Positive Thinking: Can it Be Overdone?

There is a saying, "The higher you climb, the harder you will get hit when you fall down." I think it applies to thinking and especially dreaming, too. Now, I would be the last person to tell anyone to stop dreaming. Dreaming big and pursuing your dreams is a very good thing, and so is positive thinking. "I can do it. I will work hard and achieve it. I will become this and that." However. Sometimes a sobering dose of realism is good as well.

Positive thinking / big dreaming can hurt you bad when reality hits. Life is tough, and things do not always work out as we want them to. If you have gotten used to the idea that someday you will most certainly become a big movie star, it will be a hard blow to realize at some point that years have gone by, you are not one step closer to achieving your dream than you were after high school, and it is very unlikely that your stardom will happen, after all.

The example above is somewhat extreme, I admit; perhaps not so many of us seriously plan on achieving world fame. But positive thinking can play the same painful trick on us with minor goals and minor dreams. While it is good to believe in yourself, have goals, and work hard on achieving them, I would not advise thinking about them as if they are a done deal. Don't count your chickens before they hatch - or, as Europeans put it, don't skin the bear before you have shot it. It might so happen that you miss, and the bear runs away - and you won't get that fancy fur coat you already owned in your thoughts and perhaps bragged about. Ouch!!

For these reasons, I would advise to balance positive thinking with some healthy "if's." Honestly weighing your chances of achieving this or that is helpful as well. "If I get this promotion, I can do all kinds of fun things with the additional money; however, I am relatively new at the company, and there are four other employees eligible for this promotion, more experienced than myself, so perhaps I should be realistic and not become too upset if someone else gets promoted."

Climb high - fall down hard. Climb carefully and consider the possibility of falling, and you will not get hurt so bad.