Looks like Michelle has read that other hyper-cliche, The Secret, along with Fifty Shades of Grey
Her husband won’t stop banging on about being positive and thinking positive. Any legitimate criticism by his political rivals and journalists is dismissed as ‘negativity’ and ‘negative thinking’.
The Secret is a book that began taking over the (less sane) world around 2006. You’re supposed to think positive, visualise what you want, hold the thought right there, and act like you’ve already got it.
And then it will come to you by ‘the Law of Attraction’.
Sounds familiar? Well, there you go.
I couldn’t be bothered writing my own spiel about the book at this late hour, so here’s Wikipedia. You’ll get an idea of why there’s something eerie and ever so slightly creepy and spaced-out about Joseph and Michelle, and why the whole Malta Taghna Lkoll campaign has this surreal feel about it.
The Secret is a best-selling 2006 self-help book written by Rhonda Byrne, based on the earlier film of the same name. It is based on the law of attraction and claims that positive thinking can create life-changing results such as increased wealth, health, and happiness. The book has sold more than 19 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 46 languages, but has nevertheless attracted a great deal of controversy, as well as being parodied in several TV programs.
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The Secret highlights gratitude and visualization as the two most powerful processes to help manifest one’s desires. It asserts that being grateful both lifts your frequency higher and affirms that you believe you will receive your desire. Visualization is said to help focus the mind to send out the clearest message to the universe. Several techniques are given for the visualization process, as well as examples of people claimed to have used it successfully to manifest their dreams.
As an example, if a person wanted a new car, by thinking about the new car, having positive and thankful feelings about the car as if it were already attained and opening one’s life in tangible ways for a new car to be acquired (for example, test driving the new car, or making sure no one parks in the space where the new car would arrive); the law of attraction would rearrange events to make it possible for the car to manifest in the person’s life.
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Quick, where’s the pail?
Call me a jaded cynic, but blue-sky thinking only works if circumstances are already favourable.
The problem with running a country – with running Malta – is that Malta and Europe have adversaries and even enemies. The Mintoffian “hbieb ma’ kullhadd” mantra was never going to work.
I’d rather use the tried and tested paradigm of Desired Condition <- Action <- Current Condition.
Remember him? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfAeMtcURg0
He tried using positive thinking when the circumstances were neither favourable nor neutral. We all know the result.
Of course blue-sky thinking only works if circumstances are already favourable.
You (I mean this generically not personally, Baxxter) quite literally, see that for yourself. Try thinking the sky’s blue when it’s pouring with rain.
Now try thinking that Joseph and Michelle Muscat will be your prime minister in two weeks’ time.
The Secret sounds like the same crap that was peddled by Dale Carnigie and now by the likes of Wayne Dyer.
Americans eat up this fantasy as if money and riches are going to come your way just by wishing for them while sitting on your fat behind day in day out.
I call these authors “the apex of a pyramid scheme” as they get rich by selling the same old dream to naive people via their books, lectures and now movies.
Jeez, Daphne, you got it again.So impressive. Little Joey’s ‘Secret’. Stolen, as usual. Not one original thought in four years. I discount deception, lies, and backstabbing.
We’re looking at Jim Jones koolaid here.
Just what little Joey’s so many future fuckups will produce..
To end up with an island of bloated corpses.
An offshoot of it, NLP, was invented by a sociopathic computer programmer. Another reason not to trust it. It’s the philosophy of choice for those traders and bankers who are doped up on Prozac and can no longer feel anything.
The idea of positive thinking has now been almost totally discarded by serious psychiatrists and psychologists.
Modern research advocates realistic thinking otherwise one will crash into a wall.
I refer anyone interested in the subject to read Dr Tim Cantopher who is a leading authority on realistic thinking. His theory makes much more sense than the old idea of positive thinking.
Yep. Sports psychologists, since the mid-90s, have been training elite athletes to think about losing.
Have you seen the recent scaremongering?
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151340754408358
I know of another person who’s a Labour sympathiser who started reading that same book some two months ago.
It’s total bull. Its true one needs to think positive, but then you cannot get delusive.
Try telling my friends, newly graduated Spaniards, to ‘think positive’ and life will come good for them. Yes, especially since they can’t pay their rent, find a job or move back home because their parents are unemployed or part-time only, with serious problems of their own.
How do you get a job by visualising one and being grateful for it?
Talking about jobs. The Labour Business Forum has been conspicuously absent for some considerable time now.
Marlene Mizzi who used to be all over the place is nowhere to be seen.
Has the penny dropped? Has she finally realized that it was not a political party that she had joined, but a third rate political circus act the sole purpose of which is to have Joseph Muscat ascending the steps of Castile as prime minister?
[Daphne – That’s because you’re probably not on Facebook. She’s apparently all over the place there. because you know, that’s how 60-year-olds campaign.]
Marisa Micallef (Leyson) has really disappeared though. Is she still on MLP’s payroll?
So by the same law if we all think about a PN victory then Muscat should resign immediately.
IF, big IF, that were the case, then Muscat WILL resign immediately, because the (sole) goal he set himself of being the youngest PM will have become unachievable.
I have used goal-setting techniques all my life.
They’re the main reason I retired at fifty.
I realise in typing this I may be preaching to the converted.
The thing is that goals have to be believable and achievable.
You have to have an action plan that can be translated into daily tasks.
And they have to be highly personal.
The problem with politicians, why I could never be one and would be lousy as one, is that they are essentially setting a goal for other people, i.e. trying to get them to vote for the politician in question.
The problem for me is that there are people voting for Labour who haven’t read the ‘Manifest’ and don’t have a clue what will happen if Labour get in.
It may be a modern interpretation of what democracy is all about but it doesn’t make it any better knowing you’ve done your bit whilst you are surrounded by morons doing their best to drag you down.
I am so amazed that Muscat can get away with being such a useless twat that a perverse part of me is eager to see him get in power to watch him fail time after time after time.
Of course blue-sky thinking only works if circumstances are already favourable.
You (I mean this generically not personally, Baxxter) quite literally, see that for yourself. Try thinking the sky’s blue when it’s pouring with rain.
Now try thinking that Joseph and Michelle Muscat will be your prime minister in two weeks’ time.
Positive thinking works alongside lots of positive action over a long period of time.
It is stupid to stick a goal to one’s head and not fully know the path to get there.
In Muscat’s case there are too many variables for lonely positive thinking to get you there. Greed is normally the one that throws everything out of the window.
Would be interesting the gender breakdown of the sales of these best-sellers. Not to sound sexist or anything, but certainly it must be mainly women(and those with self-esteem issues) who buy into this ‘positive thinking’ sh*t.
The Muscats are even kookier than I thought.