Though I’m no fan of Donald Trump, time and again I’m delighted by the alternately crazy and sane things he says, and the way he knows the difference; he’s the antithesis of our politicians, who say crazy things they sincerely believe are sane. This week he spoke to the BBC’s Gary O’Donoghue, who asked him about the Pennsylvania assassination attempt. As the BBC reported:
When asked if the assassination attempt had changed him, the president conveyed a hint of vulnerability as he said he tries to think about it as little as he can. ‘I don’t like dwelling on it because if I did, it would be, you know, might be life-changing, I don’t want it to have to be that.’ Elaborating, he said he liked ‘the power of positive thinking, or the power of positive non-thinking’.
I’ve believed in the power of positive non-thinking for a long time, and at the ripe old age of 66 it’s bounced me through heart-breaking incidents which would have floored a lot of other people – or at least been an excuse for a fully catered pity-party over on Facebook. Of course, one gets the usual misery-buckets muttering about how one is ‘in denial’ – but that’s one of the few ways the poor saps get their kicks, in my experience, so it would be mean to deny them it.
There’s growing evidence to show that the stiff upper lip is the superior way to tackle life’s little speedbumps. A study from the University of Cambridge claims that ‘the commonly held belief that attempting to suppress negative thoughts is bad for our mental health could be wrong’ after ‘researchers at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit trained 120 volunteers worldwide to suppress thoughts about negative events that worried them, and found that not only did these become less vivid, but that the participants’ mental health also improved.’ It seems obvious, doesn’t it? As Professor Michael Anderson put it:
We’re all familiar with the Freudian idea that if we suppress our feelings or thoughts, then these thoughts remain in our unconscious, influencing our behaviour and wellbeing perniciously. The whole point of psychotherapy is to dredge up these thoughts so one can deal with them and rob them of their power. In more recent years, we’ve been told that suppressing thoughts is intrinsically ineffective and that it actually causes people to think the thought more – it’s the classic idea of ‘Don’t think about a pink elephant’.
Suppressing thoughts even improved mental health among participants with likely post-traumatic stress disorder. In general, people with worse mental health symptoms at the outset of the study improved more after suppression training – but only if they suppressed their fears. This directly contradicts the notion that suppression is a maladaptive coping process.
Of course, all the misery guts out there will moan that the scientists involved in this jolly experiment are most likely ‘in denial’ themselves; misery loves company, and as they generally only attract the company of other miseries, it’s a vicious circle-jerk of communal caterwauling which is often effective in drowning out any empirical research or common-sense consensus which may arise. We all have friends who appear to get a high from parading their lows; we’ve all read the stats about educated young women being the most anxious when you’d think it was uneducated old men who had the most to be anxious about in the current climate.
I’d say that it’s the over-examined life which isn’t worth living
Though ostensibly they’re worrying about politics, this worrywart tendency often carries into their private lives. When you see groups of men together, they’re usually having a laugh; when you see groups of women sitting together, they’re often moaning about men – sometimes what’s wrong with the ones they’ve got, and sometimes how they don’t have one to moan about. I don’t ever recall sitting around with a group of girls moaning about the wrongs men have done me; if you don’t like the one you’ve got, go and get another one. And if you moan about men to women regularly, you’re probably a lesbian and afraid to face the fact. Give it a whirl, why don’t you – it’s fun, so long as you don’t talk about your feelings too much, in which case you’ll be back on the misery merry-go-round in no time.
Though I favour living life on the light side with a minimum of introspection, I allow for a bit of misery in the arts. From Morrissey to Brief Encounter to Madame Bovary, if I can find a piece of art that will leave me feeling good by feeling bad, I’m all over it. Is this how I manage my emotional equilibrium (give or take the odd suicide bid) – by a kind of lyrical bloodletting? Whatever the reason, I thoroughly recommend it – along with the great Stoic quote, for when trouble befalls, from Marcus Aurelius: ‘“It is my bad luck that this has happened to me.” No, you should rather say: “It is my good luck that, although this has happened to me, I can bear it without pain, neither crushed by the present nor fearful of the future.” Because such a thing could have happened to any man, but not every man could have borne it without pain. So why see more misfortune in the event than good fortune in your ability to bear it?’
I believe that it was Socrates who said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living’ – but then the old fool also said that ‘no one does wrong voluntarily’. Looking around at the morass of self-pity, which is bankrupting us financially and intellectually, I’d say that it’s the over-examined life which isn’t worth living. Those of us who exercise President Trump’s power of positive non-thinking are the ones who exhibit a resilience which is sorely lacking.
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