 Hello, my beautiful internet friends. Tonight, I wanted to share with you a little bit of a speech that I gave today about the tyranny of positive thinking. Tyranny of positive thinking. You don't hear that too often, do you? If you've been watching my videos, I've brought up this idea before that positive thinking by itself is actually not effective and more than that can actually be harmful, but positive psychology has some really great benefits. And the reason I wanted to share this video with you guys tonight is that as I was researching this speech, and I'll get to the speech in just a second because there's a story about that, I actually found that it really helped me. And so I'm gonna share all the articles that I used to research this. There's links to a lot of the studies that they did, but it was really affirming to me because I always felt like defective, you know? I'll feel defective a lot when I can't be positive or happy or upbeat all the time, but there is substantial research and many, many, many professionals agree that no one should be positive all the time and that when we encourage people to do that, when we preach the power of positive thinking and essentially shame people for having negative emotions like sadness, fear, pain, anger, frustration, uncertainty, it's actually really damaging. As I was going through and preparing for this speech, I found myself really helped by so many of these articles because it helped me actually work through some of the guilt that I have over feeling things sometimes, over like feeling sad, dealing with depression, having anxiety, or just being upset sometimes. So here is the speech, but before we dive into that two things. I wrote this speech last night and I rehearsed it this morning right before I gave it. I knew for a week in advance that I was gonna be talking and then just stuff happened and I forgot to write it and I put it off and this is the least prepared for a speech I've ever been. It did not go the way I wanted it to go, but you know what? I got up there and I talked to people and that's the important part. As always, the full version will be available on Patreon if you wanna see the full unedited uncut version. So let's dive in now. Positive thinking will ruin your life. I know at this point we're gonna pause, I'm guessing at least, and you're thinking, what an unpleasant individual. Why is she speaking to us today? Who let her become Toastmasters president? I absolutely understand if that is your sentiment, I would be right with you a few years ago. I was an advocate and a believer and even proselytized, even if it's a positive thinking for many years. I started to notice that the results didn't quite line up with what was promised. If you have ever expressed to a friend that you're having a rough day, that something went wrong in your life, you're having a hard time, and the response was, it could be worse. You should just think positively about that. You have been hit with a beam of positive thinking. The idea is that if you think positive, positive things will happen to you. If you have negative thoughts, you should reject them, you should push them out of your head and your life will become better. The problem is that this is based on a very real concept that works, but as many things in popular culture, we've taken it, we've kind of twisted it, we've perverted it, we've mutated it, and we've boiled it down into trendy little sayings. Positive psychology is very different from positive thinking. Positive psychology was established in 1988 by Dr. Martin Seldemann. He was the former president of the American Psychological Association. And what positive psychology focuses on is building resilience, increasing mindfulness. Things that actually improve our lives and require introspection. Learning to be grateful, but attaching meaning to that. Why are we grateful for these things in our life? Dr. Barbara Held, who is a professor of psychology at Bedouin College, calls the positive thinking movement the tyranny of the positive attitude. She writes, by the tyranny of positive attitude, I mean that our culture has little tolerance for those who can't smile and look on the bright side of adversity. This is true for people who have experienced loss, trauma, tragedy, you name it. If you can't turn things around within a couple weeks and smile, think positive, be grateful, then there's shame attached to it. As this movement's popularity grew, people who were dealing with depression or anxiety or other mental health issues were just being people and having a hard time were chained and felt guilt over experiencing very human emotions. It might be no surprise to you that I am passionate about this subject due to personal experience. Don't want to shock anybody. I am missing like something to tell you. I'm sorry, I didn't want to spring that anybody. But eight months ago, I lost my leg. I became an amputee. And as I went through kind of the roller coaster of emotions and adjusting to it, there were moments where I felt really, really angry. There were moments where I was upset. There were moments where I was depressed or sad or frustrated or scared or unsure. And when I expressed these feelings with people around me, oftentimes the response was, don't be so negative. You know, look on the bright side of things. What can you be grateful for your life? Look at all the things you can still do. I was dealing with a very real loss and I am dealing with a very real loss and the response was essentially to be scolded for dealing with that emotion. There was a 2012 study done by the University of Queensland. It was released in the journal called Emotion. And what they found is that when people expect those around them to not want them to feel negative emotions, those negative emotions rise. So there's kind of a double gut punch, if you will. You feel something bad. You feel hurt. You feel trauma. You feel anger or whatever has happened. And then you feel bad about feeling bad. Maybe think more positive. I mean, it really could be worse. The problem is that it actually adds to someone's overall negative well-being. I fully, passionately believe in living the best life that you can, whoever you want to be, whatever you want to do. And because of that, I'm here to share with you that the way to achieve that is not through the power of positive thinking, but by actually experiencing negative things and not denying them. If you want to live the full human experience, we have to feel a full range of human emotions. And so I would encourage you today to harness the power of positive psychology in your life, look into it, see what it really is and what it can do for you, and leave the tyranny of positive thinking in the dust. So what do you guys think about this? Have you had positive thinking like shove down your throats, basically? Like I have, at least that's been my experience, positive thinking is so ingrained in our culture that I almost feel like it's a knee-jerk reaction for a lot of people. Like when you express that something's going on or something's going wrong or whatever, it's like it's the right thing to say to be like, it could be worse, be more positive, look on the bright side, replace those negative thoughts with positive ones, and you're gonna succeed. It's like what we've been conditioned to do, like we've been trained to do. Like I said, I fully believe in living vibrant, positive, optimistic lives, but part of doing that is actually experiencing the negative, actually experiencing that full range of human emotions, because we're people, we were designed to feel emotions, but not to let them rule us. Let me know what you think about that. Do you agree? Do you totally disagree? Do you think I'm off my rocker? Like I said, I'm gonna link a lot of the references, a lot of the articles that I read to prepare for the speech, they really helped me. They actually made me feel a lot better about moments that I'm struggling, moments that I'm having a hard time, moments that I'm not chipperin' up beat all the time, and from your comments to me, I know a lot of you guys feel the same way. So many of you struggle with the same thing. So let me know what you think. I would love it if you would hit like and subscribe on this video. As you know, I'm working towards 100,000 subscribers. I think it'd be cool to get there pretty soon, like maybe before the end of the year. Laugh to go, maybe, maybe not. As always, a huge thank you to all of my patrons over on Patreon. You guys make all of this possible sincerely. A huge shout out especially goes to our patron of the day today, who is Frank Seiler. Frank, thank you so much for your continued support. You've been a member for a little while now, and it honestly means so much to me. Thank you. Quick note, I am also still running that promotion that if you join at a certain level, I will be drawing you a personal hand-drawn doodle from me to you, original art. I can't promise it'll be a masterpiece, but I can promise it'll be me just for you. I love you guys. I am thinking of you. I appreciate you listening to me, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye, guys. 🎵 Hand her from the sky 🎵