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The Power of Negative Thinking

The Power of Negative Thinking: Abandon Hope

Abandon Hope

BBC Radio 4 - The Power of Negative Thinking, Abandon Hope

Oliver Burkeman explores negativity as a surprising pathway to meeting your goals.

Psychology writer Oliver Burkeman looks at when hopefulness can be  counter-productive to action, and how negativity can be deployed as a tool to achieve positive results.

Jim Trodden has recently retired, after decades as a safety supervisor on North Sea oil rigs.  In this harshest of workplace environments, merely hoping for good outcomes, or remaining positive, was inherently to invite disaster. Instead, Jim describes his dominant offshore mindset as one of ‘chronic unease’. Constantly and vividly envisaging the worst possible outcome of every scenario was a key tool in helping to prevent disaster and - potentially - saving thousands of lives.  It’s just one example of deploying “Negative Visualisation” - a technique extolled in Sun Tzu’s Art of War and by philosophers in Seneca’s Stoic tradition, and grasped instinctively by generations of military leaders from Alexander the Great to Winston Churchill.  In part 2 of Oliver Burkeman’s series The Power of Negative Thinking, the psychology writer finds it can also be applied in modern contexts, and in all our lives.

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Psychology writer and proud curmudgeon Oliver Burkeman explores the virtues of negativity.

Oliver Burkeman, psychology writer and proud curmudgeon, explores the virtues of negativity and shows how it can be a surprisingly powerful route to joy, success and satisfaction.

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