myself talking to a tall man whose shaved head, unsmiling face, and stiff bearing suggested a military background. I asked him whether, as a coach, he felt people needed a lot of pumping up because they were chronically depressed. No, was his answer, sometimes they’re just lazy. But he went on to admit that he, too, got depressed when he read about the war in Iraq, so he now scrupulously avoids the news. “What about the need to be informed in order to be a responsible citizen?” I asked. He gave me a long look and then suggested, sagely enough, that this is what I should work on motivating people to do.
For those who need more than the ninety-second daily updates permitted by Gitomer, there are at least two Web sites offering nothing but “positive news.” One of them, Good News Blog, explains that “with ample media attention going out to the cruel, the horrible, the perverted, the twisted, it is easy to become convinced that human beings are going down the drain. ‘Good News’ was going to show site visitors that bad news is news simply because it is rare and unique.” Among this site’s recent top news stories were “Adoptee Reunited with Mother via Webcam Reality Show,” “Students Help Nurse Rescued Horses Back to Good Health,” and “Parrot Saves Girl’s Life with Warning.” At [http://happynews.com] happynews.com, there was a surprising abundance of international stories, although not a word about Darfur, Congo, Gaza, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Instead, in a sampling of a day’s offerings, I found “Seven-Month-Old from Nepal Receives Life-Saving Surgery,” “100th Anniversary of the US-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty,” “Many Americans Making Selfless Resolutions,” and “Childhood Sweethearts Attempt Romantic Adventure.”
This retreat from the real drama and tragedy of human events is suggestive of a deep helplessness at the core of positive thinking. Why not follow the news? Because, as my informant at the NSA meeting told me, “You can’t do anything about it.” Braley similarly dismisses reports of disasters: “That’s negative news that can cause you emotional sadness, but that you can’t do anything about.” The possibilities of contributing to relief funds, joining an antiwar movement, or lobbying for more humane government policies are not even considered. But at the very least there seems to be an acknowledgment here that no amount of attitude adjustment can make good news out of headlines beginning with “Civilian casualties mount . . .” or “Famine spreads . . .”
Of course, if the powers of mind were truly “infinite,” one would not have to eliminate negative people from one’s life either; one could, for example, simply choose to interpret their behavior in a positive way—maybe he’s criticizing me for my own good, maybe she’s being sullen because she likes me so much and I haven’t been attentive, and so on. The advice that you must change your environment—for example, by eliminating negative people and news—is an admission that there may in fact be a “real world” out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only “positive” response is to withdraw into one’s own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news, and smiling people.
The Law of Attraction
If ostracism is the stick threatening the recalcitrant, there is also an infinitely compelling carrot: think positively, and positive things will come to you. You can have anything, anything at all, by focusing your mind on it—limitless wealth and success, loving relationships, a coveted table at the restaurant of your choice. The universe exists to do your bidding, if only you can learn to harness the power of your desires. Visualize what you want and it will be “attracted” to you. “Ask, believe, and receive,” or “Name it and claim it.”
This astonishingly good news has been available in the United States for over a century, but it hit the international media with renewed force in late 2006, with the runaway success of a book and DVD entitled The Secret. Within a few months of publication, 3.8 million copies were in print, with the book hitting the top of both the USA Today and New York Times best seller lists. It helped that the book was itself a beautiful object, printed on glossy paper and covered in what looked like a medieval manuscript adorned with
a red seal, vaguely evoking that other bestseller The Da Vinci Code. It helped also that the author, an Australian TV producer named Rhonda Byrne, or her surrogates won admiring interviews on Oprah, the Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Larry King Live. But The Secret relied mostly on word-of-mouth, spreading “like the Norwalk virus through Pilates classes, get-rich-quick websites and personal motivation blogs,” as the Ottawa Citizen reported. 14 I met one fan, a young African American woman, in the bleak cafeteria of the community college she attends, where she confided that it was now her secret.
Despite its generally respectful media reception, The Secret attracted—no doubt unintentionally, in this case—both shock and ridicule from Enlightenment circles. The critics barely knew where to begin. In the DVD, a woman admires a necklace in a store window and is next shown wearing it around her neck, simply through her conscious efforts to “attract” it. In the book, Byrne, who struggled with her weight for decades, asserts that food does not make you fat—only the thought that food could make you fat actually results in weight gain. She also tells the story of a woman who “attracted” her perfect partner by pretending he was already with her: she left a space for him in her garage and cleared out her closets to make room for his clothes, and, lo, he came into her life. 15 Byrne herself claims to have used “the secret” to improve her eyesight and to no longer need glasses. Overwhelmed by all this magic, Newsweek could only marvel at the book’s “explicit claim . . . that you can manipulate objective physical reality—the numbers in a lottery drawing, the actions of other people who may not even know you exist—through your thoughts and feelings.” 16