A Quote by Julian Baggini

One reason why it has become harder to promote the beneficial side of emotions such as anger is that the moral vocabulary of good and bad has been replaced by the self-help lexicon of positive and negative thinking.

Julian Baggini

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Anger Bad Become Been Beneficial Emotions Good Good And Bad Harder Help Lexicon Moral Negative Negative Thinking Positive Promote Reason Reason Why Replaced Self Self-Help Side Thinking Vocabulary Why

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Julian Baggini
British - Author
Born: 1968

If you embrace 'positive thinking,' you are - by definition - spurning 'negative thinking.' So it's as if you were on a teeter-totter and are trying desperately to put all your weight on one side - the 'positive thinking' side.

Srikumar Rao

Positive thinking is just one small part of positive psychology. Plus, as an approach to well-being, positive thinking only helps you to the extent that it yields one or more positive emotions. The problem with positive thinking is that it sometimes just stays up "in the head" and fails to drip down to become a fully embodied experience.

Barbara Fredrickson

All personality traits have their good side and their bad side. But for a long time, we've seen introversion only through its negative side and extroversion mostly through its positive side.

Susan Cain

Eventually it became clear that our emotions, attitudes, and thoughts profoundly affect our bodies, sometimes to the degree of life or death. Soon mind-body effects were recognized to have positive as well as negative impacts on the body. This realization came largely from research on the placebo effect—the beneficial results of suggestion, expectation, and positive thinking.

Larry Dossey

The American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich has written about this in her book Smile or Die: How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World (2009) . She talks about the happiness industry, the rise of medication to make us happy and of self-help books, and the influence of all this on religion. In many ways religion has become another form of self-help. We all suffer from over-exposure to positive thinking.

Mark Ravenhill

Self-discipline, although difficult, and not always easy while combating negative emotions, should be a defensive measure. At least we will be able to prevent the advent of negative conduct dominated by negative emotion. That is 'shila', or moral ethics. Once we develop this by familiarizing ourselves with it, along with mindfulness and conscientiousness, eventually that pattern and way of life will become a part of our own life.

Dalai Lama

[When anything happens, we interpret it as good or bad, but...] We do not know what is really good or bad fortune. [Only the future can decide. For example, what appears to be bad today may in fact lead us to a greater good tomorrow and by the very act of thinking and planning in that positive way, we can help make that good future come true.]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Success is not a miracle. Nor is it a matter of luck. Everything happens for a reason, good or bad, positive or negative.

Brian Tracy

A bad day is just a day when you have been thinking more negative thoughts than positive ones. What we are is God's gift to us. What we become is our gift to God.

Eleanor Powell

I began studying human emotions more than twenty years ago. At that time, almost every scientist working in this area was studying one of the negative emotions, like fear, anger, anxiety, or depression. I wondered why no scientists cared to explain why we humans sometimes feel upbeat and pleasant. I liked the idea of charting new terrain. It's been a fun intellectual puzzle. There's so much to discover!

Barbara Fredrickson

Why not learn from the positive aspect of Canadian populism, which is the way to deal with it? Learn from the negative side, but it's more important to learn from the positive side, because it's an enormous amount of energy.

Preston Manning

While holding positive thoughts and emotions is advantageous, positive thinking itself is not "Hallmark Card thinking." It's really an ongoing awareness that all truly is well with the world, with life, and with oneself. It's also a commitment not to mindlessly pass on fears but to bring positive energy, images, ideas, and feelings into the lives of others, to help them attune to the wellness at the heart of the world.

David Spangler

Mentally, physically and emotionally we are the same. We each have the potential to good and bad and to be overcome by disturbing emotions such as anger, fear, hatred, suspicion and greed. These emotions can be the cause of many problems. On the other hand if you cultivate loving kindness, compassion and concern for others, there will be no room for anger, hatred and jealousy.

Dalai Lama

A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminately murderous. A bad cause can become good if enough people fight for it in a spirit of comradeship and self-sacrifice. In the end it is how you fight, as much as why you fight, that makes your cause good or bad.

Freeman Dyson

Few things are more negative than thinking positive for no reason.

Dov Davidoff

Why antagonize somebody for no reason? Why try to garner attention by doing something negative? Why not do something positive on your own merits, instead of somebody else, whether it's to try to antagonize them or draw their ire, or even to have them help you out.

Josh Barnett

A Quote by Julian Baggini

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