Eric and Emma, the couple up the hill from me in
Sausalito have been married 54 years, they proudly told me. They walked, hand-in-hand past my home each morning,
usually laughing, smiling and pointing out things to each other along the way.
Originally from Ireland, they listened to BBC at dawn so they usually had a
tidbit of news to share with me if they happened to pass my home when I was
finishing my lame attempt at morning exercises in the back yard.
When Emma died suddenly last year, he stopped walking,
stayed in their home and ignored my knock on their door. Later, when he started walking again,
he told me his son, a public speaker on leadership, suggested that he start
saying positive self-affirmations every morning “to lift his mood.” He
retorted, “My mood doesn’t need lifting!
It’s right where it’s supposed to be.” So his well-intentioned son then mailed him a card pack with cheery faces on one
side and, on the other, a series of upbeat daily affirmations. The card pack was entitled "Yes, I Can!” to which he responded (to me, but not his son, I gather) “No I won’t!”
That inspired Eric to act, but not in the way his
son intended. He wrote his own series of Realistic Affirmations. The sentiments reflected
his way of responding to grief, his stubborn resistance to being
told to feel better and his core attitude about life. Some were funny. Yet his basic resilience started to shine
through as he finished writing his sayings by the end of the year. “Not every
cloud has a silver lining so start liking the clouds."
I thought of Eric today when I read that Norman Vincent
Peale may have been wrong, at least for many people when he advocated saying
positive self-affirmations to lift your mood. That oft-repeated notion that
feeding ourselves upbeat messages can make us feel better isn’t necessarily
true according to Joanne Wood's research. In fact, these
wildly popular self-esteem boosters put some people “in peril.” (This finding
may disturb fervent The Law of Attraction followers.)
If, for example, you say to yourself, “I’m a loveable
person” yet you don’t really feel that you are you will feel worse than people
who:
• Did not repeat the affirmation, or
• Focused on how the affirmation was both true and not
true.
That’s a startling revelation for many of us Americans
who have been bombarded with self-help messages based on the belief that
positive affirmations are entirely beneficial. It’s also a relief to know that one wasn’t simply
self-defeating when one was feeling low, said positive affirmations and then felt
worse.
In the study, those with high self-esteem who …
• repeated
the positive affirmations, or
• focused
on how they were true
…felt better than those who did not – but only to “a
limited degree.”
I’d like to see more study on this because it means that
there is little benefit for anyone in saying positive self-statements. Plus this practice backfires for the
very people who most need them. As Ed Yong concluded, “Statements that contradict a person's
self-image, no matter how rallying in intention, are likely to boomerang. “
This new study doesn’t take away from the power of a
related practice. That’s preparing
to perform well, in a sport, speech or other activity by vividly visualizing
the performance in advance.
Eric, by the way, has begun
writing his memoir, describing some of the adventures he shared with Emma, the people they met and the joy of living with her “through thick and
thin.” As Byron Katie would say, he is “loving what is.”
It has lifted his mood I am happy to report.
