moodr

of mood and men

How Pollyana affects personal change

May 9th, 2008 by Osman

Here is a crosspost and the content of another message I sent to the group personal change. It’s a crosspost because this is something I have written back in January, 2007 on another blog: You Have Every Reason To Feel Better.

I think the worst effect of the novel Pollyanna is the popular imagery of an optimistic person in people’s mind. This novel is so popular and so talked-upon that the character named Pollyanna has been exaggerated in her optimistic nature. We always make fun out of her optimism. Unfortunately, we tend to humiliate this optimism later on.

If you take something good and make so much fun out of it, it becomes the new bad thing. So, under peer pressure, we decide that optimism is not good to deal with life. Everybody looks like that they would accept us and agree with us when we tend to be pessimistic about life. Therefore many people try to win the race of being the first who criticize the other. It feels like when you are the first to criticize the other or simply yourself, then there is no room for others to criticize you.

The truth is that we don’t like to hear criticism, even the ones that people call constructive criticism. Once the name includes criticism, it signifies that somebody is going to have a say over our behavior. Of course, this is a wrong perception. However perception becomes reality.

In fact, most of the time, human being’s depression and anxiety is about living and being. Since you exist and most probably you are not going to die in the moment, you have every reason to feel better. Better than nothing.

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