Seeking Recommendations: Positive Thinking

[Anonymous]

I need to find a good book about finding greater happiness through positive thinking, and ways to overcome negativity and criticism of others, and focus on being at peace with oneself with all our strengths and weaknesses, and believing we can do things if we put positive thoughts towards achieving what we want.

(Don’t recommend Book of Mormon…I have that one already )

Any good recommendations of a good read that is a good self-help book on developing those skills of positive thinking leading to happier lifestyles?

[Anonymous]

I HIGHLY recommend the book “Remembering Wholeness” by Carold Tuttle! She has so many answer to so many questions in the book and SEVERAL self-help tools. She is LDS but definitly has a very stage 4 attitude on several things. This book has been answer to so many of my prayers. You can find fairly cheap copies of this book at http://www.half.com or at amazon as well. Good Luck!

[Anonymous]

[Anonymous]

I really enjoyed “Making Peace” by Eugene England. It’s a collection of essays, obviously not always focused on the exact topic, but for me it was a great read that I needed. The first is “Healing and making peace in the Church and in the world.” Another touched on the experience when he got kind of a harsh letter from an apostle – and I think what grows to be some mature insights about forgiving. I need to read it again.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the recommandations. Perhaps I will start with Peale, and then go to Tuttle and England to see how those apply.

Tom Haws wrote:

Questions:

-Are you leaning toward things that broaden your understanding of how intent shapes reality? Peale

-Are you leaning toward things that broaden your desire and ability to see other people more clearly? any or all Arbinger Institute books, the Peacegiver

-Are you wanting to understand and master yourself better? Covey’s The Seven Habits, the Criticism book by Lund above, many others

I’d like to hear more about what you are seeing that you would like to understand better. What are you starting to see?

Here is my current thinking. When I was TBM, I was VERY happy. The more faith and positive thinking I had that the “true” church was blessing my life, the more I think it did bless my life. I noticed that church became less valuable and more annoying the more I doubted the importance of attending church. My TBM views could not sustain my experiences I was having in reality, but I do remember I was pretty happy and optimistic, and I want to keep that optimism, even if I have learned to view things with a different lens.

I have a theory I want to study that suggests church is more “true” the more I think it is “true”. I think the health of our minds and the power of our thoughts plays a large role in our experiences of reality. I think it makes us more happy when we are more positive, instead of being critical of the church or the church members all the time. I think this is a general rule in life…not related necessarily to mormonism or even to religion. But religion can help a person find that optimism, and I hope mormonism can continue to do that for me, despite my independence and caution I now take on things taught to me at church.

I also have some family members battling depression…and I think these lessons on positive thoughts apply to them and their battles as well. I heard recently that many studies have confirmed that about 80% of people suffering from depression show improvements when taking placebo pills. Just something I am interested in studying and learning more about. If there really is that much power in our minds that determine our happiness, why does it seem so hard for people to tap into that? Why is it so difficult and not more natural for us? How often to we misplace our sources of happiness (ie. church or God vs our own minds as the source of happiness)?

[Anonymous]

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Victor Frankl is a keeper that should be a part of everyone’s book list sometime in their lives.

I remember as a teen reading and being inspired by a very small pamphlet book called “As a Man Thinketh” by James Allen. I haven’t seen that one in a long time, but remember enjoying it at the time.

[Anonymous]

Heber13, I hope we get a chance to talk more about this. I haven’t read Peale yet, so it may turn out it is too “christian” for me, and maybe James Allen (As A Man Thinketh) and Victor Frankl (Man’s Search For Meaning) would be better.

I have read Man’s Search For Meaning, and I can say it’s short, a page turner, compelling, and memorable. It actually may be a better place to start than The Power of Positive Thinking. Super inspiring.

[Anonymous]

All good recommendations.

The absolute gold standard book for ‘positive thinking,’ battling negative thinking, or thinking more realistically is David Burns’ The Feeling Good Handbook (Feeling Good is wonderful, but the Feeling Good Handbook is of such practical use.). This is one I recommend to my patients who are willing (and able) to work with a book.

Heber13 wrote:

I also have some family members battling depression…and I think these lessons on positive thoughts apply to them and their battles as well. I heard recently that many studies have confirmed that about 80% of people suffering from depression show improvements when taking placebo pills. Just something I am interested in studying and learning more about. If there really is that much power in our minds that determine our happiness, why does it seem so hard for people to tap into that? Why is it so difficult and not more natural for us? How often to we misplace our sources of happiness (ie. church or God vs our own minds as the source of happiness)?

There IS power in positive thinking, but research is showing that it’s often more effective to replace negative thoughts with more reality based thoughts (and often the reality is more positive than we make it.)

Placebo power is real. Psychiatrists are often struggling to prove the efficacy of our meds/therapies for some conditions. Studies show that these DO work better than placebo, but often not as well as we’d like.

Happiness is hard, but some say it’s achievement actually IS natural for us. Carl Rogers said that we are ALL trending toward healing, growth, maturity, acceptance, etc. Good therapy, good books, meds, etc, help with the obstacles that get in our way.

Good luck. Let us know what ends helping you the most.

[Anonymous]

I like the Eckhart Tolle books in that they help create a new worldview and framework for thinking. They also contain interesting links to the sayings of Jesus, but from a different perspective. I also liked Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements. It is similar.

[Anonymous]

Heber13-

Sorry, I’m late to the post, but I can’t recommend enough “The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt (don’t know if I already recommended this to you). Not only does it help with positive psychology, but it clearly explains why your hypothesis is true. Haidt is a renowned positive psychologist, and his book is a great look at why religion (and even possibly erroneous beliefs) ain’t so bad (exactly the point you’re making).

[Anonymous]

Jordan wrote:

All good recommendations.

The absolute gold standard book for ‘positive thinking,’ battling negative thinking, or thinking more realistically is David Burns’ The Feeling Good Handbook (Feeling Good is wonderful, but the Feeling Good Handbook is of such practical use.). This is one I recommend to my patients who are willing (and able) to work with a book.

I like that book too. I have his Ten Types of Twisted Thinking posted on my fridge. Here they are:

Ten Types of Twisted Thinking

By Dr. David Burns

1. ALL-OR-NOTHING THINKING: You see things in black and white categories. If your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total failure.

2. OVERGENERALIZATION: You see a single negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3. MENTAL FILTER; You pick out a sigle negative detail ad well on it exclusively so that your vision of all reality become darkned, like the drop of ink that discolors the entire beaker of water.

4. DISQUALIFYING THE POSITIVE: You reject positive experiences by insisting they ‘don’t count’ for some reason or other. In this way you can maintain a negative belief that is contradicted by your everyday experiences.

5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS: You make a negative interpretation even though there are no definite facts that convincingly support your conclusion.

A. Mind reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out.

B. The Fortune Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already-established fact.

6. MAGNIFICATION (CATASTROPHIZING) OR MINIMIZATION: You exaggerate the importance of things (such as your goof-up or someone else’s achievement), or you inappropriately shrink things until they appear tiny (your own desirable qualities or the other fellow’s imperfections). This is also called the ‘binocular trick.”

7. EMOTIONAL REASONING: You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way thigs really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.”

8. SHOULD STATEMENTS: You try to motivate yourself with shoulds and shouldn’ts, as if you had to be whipped and punished before you could be expected to do anything. ‘Musts’ and ‘oughts’ are also offenders. The emotional consequence is guilt. When you direct should statements toward others, you feel anger, frustration, and resentment.

9. LABELING AND MISLABELING: This is an extreme form of overgeneralization. Instead of describing your error, you attach a negative label to yourself. ‘I’m a loser,’ When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to him, “He’s a dam louse.” Mislabeling involves describing an event with language that is highly colored and emotionally loaded.

10. PERSONALIZATION: You see yourself as the cause of some negative external event which in fact you were not primarily responsible for.

Shad Helmsetter, PhD book “What to say When You Talk to Yourself” was a huge help to me as well.

[Anonymous]

bridget_night wrote:

I like that book too. I have his Ten Types of Twisted Thinking posted on my fridge.

I love it. I recommend the list for all fridges.

When our mind races it’s so hard to get a hold of ourselves. Burns puts into to words what we are doing when our mind runs wild, gives words to the ineffable.

Can be so helpful and liberating – when we catch ourselves saying something like “the church SHOULD do this or that,” we can avoid a world of of anger, frustration, and resentment by remembering that SHOULD statements can be twisted and of limited use. One of my mentors told one of his patients to “stop ‘should-ing’ all over yourself.’

I strongly believe that while positive thinking can be helpful, REALISTIC RETRAINING of the mind or liberating ourselves from our twisted and limited thinking, a la cognitive-behavioral therapy, is where it’s AT!

In short, training/reminding ourselves to think more correctly/realistically will likely have longer effect than merely thinking positively.

[Anonymous]

Here is one thread with some suggestions, focused on positive thinking.

[Anonymous]

I would like to 2nd Heber13’s advice on reading Peale. I would particularly recommend Peale’s “Why Some Positive Thinkers Get Positive Results”. “The Feeling Good Handbook”, by Dr. Burns was good in my opinion. However, I believe the book by Dr. Burns is more of a book for individuals dealing with depression, mental illness etc.. . I guess it just depends what you are looking for.

[Anonymous]

I second the second of Angry Mormon on Peale’s “Positive Thinking Books”. The lessons in it have been salvational (is that even a word) for three generations of my family. I even carry an audio of one of his books on my ipod, and when I need a lift I plug it in.

[Author]

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