I woke up this morning thinking about the phrase dress like a winner to be a winner or in other words fake it until you make it. Then I started wondering what a winner dresses like, and decided it is either jean shorts and a brightly colored t-shirt or a fur coat and big sun glasses. It is then I realized the silliness of the phrase.
How does a winner dress? Who is a winner and who decides what makes someone a winner? This is why the entire positive thinking movement has never gained traction with me. Perhaps the idea should be rephrased to don’t let your negative thoughts interfere with your positive actions. Thinking positively is going to make it easier to carry out positive actions, but it isn’t going to make actions positive in and of itself.
I was thinking about the pre-Reformation world and medieval laws the other day. If a rich man were to murder a poor man then the law would have been on the rich man’s side because he could talk about all the money he has donated to the local cathedral and all the indulgences he’d paid. He would point out that it is impossible for him to have committed the sin of murder as he is clean according to the church and therefor the person he killed must have been a sinner.
This is the type of thinking that most of the self-help, positive thinking people engage in. If they think it it is reality. A winner is a person with lots of wealth that has “made it” in life. They view the world in this pre-Reformation manner. That the goodness of someone comes from the amount of wealth they have acquired and not from any good actions they have participated in.
I think it is why the bible says that they will know your faith through your actions and not your actions will be just and good because of your faith. Faith is active as is the nature of positive thinking. You can’t just think positive thoughts and will a new reality into existence, but you can think positively about the outcome of your actions. Negativity can become a cloud that obscures the next steps, and that could lead to disaster.
Not thinking about trouble doesn’t make it go away, but it does no good to borrow troubles from the future, and if we let our negative thoughts cloud our judgment then those troubles will be even worse when they arrive.
David Huzzard Writes 