choices – Pith Rant

Successful Outcome

Content note: animated gifs

A square with an orange filter over a photograph of college students rappelling on a climbing wall. In the upper right hand corner are the hashtags #momentummonday and #uwec, the educational institution that shared the post. In white sanserif letters, it says, "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." -William James — A square with an orange filter over a photograph of college students rappelling on a climbing wall. In the upper right hand corner are the hashtags #momentummonday and #uwec, the educational institution that shared the post. In white sanserif letters, it says, “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” -William James

I originally wrote this post in early 2020.

At that point, I had heard of coronavirus, but people were dismissing whispers about lockdowns.

More recently, here in mid-2022, I was reading the book Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia and Emily Nagoski, and I was struck by their chapter on “persistence.”

The perspective they present there is much more nuanced and thoroughly researched than my blog post here (which makes sense, because they wrote a whole book), but I’ll go ahead and admit that I was chuffed to see a well-rounded argument by people I respect with some thematic parallels to my burned-out thoughts from two years ago.

Back in the before-times, I was feeling especially salty about this featured quote because I had just received a long-overdue confirmation of rejection for a job that I was extraordinarily confident about my ability to perform, that I was ridiculously prepared for, that I was eminently qualified for, and for which I made an exceptionally strong argument for myself for in both preliminary and final interview stages.

I also received my poorly-handled rejection notification the day after Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the 2020 presidential race.

It wasn’t a great day to see an inspirational quote about attitude.

My attitude had varied over the months of the academic job application and interview process, but overall, I remained uncharacteristically positive.

I mean, I was still fundamentally me.

Of course I experienced bouts of doubt and anxiety.

But for once, my professional self-doubt felt like a lie that could be countered with evidence.

When I saw the original advertisement for the position, I thought, “Well, that’s me. I can do all of that, and I can do it well.”

(It was far more common for me to read the bulleted Preferred Qualifications list and feel great about three of them, okay about four or five, ambivalent about a couple, and terrified by at least one.)

When I started pulling my materials together, I told myself, “I will turn in an application that they can’t ignore. They may not actually contact me for an interview, because that’s out of my hands, but by god, they’ll have to work hard to justify keeping me out of the running if that’s the case.”

And they contacted me pretty promptly to schedule an interview.

And when I prepared for the interview, I told myself, “I will not give them any reason to second-guess choosing my application, and by god, they’ll have to sweat if they don’t put me through to the next round.”

And I made it to the next round.

Every other time I had a campus visit, I’d leaned into a “fake it ’til you make it” approach to get me through, but this time, I just felt a qualified colleague.

It would be unfair for me to resent the fact that another person existed with pertinent qualifications, which they proceeded to show off to good advantage in their own interview. The person who got the job was presumably confident, prepared, and qualified, and capable of making a strong argument on their own behalf.

Awareness of this fact didn’t do much to alleviate the sting.

So, back to William James (and those who like to quote him out of context):

How does “attitude at the beginning” really come into play when we arrive at an unsuccessful outcome?

I admit that I threw myself a big old pity party when I got the rejection, and I stand by that. Pretending not to be bitter will only exacerbate bitterness.

I also admit that my above question originally arose from a place of resentment and frustration.

But once the emotional lava has hardened, the issue still stands: what’s the connection between attitude and success?

The quote in this macro is being used in service of this broader Power of Positivity enterprise that blames individuals’ thought patterns for individual failures (or successes), rather than engaging more meaningfully with the social infrastructures that reinforce patterns of success (or failure).

If we’re looking to define an attitude that helps to determine success, it seems like confidence, persistence, and resilience are good personal qualities to have, eh?

I don’t know Elizabeth Warren personally, and I’m in no position to ever speak meaningfully about her mental or emotional state.

But at least in terms of her public image, she remained engaged, forward-thinking, and determined. She shows it when she’s angry, but she remains broadly “positive,” and does not appear unconfident or underprepared.

Elizabeth Warren’s own attitude wasn’t the problem with her campaign. Her attitude was demonstrably on point.

Of course she’ll persist. Of course she’ll be resilient. Of course she isn’t going to stop working altogether. She knows the drill. She’ll stay on her feet.

But still.

Fucking hell.

I’ve focused a lot on that word “attitude” in the original macro, but here I’ll start folding in that idea of “successful outcome.”

A “successful outcome” for a job interview – both at the local and national level – is a job offer.

That’s what it looks like your own attitude is mirrored by that of a larger system (which may or may not be rigged in your favor).

Now, I promise that I know that “not achieving a desired outcome” is not the same thing as either “failure” or “total lack of institutional support.”

When multiple people are competing for only one position, it’s obviously not possible for everyone to “succeed” in the sense outlined above, and so of course there’s going to be disappointment somewhere.

Toxic Positivity encourages us to elevate the lesson at the expense of acknowledging the disappointment, though.

Sure, I get to practice resilience this way, and I can identify opportunities for growth, but “someone else got the job” still wasn’t a “successful outcome” for me. (Or Elizabeth Warren.)

It’s a reasonable outcome.

It’s a manageable outcome.

It’s not a total failure, and it’s not the end of the world.

I’ll persist. I’ll be resilient. I won’t stop altogether. I know the drill. I’ll stay on my feet.

We can’t all have successful outcomes all the time, and that’s normal.

Now, I think that’s a reasonable attitude to have at the disappointing conclusion of a difficult task.

Cognitively, I know that this is my baseline “actual” attitude, even though I may struggle to stick with it as circumstance and emotions fluctuate.

This “attitude determines outcome” framing doesn’t seem to encourage a healthy, balanced response to unsuccessful outcomes, but then again, what do I know from healthy?

There are a couple of ways to justify this relationship between “attitude determines outcome” and what “a successful outcome” actually looks like compared to an “unsuccessful” one.

1) Play with the definition of “attitude.” If you have an unsuccessful outcome (e.g., not getting the job, not winning the race, not nailing the performance, etc.), it must be because your initial attitude wasn’t truly what was needed for that particular kind of success in that particular situation. Your attitude was always the problem, rather than anything circumstantial, and you need to try harder to have a more situationally-appropriate attitude if you want to achieve your goals. (Okay, I’ve been a bit flippant there, but then again I never promised not to be.)

2) Play with the definition of “success.” If you don’t achieve your desired outcome (the job, the medal, the gig, etc.), it’s okay to retrofit your idea of success to accommodate whatever actually happened. That sounds a lot like the ol’ “Everyone’s a winner” schtick that never made anyone feel any better in elementary school.

“You succeeded because you tried.”

(Don’t tell Yoda.)

Animated gif of the shriveled green character Yoda from Star Wars (specifically The Empire Strikes Back, for the nerds) saying his iconic line, "Do or do no. There is no try." — *Animated gif of the shriveled green character Yoda from Star Wars (specifically The Empire Strikes Back, for the nerds) saying his iconic line, “Do or do no. There is no try.”*

Now, I’ve offered several either/ors here, and you know how I feel about binaries.

Of course success is not an absolute binary, and it’s reductive to treat most outcomes as “SUCCESS” vs. “FAILURE” with nothing in between.

At the same time, of course it’s disingenuous to act like “NOT SUCCESS” has so much overlap with “SUCCESS” that the difference is functionally negligible.

I have a background in social science research, but I’ve really only dabbled in psychology. I’ve spent more time engaging with popular psychology resources than digging into the academic theory and history of the discipline.

So I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure who William James was when I initially snagged this screenshot.

In fact, when I started writing, I was thinking of Henry James, and I was all ready to lay into him.

Wrong James, though.

It turns out that William James is often referred to as “the father of American psychology.”

The history of the philosophical tradition of Pragmatism, as James defined it and as it has since evolved, wasn’t exactly light reading, and I’ll be upfront about the fact that I just don’t feel like summarizing it here.

And at any rate, this blog isn’t a great space to develop a lengthy and well-researched essay on the history of ideological debates that have influenced contemporary psychological practice. I’m just here to pick apart their outcomes.

I liked the sound of “pragmatism,” though, so I considered the possibility that his quotable quote was pulled from a context that could offer some illumination.

I briefly searched for that original context.

Early efforts to identify the source beyond the author’s name were fruitless. This sentence has been macroed a LOT:

Screenshot of the many results of a Google image search for the William James quote "It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome." There are many different treatments in terms of font, color scheme, and imagery. 14 are represented here, but that's just what fit in the screenshot. — Screenshot of the many results of a Google image search for the William James quote “It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” There are many different treatments in terms of font, color scheme, and imagery. 14 are represented here, but that’s just what fit in the screenshot.

I have just a couple highlights to bring in from my very brief historical review.

“Pragmatism” as a movement has been paraphrased as “a return to common sense.”

Well, that sounds less promising. Naturally, I wondered whose senses were considered to be most common, and naturally, I have some hunches, William James, but we’ll table that for now.

(*cough* abled-ish financially secure cis het white dudes who were likely to have been raised with broadly Christian values if not beliefs *cough*)

I didn’t find the original context, but I came across another James quote that seems like a helpful expansion: “a belief can be made true by the fact that holding it contributes to our happiness and fulfillment.”

I.e., “fake it ’til you make it.”

It seems a little on the nose to me that the “father of American psychology” advocated for magical thinking that he preferred to rebrand as “pragmatism.”

Admittedly, I’ve presented a judgement about an influential figure and the significance of his entire career based on just a couple of Google searches and the brief perusal of a few articles. I stand 100% ready to be educated by the perspectives of those more familiar with his work (as I pretend that multiple people with relevant and informed opinions are reading this blog).

Shortly after writing an early draft of this post, I read a chapter from Barbara Ehrenreich’s Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America that expanded more on the historical context that led to the emergence of William James’ psychological philosophy. In short:

it seems like James approached the then-emerging pseudoscientific fad known as “new thinking” (the idea that people could manifest things simply by thinking about them) with a reasonable degree of skepticism.

His original motivation seems to have been practical enough. I respect anyone who is driven by a desire to disprove popular bullshit; yet the outcome has led to terribly impractical results (i.e., more people in contemporary society who lump his eventual admission that “thinking positive thoughts can in some cases seem to correlate with positive outcomes” into the same kind of magical thinking he was contesting in the first place).

So in that sense, his optimistic attitude at the outset does not seem to have resulted in a particularly successful outcome for his theories.

Just sayin’.

I write a lot here about what I don’t believe and not as much about what I do believe.

I want to stress that I believe deeply in the value of acceptance.

I can and always will learn from disappointment.

I know my Bob Ross, y’all.

Animated gif of painter Bob Ross from his '90s TV show "The Joy of Painting," standing in front of a nature-scape with his palette in hand, saying, "We don't make mistakes - we just have happy accidents." — Animated gif of painter Bob Ross from his ’90s TV show “The Joy of Painting,” standing in front of a nature-scape with his palette in hand, saying, “We don’t make mistakes – we just have happy accidents.”

I absolutely appreciate the value of being able to identify positive potential after a negative situation has unfolded.

I comprehend and respect the idea that the anticipation of success can have benefits that the anticipation of failure may not.

I recognize the ways in which negative thinking can perpetuate cycles of self-sabotage.

But.

Attitudes don’t exist in vacuums.

Having a good attitude IN A SYSTEM THAT PRIVILEGES AND PRIORITIZES YOUR ABILITY TO MAINTAIN THE IDEA THAT YOUR OWN ATTITUDE IS THE BEST ONE will, indeed, probably encourage successful outcomes.

You can have the best damn attitude in the world, but that’s not the primary thing determining your success. It just helps.

Know your strengths, know your limits, and know your value. That’s in your control.

But also know that there are plenty of folks out there who want you to be fully responsible for the “failures” that you encounter, just so that they can justify their own relative comfort and “success.”

I feel like this post turned out more ranty than usual. That’s not what I planned for when I started, but that’s where it ended up.

Unintended and unexpected outcomes are normal and fine.

It is possible to turn your mistakes into birds.

But that doesn’t have to mean that your attitude was always going to lay eggs in the first place.

The Stuff That Weighs You Down

A photoshopped or filtered photo with a heavily saturated warm pastel color palette, featuring little spindly pink flowers, an orange butterfly on the left of the image, and some kind of light-colored circles that may be out-of-focus dandelion fluff or dust or sunlight reflections. The gray serif font in the middle reads, "If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down." It also attributes the work to a photograph, saying "Photo by Joel Olives" in a new, darker gray sanserif font at the bottom, and lists what is presumably the name of a site or company, "Butterflies and Pebbles," in a third sanserif font across the bottom of the entire image. — A photoshopped or filtered photo with a heavily saturated warm pastel color palette, featuring little spindly pink flowers, an orange butterfly on the left of the image, and some kind of light-colored circles that may be out-of-focus dandelion fluff or dust or sunlight reflections. The gray serif font in the middle reads, “If you wanna fly, you gotta give up the stuff that weighs you down.” It also attributes the work to a photograph, saying “Photo by Joel Olives” in a new, darker gray sanserif font at the bottom, and lists what is presumably the name of a site or company, “Butterflies and Pebbles,” in a third sanserif font across the bottom of the entire image.

I love how this image feels positively weightless!

It’s like how the world would look if gravity wasn’t even a thing!

But I mean, still more fun than outer space. There’s oxygen here.

Does it really matter whether this gentle universal message is being shared by a physically healthy and mentally/emotionally supported person with a solid 401K and too many possessions, or if it’s being shared by a physically disabled and mentally ill person who is not entirely confident from month to month that they will be able to pay for all the things that they rely on for survival?

I mean, they both still have baggage to unload.

But poor people just also have extra baggage to unload before they can responsibly think about something like flight, amirite?

Okay, I have to push “pause” on the sarcasm button because I’m less comfortable leaving this open to minor misinterpretation than usual.

The point of invoking disability and poverty in this example is NOT to suggest that you, dear reader of any ability or financial status, are expected to feel sorry for “those people” on account of how their existence is.

Nor is the point of invoking disability and poverty to imply that you ought to be more grateful for all that you have, because “it could all be taken away in an instant.”

I’m not invoking disability and poverty as an appeal to pathos, or as a very special lesson, or as a cautionary tale.

I am using these relevant examples because CONTEXT MATTERS.

Allow me to offer a brief, honest anecdote in the interest of developing a thematically appropriate metaphorical framework.

One fine spring morning, not so very many years ago, I paused as I was about to open the latch of my back door and step outside.

There was a sparrow on the top step. I held my breath and hoped I wouldn’t scare it away.

It was just a magical little moment.

I marveled at the confluence of circumstances that had brought me and this little bird together for such a brief time.

Then the sparrow pooped on my stoop and flew away.

Of course, in order to take flight, birds freely and routinely give up the stuff that’s weighing them down without any regard for the mess it leaves behind.

Just look at how fluffy this picture is.

It’s like all you’ll ever have to throw away is cotton balls and glitter.

I get that the macro is not meant to be taken entirely literally, and that it’s referring to, like, emotional weight and not necessarily physical things.

Trust me, I read that message loud and clear.

But this macro wants you to perceive the relationship between you and your troubles to be like the relationship between a cute little sparrow bird and the way in which it’s perfectly poised to evacuate meaningless excess because physics (e.g., gravity) and biology (e.g., evolution) have been collaborating for millennia to bolster its precious body.

In life, one charming li’l stoop sparrow poops and takes flight and goes home to its cozy bird house and 2.5 chicks, and another adorable li’l flutter bucket gets snagged by a hawk and its untended eggs get eaten by a weasel.

That’s nature for ya.

But that doesn’t leave room for all the other factors that need to be accounted for in this metaphor, tho. Like society.

animated gif from the ’90s movie “Billy Madison” (*which is definitely a terrible movie but it burned so many quotes int0 my brain)* of actor Adam Sandler saying “society” while doing air quotes with his fingers to explain a heavy-handed metaphor

Here’s where I’ll depart from any lingering evolutionary parallels, because social Darwinism is just racism, and we’re coming back around to the land of choices, folx.

You’ve got to be able to choose to let go of the things that are weighing you down in order for this macro to work.

If you can’t choose to let go of something that\’s holding you back, you don’t get to fly.

For many folx who have access to appropriate treatment for any conditions that they are managing, though, it isn’t those disabilities or illnesses that are weighing them down. The heaviest barrier is the people around them who don’t understand that they won’t “get better” or “try harder” than they already are.

For folx who live with the most unpleasant realities of poverty on the daily, it’s not an option to just “give up” being poor. I’m pretty sure that the majority of people living beneath whatever the poverty line is defined as in their own neck of the woods would like to give up on debt and exhaustion in exchange for a nice long flight (or metaphorical flight of their preference).

It’s the people clinging to a dysfunctional system because it’s not terrible for them that prevent the system from letting go of what’s weighing it down.

Sometimes the stuff that’s weighing you down the most is not, in fact, coming from inside the house.

I mean, still check in on what’s coming from inside the house.

Poop away, my little birdies.

You may need to learn to poop more freely and efficiently, like that unencumbered and dropping-optimized stoop sparrow, and of course it’s okay if you need to practice that kind of jettisoning.

I firmly believe that we all have metaphorical emotional pooping to do, and that there is no shame in admitting this.

Just be careful about letting go of so much of what you’re carrying inside that you forget who fed it to you in the first place.

It’s not necessarily your little birdie poops that are contaminating rivers and polluting the groundwater, eh?

That metaphor got grosser than I originally anticipated.

Sorry-not-sorry.

*Animated gif of actor Lucille Ball, in character as “Lucy,” shrugging broadly and and squinching her face in a “Whaddaya do?” kind of expression*

What You Feed Your Mind

[A cartoon image of two pink cartoon brains with faces and floating hands. There is a black line between the two brains to separate them. The brain on the left is grotesque and scary, with angry eyes and a frowning, open mouth that reveals pointed teeth and a long pointy tongue. The brain and its floating hands are covered with either spots of dirt or bruises. The floating hands are clutching a knife and a fork, and the brain itself is hovering over a plate of what appears to be a pile of excrement (although the illustrator held off of making it too visually unpleasant so that the pile is more like the poop emoji or a swirl of chocolate soft serve ice cream). The poo has the words "Drama, Bad News, Negativity" written on it. The brain on the right is clean and happy, with a big smile on its face and excitement lines coming out of its head. The position is the same - clutching the eating utensils and hovering over a plate - but the plate is full of fresh produce: apples, broccoli, and lettuce, as well as a banana that says "Positivity," a carrot that says "Discipline," and an avocado that says "Dreams." The slogan, in black impact font at the top, reads, "You become what you feed your mind." It has the letters "opw" at the bottom, presumably for an organization but I can't determine what organization it is, and the bad brain's knife has a copyright for "successpictures" running down the blade. — [A cartoon image of two pink cartoon brains with faces and floating hands. There is a black line between the two brains to separate them. The brain on the left is grotesque and scary, with angry eyes and a frowning, open mouth that reveals pointed teeth and a long pointy tongue. The brain and its floating hands are covered with either spots of dirt or bruises. The floating hands are clutching a knife and a fork, and the brain itself is hovering over a plate of what appears to be a pile of excrement (although the illustrator held off of making it too visually unpleasant so that the pile is more like the poop emoji or a swirl of chocolate soft serve ice cream). The poo has the words “Drama, Bad News, Negativity” written on it. The brain on the right is clean and happy, with a big smile on its face and excitement lines coming out of its head. The position is the same – clutching the eating utensils and hovering over a plate – but the plate is full of fresh produce: apples, broccoli, and lettuce, as well as a banana that says “Positivity,” a carrot that says “Discipline,” and an avocado that says “Dreams.” The slogan, in black impact font at the top, reads, “You become what you feed your mind.” It has the letters “opw” at the bottom, presumably for an organization but I can’t determine what organization it is, and the bad brain’s knife has a copyright for “successpictures” running down the blade.

Ah, yes, the two food groups: steaming shit and fresh produce.

Why feast on the disappointing Poop of Negativity when the Avocado of Dreams is within reach of the fork you’re using to eat the deconstructed mishmash of the salad that is life?

A powerful reminder, to be sure.

I might be overthinking this*, but fruit turns into poop, right?

I promise I understand that the image is meant to emphasize the contrast between the brains and their diets rather than depicting any direct correlation between them, which is why we go from poop to fruit.

But still…

I’m just saying that the contents of that shit pile used to be something else.

It’s the circle of life.

I feel like the Angry Krang recognizes that its dreams and positivity have served their purpose, and it’s only left with bitter, smelly remnants to work with, but is still committing to feeding itself with whatever’s on hand, so, honestly, that looks a little more like the face of resilience to me.

Sub-question: are the pointy fangs and lizard tongue practical evolutionary adaptations for a coprophage?

Like I don’t know much about what kind of ecosystems are happening in Dimension X.

Maybe Angry Krang is a predator who is also willing to scavenge?

I’m very interested in the morphology of Happy Krang, because if it’s got the same tooth and tongue situation, I just don’t think that fruit and veg plate is going to be a walk in the park.

I like to think that this is literally explaining that some brains are herbivores and others are predators, and showing how they developed appropriate adaptations over time.

I suspect that this may be a case of divergent evolution, and that this image has actually been shared as a picture on the page “Science Diagrams That Look Like Shitposts” in an alternate universe.

*I am overthinking this

Happiness is Just Four Tricks Away! (Special Bonus Rant: Business Insider Edition)

Content note: animated gif

I don’t feel obligated to protect the identity of the original author here, since it’s just a widely available article.

He’ll be fine.

So, the original title of the piece we’re working with today is “I’m Taking Yale’s Class on Happiness – and Halfway Through, These 4 Tricks are Already Working.”

Good for you, buddy.

I knew there had to be a trick to substantive, lasting, soul-fulfilling happiness!

And it seems so right that a white dude named Justin should be the one to reveal those tricks to me.

After spending just a few weeks taking an course created by an elite institution.

You see, hacking happiness works like flying with pixie dust (an equally actual thing).

It’s just as simple as changing your habits.

I wonder which bad habit Justin started with first.

The “too much melanin” habit? Perhaps the “too much estrogen” habit? Maybe the “not enough money” habit, or the “neurodivergence” habit?

“Again, the point here is that these positive habits have been tested and proven to work, based on psychological science.”

The creator of the class he’s taking has “collected all the psychological science out there,” so I’m glad that’s been taken care of.

Mmmm. Delicious, objective science. Home of the placebo effect.

Which is totally irrelevant here.

The science is in, because science is about finding absolute answers and shutting down further inquiry, and the history of psychology research is also free from bias, caveats, or limitations.

Unrelated, maybe don’t look up “replication crisis.”

Anyway, it’s comforting to know that it only takes five weeks to get the gist of this happierness thing. That’s way faster results than I got from that cult I joined last year.

The four “tips and tricks” Justin has chosen to feature in this piece of substantive journalism for Business Insider, a publication with no investment in maintaining a docile and uncritical workforce, are:

Focus on Your Strengths
Invest in Experiences
Learn to Savor More
Express Gratitude and Spread Kindness

So simple. So practical. So efficient.

I’m sure some asshole could find a lovely sunset to superimpose this list onto, and then we’d really be in business.

Regardless of circumstance, happiness is equally available to anyone who follows these easy steps.

It doesn’t matter whether they were born already owning a yacht or if they’ve lived their entire lifetime without access to professional health care. It’s still true that both of those hypothetical people have strengths and things to be grateful for!

A cynical person might suggest that “happiness” as an end goal could be seen as a convenient diversion for rich people by rich people to avoid engaging with the real reasons that unhappiness is so persistent in the world in the first place, and maybe even as an excuse to blame unhappy people for their own failures rather than accepting at least partial complicity in perpetuating oppressive and exploitative systems.

But that’s just not backed by the entirely unflawed, objective, and apolitical science of psychology.

I wasn’t sure if there was any way I could savor this listicle masquerading as an article any more than I already did, but then I read the advice in the voice of the Hedonismbot from Futurama, and added the words “in bed” to the end of every sentence, as per fortune cookie tradition.

Focus on Your Strengths … in bed
Invest in Experiences … in bed
Learn to Savor More … in bed
Express Gratitude and Spread Kindness … in bed

*Animated gif of the Hedonism Bot character from Futurama, eating bunches of grapes and saying “I apologize for nothing!”*

Closing thoughts:

There is plenty of trustworthy research that supports some aspects of positive psychology.

And the goal of understanding how to help humans feel less bad about living their lives certainly has value.

And I grant that the kinds of suggestions provided in the article are purposefully framed to be as generalizable as possible, in order to be applicable across more circumstances and contexts, so that they aren’t as easily dismissed by a jerk like me saying, “That’s not actually practical for most people.”

Still, I can’t get over how it’s decontextualized to the point where the reasons why we need to study and practice something as fundamental as “experiencing good feelings” are secondary to the goal of “experiencing good feelings.”

The fact that positive psychology is so widely embraced and promoted by rich white people definitely gives me pause, when it is also largely a framework that blames disenfranchised individuals for not having felt or thought right.

On this blog I’ll frequently reference Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Bright-Sided: How Positive Thinking is Undermining America. In this excerpt, she describes some encounters she had with Martin Seligman, the “father of positive psychology.” She writes, “When one audience member proposed renaming positive psychology ‘applied behavioral economics,’ because ‘it’s popular in business schools and goes with high salaries,’ nobody laughed.” The popularity of positivity psychology and its disdain for ‘learned helplessness’ reminds me too much of social Darwinism as a means of justifying beliefs that disproportionately harm members of already marginalized populations.

I’m not here to question whether there’s merit in recognizing strengths, having experiences, savoring things, and expressing gratitude.

I advocate for all of these things.

Just, maybe feeling happy after understanding and practicing these habits isn’t as much a “trick” as it is a normal consequence of not ceding control of your good feelings to a ubiquitous conglomeration of rapacious systems that benefit from your misery.

A Strong Woman

A narrow wooden boardwalk runs through the center of a grassy plain. There are hills or small mountains in the distance. The sky is foggy and gray, and a person in jeans and a red coat is walking on the boardwalk, away from the camera. The black serif font reads, "A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey, but a woman of strength knows it is in the journey where she will become strong." The source is "Power of Positivity." — A narrow wooden boardwalk runs through the center of a grassy plain. There are hills or small mountains in the distance. The sky is foggy and gray, and a person in jeans and a red coat is walking on the boardwalk, away from the camera. The black serif font reads, “A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey, but a woman of strength knows it is in the journey where she will become strong.” The source is “Power of Positivity.”

And only the truly BEST women* understand that contrived comparisons designed to enable self-superior back-patting by devaluing other women for failing to reach arbitrary benchmarks recently created by internet randos are in fact the STRONGEST of all contrived comparisons.

What is the point of this weird hair-splitting between “women of strength” and “strong women” in the first place?

I mean, aside from encouraging strong women to second-guess the merit of one of their defining assets and instead shift their focus to petty trait-based competition with other women.

Also that boardwalk looks a little more like a “path” to me than a “journey,” but I’m not here to nitpick.**

An Instagram post with a black square featuring white handwriting font. The font alternates between script and print. Before the quotation is the tag @peacefulmindpeacefullife. The quote says, "Behind every strong woman is a story that gave her no other choice." -Nakeia Homer — An Instagram post with a black square featuring white handwriting font. The font alternates between script and print. Before the quotation is the tag @peacefulmindpeacefullife. The quote says, “Behind every strong woman is a story that gave her no other choice.” -Nakeia Homer

Usually I pick on these inspirational macros for framing everything in the world as a choice, so you’d think I’d be happy to see a different spin on that message, but of course I’m never happy about anything (on account of how I choose to be angry and sad all of the time).

“I choose to be happy.”

“I choose to be successful.”

“I choose to be healthy.”

“It’s not like there are any systems in place that disproportionately favor the success and stability of people with my particular demographic characteristics! Nope, I am just really good at making the right choices.”

I resist the lie at the heart of the emphasis on choice (in this context) because it’s usually just denial and/or rationalization.

Among other things, people want to believe that society is fundamentally just, and that those who do the “right” things will be rewarded and that those who do “wrong” will be held accountable. Safe people want to believe that they are safe for a reason.

This enables the denial of structural inequality, which is kind of a theme on this blog.

So.

On the surface, this quote isn’t quite playing the “success is a personal choice” game.

It should be an acknowledgement of feminine resilience, right?

In principle, I understand how I should feel both inspired by the women and angry at the unspoken circumstances.

And yet.

With this framing, I get the sense that strong women did not, in fact, choose to become strong.

It just kind of happened.

Which feels just as problematic as the idea that poverty “just happens” because those people made poor choices.

Can something that is almost unavoidably dictated by circumstance be intentional? Is “the only choice” really a choice, at that point?

It’s almost like this quote reverses the typical roles of personal agency and the influence of circumstance that we often see in the “they made their choices” trope.

Like, “the cards were so stacked against this person that they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t truly exceptional.”

I looked up the person that the quote itself is attributed to, and I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I’m still a little suspicious of some of her messaging, but I’m also suspicious of messages in general, and in the end she is just living her life and doing her job.

For now I’ll just acknowledge that this quote is decontextualized, and it could very well be part of a more cohesive point.

So to review: instead of emphasizing the centrality of free will and choice, this message (that has presumably been isolated from its original context) accepts the existence of situations in which choice is not the only important factor, but to the extent that circumstance occludes choice.

The blog / podcast You Are Not So Smart by David McRaney explores the psychology behind common fallacies and cognitive distortions, so naturally I’m into it.

This post about “Survivorship Bias” really rocked my world.

The basic fallacy is the belief that “You should focus on the successful if you wish to become successful.” However, “When failure becomes invisible, the difference between failure and success may also become invisible.”

McRaney relates a story about fighter planes in WWII.

The American military was looking to improve the design of these planes so that more of them would make safe returns. Engineers were examining the damage to planes that had safely made it back to base, but it was the statisticians who recommended that they would learn more from the planes they didn’t have access to: that is, the planes that had been shot down in action.

The engineers had noted that the returned-but-damaged planes had sustained a lot of damage around the wings, and they were hoping to reinforce that area, but the stats folx pointed out that those planes had been able to make the journey in spite of heavy wing damage. The wings were fine.

By focusing their attention on the success stories, they were creating a misleading narrative. The salient information was in the failures. What had caused them to go down? That’s where they would learn to prevent more crashes.

“Behind every strong woman is a story that gave her no other choice.”

Only success is represented here.

(With the reading that at least on some level, the quote suggests that success = strength and implies that failure = weakness.)

However weakness and failure are defined in this situation is invisible, and that’s a problem because un-strong women apparently did have some options available.

So even though this quote appears to reverse the framing of “choice,” the outcome is more or less the same old refrain:

Non-success stories were chosen by those who did not choose success.

Failure was an option, and yet success was not exactly a choice.

Amirite, ladies?!?

*When the word “women” (or its variants) is used without any additional commentary on this blog, it means all women, without having to specify trans women as a subcategory of women, because trans women are women, full stop. HOWEVER I am still including explanatory footnotes because plenty of sites also use unqualified sex and gender terms to indicate their acceptance of a binary understanding of sex and gender. And that sucks.

**Yes, I am.

Keep Going

A bright red umbrella obscures the face of a person wearing dark boots and a gray coat, walking on a snowy beach. The text alternates between red and black. and says, “Pray, when you feel like worrying. Give thanks, when you feel like complaining. Keep going, when you feel like quitting.” The logo at the bottom says, “Power of Positivity.”

I’d argue that there’s a difference between “reframing” and “denial,” and that this macro captures the importance of that distinction.

A reframe for “I’m worried” can be as simple as “I feel worried right now because I don’t have a sense of control over a situation that really matters to me. I know that this feeling will pass and that it will probably happen again.”

Instead of not complaining at all, maybe something like, “I want to examine the source of my irritation when I feel calmer to decide whether it was a defensive response or if it is really important to address.” It can be worthwhile to reframe the urge to complain, but it depends entirely on the situation. Sometimes complaints are necessary for change to happen, and in those cases people who offer gratitude as an alternative to frustration often want stasis, power, or both.

I might counter the suggestion to “keep going” with the words of one Kenny Rogers: “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em, know when to walk away.” Persistence without purpose isn’t necessarily laudable. A reframe might just be a pause: “If can make it through the next five minutes, I can check in with myself again.”

The message on the macro could be paraphrased as, “Don’t stress, don’t whine, don’t rest!”

That’s denial.

If you are experiencing a common response to a trying situation, STOP! Do something else instead.

That’s how you do healthy.

Ungood feelings are definitely not appropriate responses to inappropriate circumstances. Your feelings are wrong and they need to be corrected.

If you haven’t learned to eliminate your human stress response by praying, then you’re really just asking for an ulcer.

If you can’t solve a huge systemic problem by practicing individual gratitude, you’re really just an ungrateful leech.

If you haven’t managed to persevere in the face of overwhelming resistance, were you even really trying?

I just don’t know why so many anxious and depressed people miss these obvious solutions to simple problems.

Life is mysterious, I tell ya.

With respect to the image:

I don’t know that “Thank god I remembered to bring my big red umbrella today so I can finish this shitty winter beach walk” should really be the takeaway here, and yet it seems to be supported by the text.

It’s okay to give up on your walk that turned out to be windier than expected.

Choose Not to Find Joy

An image of mostly white sky, with some snow-covered pine trees along the lower edges and bottom of the square. The black sanserif font says, "If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of snow." It is credited to @mindfulfitness. — An image of mostly white sky, with some snow-covered pine trees along the lower edges and bottom of the square. The black sans serif font says, “If you choose not to find joy in the snow, you will have less joy in your life but still the same amount of snow.” It is credited to @mindfulfitness.

Granted that joy is just a lifestyle choice that’s unconnected to circumstance, I still kind of wish that @mindfulfitness didn’t have to flaunt their joyfulness all the time.

You’re joyful. I get it. Keep shoveling.

Unless there’s a possibility that joyfulness isn’t any more of a lifestyle choice than sadness?

And that real people who experience real joy in their daily lives are actually less likely to make a big deal about it than aggressively sad people?

And maybe really joyful people aren’t secretly trying to get everyone to fall in line with their nefarious pro-shoveling agenda?

And real people who experience real sadness, frustration, and apathy can actually just not be super into snow without channeling their misguided and possibly jealous resentment toward their more joyful neighbors?

Shit.

That kind of holds up.

Maybe it’s okay to talk about your joy or sadness and it doesn’t necessarily mean you made better or worse choices than anyone else.

But then how am I supposed flaunt my emotional superiority?

True Self-Care

Content Note: Animated Gif

Square image from quotecatalog.com with a cartoon piece of strawberry shortcake on a black background. The pink sans serif text reads, "True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don't need to regularly escape from." -Brianna Wiest — Square image from quotecatalog.com with a cartoon piece of strawberry shortcake on a black background. The pink sans serif text reads, “True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.” -Brianna Wiest

People who are well-off enough to periodically reject some of the many comforts available to them at any given moment are good about weirdly moralizing other people’s inconsistent access to comfort, at least partly due to a complex combination of projection and rationalization.

I am leaving that rat-maze of a sentence there, and barreling on to the cheese at the end.

For some reason, I haven’t seen a macro that says, “Don’t weirdly moralize other people’s access to and use of comforts you assume are equally available for everyone to reject in the name of self-righteousness!”

The rest of the article that this quote was pulled from does account for the fact that hygiene and food are not necessarily bad forms of self-care, but someone’s choice to pull the quote from that context speaks for itself, too.

The other squiffy implication of the framing “…the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from” is that you, cake-eaters and bath-takers, are wholly responsible for the stressful conditions that exist elsewhere in the world.

Probably your own shortcomings created the context in which you are mired in an exasperating, unsupportive, and/or dehumanizing workplace and/or life situation.

The infrastructures behind those exploitative systems supported by your employer / government / family / etc. are irrelevant here.

“…the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from” is just code for “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”

The implication that small indulgences are “lesser” forms of self-care is grounded in the warped mentality that suffering and denial are inherently noble.

You built your own hedonistic little prison out of minor indulgences! For shame.

ME: Fix my problems, cake!

CAKE: Nope, sorry – you did your life too wrong to get to want things that are nice!

ME: (SOB)

(NOMNOM)

(SOB)

Decadent bath cakes will only shield you from the harshness of reality for a little while, without addressing the real roots of your own inadequacies.

This macro is the decontextualized quote version of the Onion article “Local Woman Authority on What Shouldn’t Be in Poor People’s Shopping Carts.”

Animated gif of drag queen Latrice Royale fanning herself and saying, “Shade.”

I can’t stand the kind of petty assholes who judge the adequacy of another person’s argument based on adherence to arbitrary grammatical conventions. That is some classist nonsense.

But you know what?

I bet that the Venn diagram of “people who have shared this macro” and “people who pride themselves on correcting internet grammar” is barely two circles.

And so, I’ll go ahead. I’ll be petty right back. I can get pedantic about a rule that doesn’t really matter to me.

Show a semicolon some love, you independent clauses.

From a design perspective, who decided to use strawberry shortcake instead of chocolate, like in the quote?

“The background is black, so chocolate wouldn’t contrast,” you say?…

THE SAME PERSON WHO CHOSE THE GRAPHIC CHOSE THE BACKGROUND.

The creation of this image did not require a design team. Stick that in your back pocket.

Lastly, I feel like the point of the quote is to reject the value of the cake, because finding comfort in cake means that you hate your life so much that cake is an escape from it.

So if you loved your life more, you wouldn’t need to seek solace in, like, physical comfort.

Shouldn’t the picture be… I don’t know… not cake?

Being truly happy because of how right your choices always are is like eating cake in the tub all the time, but without the guilt of knowing that you shouldn’t be eating cake, because you actually aren’t.