Bad Thoughts Can’t Make You Sick! Or can they?

I’ve written about the positive thinking movement before. Your thoughts don’t have magical powers. You can’t just wish for wealth and thinking bad thoughts won’t bring bad things to you. That’s just a bunch of wooey - hooey.

 Aeon Magazine makes an excellent case for abandoning the woo related ideas that bad thoughts can make you sick – see: https://aeon.co/opinions/bad-thoughts-can-t-make-you-sick-that-s-just-magical-thinking

First, there is no good evidence that good thoughts or bad thoughts influence our health. There are problems with the research and with self reporting. Confounding of health and happiness is harmful to those who aren’t healthy and/or happy as it blames them for their physical problems and treats happiness as if it is a choice!  In short, it’s a form of victim blaming that does nothing to help people overcome their illnesses or become happier.

This isn’t to say that your brain doesn’t influence your health. Your brain is part of your body and your health effects the brain and the brain effects your health. Depression is a physical illness, not something people “choose.” And yes, having depression does cause certain sorts of negative thoughts to occur. But that doesn’t imply causation. In fact figuring out where causation lies is extremely difficult. There really isn’t a brain body divide. It’s all just body.

This doesn’t mean that your thoughts don’t matter. They do. They have a tremendous impact on your ability to function, make rational decisions and more. It’s just that you might not have as much control of them as you would like and it’s possible your physical illness is causing your negative thoughts and not the other way round.

Continuing Education.

Why a commitment to your continued education will help you personally and professionally.

Knowledge is power.  It represents liberation. Without knowledge you can be taken advantage of and duped into doing things that are counterproductive. And the worst part is, you won’t even know it.

No one is perfect and there is always room for improvement. This is why Humanists are lifelong learners and advocates of continuing education in the form of personal and professional development.

Not all educational opportunities are alike. There is a tremendous amount of woo being peddled by self help gurus and life coaches. Woo is a derogatory term for non-science based nonsense peddled as knowledge.  All too often, people looking to improve themselves are led astray by peddlers of woo. This is why the self help movement has such a bad reputation. People are being taken advantage of by charlatans and they don’t even know it!

An example of woo is the positive thinking movement that is based on the book, The Secret. The idea that all you have to do is have faith and trust and a little bit of pixie dust and suddenly what you wish for will materialize is a nice thought, but it doesn’t work in the real world. Last time I checked, wishing didn’t work too well. If you want someone to send you a check in the mail, you have to do something to earn it.

Now, you may be wondering why I am picking on the positive thinking movement. It’s harmless right. And why not be positive? Well, that’s the problem with woo. It isn’t harmless. People spend money to learn the techniques. They spend time trying to solve their problems by thinking the right thoughts. They police their thoughts in an effort to think correctly. All of this is time, energy and money that isn’t being spent on fixing whatever problem you have. The worst part is that not only does this not work, you can’t get a refund! If you complain it didn’t work you will be told that it’s your fault. The coach or guru never has to issue a refund for teaching something that didn’t work. Sure it works for them. They may even be true believers. But they still suckered someone out of their money and then blamed them for their failure. That’s cruel and abusive, especially given the financial hardships people have faced recently.

It’s time to get real 

My point is that if you really want to improve you need to find teachers that will teach you reality based pragmatic approaches that will actually help you learn what you need to do to succeed. What you need is practical science based knowledge. Not woo based non-science.

Magical thinking doesn’t cut it in the real world. Whether it is a science based approach to getting the bullies and other obnoxious people in your life to stop, or a science based approach to mental health. Getting practical information that is based not just on anecdotes but on actual science will help.

I founded my company Humanist Learning Systems to provide exactly this sort of science based, humanistic education. Check out what we offer at: https://humanistlearning.com/programsoffered/

Learning how to tell the difference between woo and reality based approaches, is priceless. If you want to learn how to do this more effectively, then I recommend my 6 hour program – Living Made Simpler (http://humanistlearning.info/livingmadesimpler1/)