Aspire to Become a Pollyanna
The “Pollyanna Principle” is a psychological theory (developed around 1978 by researchers Matlin and Stang) named after the 1913 book Pollyanna, (the same book Disney based his movie) about a young girl who fervently held a determined optimistic and grateful outlook on life.
Our culture is in conflict about “Pollyanna”. While we praise and herald “Pollyanna” for her positive thinking, “being a Pollyanna” is a critical put down for those that naively ignore and avoid dealing with reality.
Avoiding and suppressing our negative feelings eventually makes us unhappy, eventually becoming mind-body pain and syndromes that manifest as states of disease.
It is healthy to acknowledge and appropriately allow and responsibly release negative emotions that naturally occur to an unwanted event. It is just as important to then return to an optimistic perspective. Positive psychology research shows that people that choose to find the good in everything are happier people.
Psychologist Christopher Peterson noted that human minds at the unconscious level gravitate toward the positive, while at the thinking, conscious level, we tend to focus on the negative.
When we think and worry about all the possible unwanted events in our life or limit ourselves by accepting the negative concepts and judgements of ourselves and others, we are consciously choosing to keep ourselves from our deeper optimistic and joyful self!
