“I do believe in the power of positive thinking,” veteran newspaper editor Ben Bradlee wrote recently. “I don’t know any other way to live.” 1 We’ve gone so far down this yellow brick road that “positive” seems to us not only normal but normative—the way you should be. A restaurant not far from where I live calls itself the “Positive Pizza and Pasta Place,” apparently distinguishing itself from the many sullen and negative Italian dining options. A veteran human resources executive, baffled by my questions about positive thinking in the workplace, ventured hesitantly, “But isn’t positive . . . good?” He was right: we have come to use the words “positive” and “good” almost interchangeably. In this moral system, either you look on the bright side, constantly adjusting your attitude and revising your perceptions—or you go over to the dark side. The alternative to positive thinking is not, however, despair. In fact, negative thinking can be just as delusional as the positive kind.
