Or did you have to work hard and go through lots of struggles instead?

I believe, everybody has seen these and similar ads: eat whatever you want, don’t even exercise, and lose weight. Just take our pill so that everything happens effortlessly.

Effortlessly is the keyword for everything. People, who want to make money using these empty promises, are quite successful.

Try our dating site and see how you find the right husband or wife right away, we do everything for you so that you just enjoy this person and are thankful for the rest of your life. To us.

Try our new outfit and see how effortlessly you get a new job because you make such a fantastic impression at the job interview.

Try our product and see how effortlessly you become the healthiest person ever, just one spoon a day, and you are like new and absolutely free of any digestive problems.

Use our cream and make your wrinkles and age spots disappear within one week. You will look just like her who’s undergone some 10 plastic surgeries and has daily beauty procedures in the most expensive clinic with the most expensive doctors.

Buy our book: positive thinking and positive attitude and see how your life improves within a few days. You are rich, healthy and happy. Problems disappear, and your mind is bright, focused, and sharp. Every day is a happy one, and nothing bad can happen to you. Effortlessly, just write down these sentences or repeat them in the morning and before you go to bed.

So, we could continue endlessly because all what one has to do is think positively and repeat affirmations and everything happens. They get the dream job, or even better, – don’t have to work at all. I saw on Facebook, one had to share a picture with piles of banknotes, and it said underneath: money flows to me effortlessly, and that was promised to become true. That sounds like a line from a criminal fairy tale. In reality, there is no such a thing as money flows to somebody effortlessly.

The next thing is usually health: repeat or write on a paper whatever times this positive affirmation and you will be surprised how no headache bothers you, you never get colds, heartburn, digestive disorders, anxiety, diabetes disappears, cancer resolves from itself and heart attack or stroke will never threaten you. It’s very simple: just be positive and pain will completely go away. Depression will turn into uplifting energy. Broken bones will heal and age related dementia is just a joke which may affect people who are not positive enough.

In the same simple way one can change the relationship, make bad marriage good just being positive about it, get hundreds of new admirers and therefore have no problem with choosing a spouse.

Here it finally is: somebody has discovered the secret of success in any area of our life. They know it, and you don’t. You definitely have to learn about that.

While there is a true connection between our thoughts, the way Universe acts and reacts to them, nothing happens effortlessly, but we cannot deny the factor of being at the right place in the right time.

That’s why positive thinking is attracting so many people. It is said it solves everything: from health problems to financial disasters and debts, from mental disorders to marriage solutions and personal improvement.

First of all, life is life, bad things happen to very nice and good people, too, and the biggest part of humans or almost everybody (whether they admit that or not) is unhappy or unsuccessful in some area of their life and time to time. Nobody can be absolutely happy every single moment, and anything we do can potentially have wrong or bad outcome, as well.

Secondly, when things go wrong or health gives us hard times, most people often look for causes in themselves and in their own actions, and after that they blame other people and life, government and their destiny. Bad diagnosis is mind-blowing and devastating, and we are ready to do everything to cure ourselves. That is how one initially feels: completely lost, desperate and helpless. Because we all instinctively hope that nothing bad can happen to us personally. When such book about positive thinking comes along or happens to be in our sight, that’s like something minor to buy it, possibly read it and possibly try to be positive when we are absolutely desperate, in pain and suffering. Maybe we should choose a better path to let the Universe know what we want.

The huge number of terminally sick, badly sick and suffering people proves that pure happiness approach does not really work. If it was so simple: why are there so many sick people who suffer from incurable or partially curable diseases? I am very sure many of them are aware of positive thinking and have tried it. We are actually overcoming our fear from the future not because we are positive we will survive, but because we have many protective mechanisms built in us and physical and mental strength to cope with such issues. That is called willpower and desire to live.

The huge number of homeless and jobless people also proves that there is no real connection between being positive and having everything one needs: safe home, well-paying job and enough of good, nutritious food. Everybody has positive attitude and positive expectations when they go to apply for a job, when they try to save money for a house. Yet, positive thinking won’t prevent us from global financial crisis which can destroy all savings and put us out on a street. How bad is that because we are positive, but people who have all the money might be not?  Otherwise, they could just simply help us out. meaning, most people of this planet need help, especially financial because money solves numerous issues.

Although, millions of people have tried the positive attitude challenge and still do, that hasn’t had any impact on the decrease of diseases, that has had no impact on the global economy and that has had no effect on each and every family’s wellbeing.

Lots of people live or at least try to live believing that everything is fine and if they feel something is wrong, they blame themselves for not being positive enough.

Positive, negative and neutral thinking are simply distinctive ways of perceiving the reality, therefore, there is no reason to put emphasis on one of them. It is obvious that we must have a positive outlook when starting or doing something (otherwise: why to bother?), but this positivism has to be based on realistic evaluation of facts, and therefore, realistic optimism is much more valuable than plain positivism. We review our chances, we evaluate our goals and chances, and we realistically approach every problem.

Realistic approach also includes a healthy criticism. Well, that might seem to be too much down to earth, but I could list hundreds of examples when realistic optimism causes no disappointment, but overly positive expectations do, and that happens every time when there was absolutely no reason to hope for a good outcome.

Lots of people believe that they are entitled to everything, and to have this everything shouldn’t take them any efforts.

There is no scientifically proven correlation between positive thinking and perfect health, longer life, better income or better personal relationships. I could insert a long list of psychologists who proved how delusional positivism and obsession with seeing no downside in anything can have the adverse effect: from more severe depression and anxiety cases to people who got scammed out their life savings or got betrayed in other ways. I will not insert this list because I want to describe my personal observations and experiences. However, if you google “the negative effects of positive thinking”, very many articles listing psychological research will come up. That means, positive thinking does not constitute “a cause and effect” correlation because people who are already healthy, people who have no financial problems or are naturally inclined to explain everything from the trust and belief position (are born as a psychologically easy-going type) will definitely be more positive and maybe even less cautious than people who struggle with pain, are terminally ill, have broken marriage, don’t have a job, or home, have broken relationships, etc.

However, there is a strong scientifically proven correlation between willpower, personal integrity and perseverance and better health, better jobs resulting in better income and more successful relationships. Willpower is not the same as positive thinking. Willpower is neither positive, nor negative. It shows that the person has the strength to withstand whatever comes along and to stick to their plan. Willpower also allows implementing our intentions regardless of obstacles, and quite often that is all what matters.

Under the never-ending pressure to pretend and to show how positive and well we are, we do not want to admit any bad things anymore because that might be understood as a weakness, as a personal failure. We feel obligated to be positive and to show off our “everything is excellent” side. Nobody has cancelled troubles, diseases, disasters, failures, broken promises and broken hearts. That is life. The bad sides of our life have to be assessed and dealt with accordingly: black doesn’t become white if we think so. We have to paint it white and do this with internal strength from the position of our personal belief and willpower, without pretending, without lying to ourselves.

When somebody is seriously sick, they need a treatment. If one has tooth ache, they have to go to the dentist. When husband is cheating or beating up the wife, this wife has to divorce him. When small kid is rude, we have to react to it. When our house is dirty, we have to clean it: roll up the sleeves and get down to it which is not really exciting or entertaining.

Talking and thinking does not always help or do the job. We have to act instead of expecting a miracle. It is dangerous to expect we will have everything we feel entitled to without putting any efforts into it. That refers to absolutely any area of our life: being fit and good-looking, having a great relationship or long-lasting marriage, having financial stability, good job and improved global climate.

Neither this world, nor life is perfect. Humans have imperfections, too. It is good to strive for self-improvement, but this is not done only by thinking and attitude. The attitude should be realistically optimistic, but the main part is a positive action, or an action to implement all our positive intentions. It is not enough to think: I am beautiful, smart and healthy, while spending the entire time staring at phone or laptop screen on a coach and eating junk food. Is it?

In my experience, positive thinking gives results only if it is based on assessment of reality and it is followed by an action in the right direction.  I am for realistic optimism.

Besides, one website offered free happiness training. Cool or what? Free. Free happiness for everybody. I told before, type in Dalai Lama’s quote about how man surprised him most because of not living neither in presence, nor future and dying as if he never lived, and this site will come up, but maybe don’t do that because Olga, a fellow blogger was embarrassed to receive messages every day, although, she didn’t sign up for anything on that site. This is just how terrible they are: you want a free happiness and they make you suffer for that.

Have a good day and life! Thanks for reading!