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Feeling Down? Think Positive!

Topics: Lifestyle & Culture | 2 CommentsBy admin | August 3, 2009

But research suggests you may be wasting your time. Maybe you should just go shopping.

Probably one of the dumbest things you can say to someone when they’re unhappy is “Cheer Up!”. So why would we think it would work on ourselves? It only takes a little common sense to realize that the reason Al Franken’s Stuart Smalley character was so funny, or that Demotivator posters became so popular, is that we instinctively know that telling ourselves to feel good isn’t necessarily going to make it so. In spite of millions of copies of books like The Power of Positive Thinking and The Secret being sold, science suggests that telling yourself to feel better might not make it happen. By the way: on the same note, reading cigarette warnings makes you want to smoke. So what’s a despondent soul to do? Heck if I know, I’m too happy to worry about this kind of crap. Why don’t you just cheer up? Jeez. The rest of the world is happy, according to this University of Michigan Study. Maybe you should just go shopping or something. Apparently, science has found that money can indeed buy you happiness. I think the rich people knew this all along and were just holding out on us.

Read Comments

  1. Posted by TeacherPatti on 08.03.09 7:19 pm

    You know what I hate? When people on the street say “Smile!” to me. On a chat board one time, a bunch of us girls had a long conversation about this and we heard from the boys on the board that no one had ever told *them* to “Smile!” This of course led to this whole discussion about whether women are supposed to always seem happy or whatnot. Because I have dimples, it often looks like I’m smiling when I’m not, but apparently there are times when I just!don’t!look!happy!enough! Argh.

  2. Posted by admin on 08.03.09 8:04 pm

    Interesting. One of my favorite pastimes is trying to get Michigan people to smile. I just smile at them. Works about 37.5% of the time. The other 62.5%, they run screaming in horror like I just said I was gonna cut ‘em and swipe their wallet. That all being said….

    Hey TeacherPatti! SMILE!

    ;)