Positive thinking. Goal setting. Reaching for your Dreams. This is the foundation of motivation, inspiration, and the self-help culture over the past few decades.

Lately, a new wave has begun a virus like battle to undo this ‘think good things’ movement.

Blogs, letters to the editor, websites, and books are being written to down-play this thinking of old and replace it with a more ‘realistic’ approach.

Don’t fall for the ‘rah rah’ they say. Don’t try and risk everything because most people fail (and thus, the inference is, you will as well).

Now a new supervirus has begun to combat this positive way of thinking. Although the premise is not new, the propagation of it is. It has been referred to as Defensive Pessimism, that old ‘if you believe something bad will happen and then work hard to ensure it won’t you’ll be happy when it doesn’t and not disappointed if it does’.

So the basic premise in all of this is not to get your hopes up. Don’t spend too much time dreaming and for goodness sake don’t actually follow your dreams. Stay grounded, be realistic, and whatever you do don’t drop everything and chase after some lofty goal.

The intentions are well enough. There certainly is a plethora of data to suggest that those who risk foolishly and jump off the proverbial cliff in search for some far off Dream do in fact fail. Of course, there are those who succeed as well, but they are much smaller in number.

This alternate course sets you up to succeed, such is the claim of the virus makers, because by ‘preparing for the worst’ and then working your butt off to prevent it, you virtually ensure that the worst won’t happen.

One might argue that putting forth the same amount of butt-working towards a goal and dream might also ensure its success, but we’ll put that aside for now.

The biggest Achilles heel of this less than positive virus thinking, is that it has tunnel vision. The focus is all about the end result, either the worst case scenario or a goal or dream.

It misses one main, and often forgotten, principle of the think positive movement. Namely that it is just as much, if not more, about the journey as it is the destination. You see if you live day to day with a pessimistic attitude, defensive or not, and work to prevent the doomsday scenario you play in your head, even if you are successful in preventing the end result from happening, you spend all of your time expecting the worst to happen.

That doesn’t seem like a fair trade for the minutes, hours, days, and weeks of your life that are measured by the time you are willing to exchange them for.

Inoculating yourself against such a virus is more than simply thinking positive thoughts. Simply thinking something good will happen has never made something good happen. It takes action to make things happen. However, thinking positive thoughts WHILE taking action . . . that is, as they say, the “magic sauce”.

It’s about the journey, not simply the destination. Positive Thinking in and of itself will not help you achieve your goals. Put together, however, with specific action, focus, thought and the right questions, Positive Thinking will not only help you achieve your goals, it will help you enjoy the journey as well.

Enjoying the journey gives life meaning… or perhaps, it is the meaning of life.