Positive Thinking Is NOT Enough

“While some researchers and clinicians argue that you can change your life by just changing your thoughts, actions, or feelings, I have seen no evidence in my research that real transformation happens until we address all three as equally important parts of a whole, parts that are inextricably connected to one another, like a three-legged stool.”

—Brene Brown, from Rising Strong

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EP125: Positive Thinking Is NOT Enough • Listen below • Play on iTunes

Positive thinking is NOT enough.

Your thoughts + actions + feelings are like a three-legged stool.

This is similar to people that follow the old self-help advice to just “think positive.”

If we THINK positive, but we still FEEL negative, then how will we ACT?

Positive thinking is powerful, but only when we think of it as one of the three necessary legs that reinforces the stool we’re sitting on.

If we don’t want the stool to wobble or break, we’ve got to make sure we give each leg the care it needs to keep us from falling down and getting hurt.

I believe that the key here, with this idea, is to focus on being as congruent as possible.

What’s the best way to do that?

Make sure you’ve got all three “legs” in check:

• First, remember that the way you THINK has gotta be in line with the way you…
• ACT. Because the way you act is going to have an impact on the way you…
• FEEL. And the way you feel is going to help reinforce the way you think, or it’s going to help you re-examine the way you think…

Which is going to circle right back around into helping you decide the way you choose to act in any given situation…

See the feedback loop these three end up creating?

So here’s the bottom line:

It’s not about positive thinking alone that drives our success in life — it’s about being in positive congruence between the way we think, act, and feel that drives our success in life…

And at the very least, keeps us from falling off the stool.

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Crucial quote: