Monthly Archives: April 2017

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Did you know that Trump practices positive thinking?

How can you make positive thinking work for you?

On one hand, Donald Trump is known for his rants of negativity on our public airwaves and of course on twitter. On the other hand, Donald Trump talks with a lot of confidence about what he has done, what he will do, and what is going to happen. In fact Donald Trump actually practices many of the positive thinking principles espoused by Norman Vincent Peale who is the rightmost figure in the next picture. These principles have inspired people to believe in their own capabilities and accomplish great things through significant planning and effort. While Peale emphasizes numerous positive thinking principles in his writings. Three of Peale’s principles are certainly transparent in Trump’s bombast.They are:

  1.   You get what You expect.

Trump believes that his attitude is more important than any problem he faces. He does not seem to think about defeat. According to Peale one should not build obstacles to success in their mind.  This belief gives Trump hope to accomplish improbable tasks; in other words you are overcome because of what you you think. This means self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful.

  1. What we say we experience.

Trump hardly talks about defeat even if he has just lost a major battle. For instance read how Trump describes what happened with the first version of his healthcare bill. He uses words such as victory and winning constantly. Peale stressed that there is a great deal of power in the words you use. Words affect your mood and outlook on things. Therefore, if you use words of pessimism you will create more negativity in your world. If you use optimistic and inspiring words, you will behave and react in a like manner.

  1. Learn only from your success.

Peale suggested that learning from errors would make an individual more inclined to make more errors. In a similar manner, Trumps actions indicate that he thinks it is more important to learn from successes than failures. The belief is such behavior will make it easier to repeat what you did to create the success. To increase your chance of future success take notes about your successful behaviors and practice them as time permits.

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Do you know why Trump flip-flops all the time?

Regardless of your political beliefs, anyone who has been actively listening to current events knows that President Trump has a habit of changing his position. This behavior pertains to a wide range of topics. For example he insisted that America would not have an active military presence in Syria. Nevertheless, he ordered the bombing of a Syrian airfield last week.  This is not new. President Trump had specified last year that witness immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony was equivalent to committing a crime. Since then he has also back-pedaled on that statement concerning Michael Flynn. This certainly was not the case concerning Hillary Clinton’s staff members last year.

Some may argue that President Trump changes his positions to gain negotiation advantage. Yet, there may there may be other reasons why many of President Trump’s statements are inconsistent with his past rhetoric – cognitive structures. Cognitive structures are mental processes that individuals use to process and understand information. They organize information for learning and recall. Cognitive structures are integral for comprehension and memory.

According to Sternberg (2009), there are three general categories of cognitive structures.

* The first are comparative thinking structures for memorization and classifying.

* The second is symbolic representation structures like math, gestures, dance, and music.

* The third is logical structures like reasoning, cause and effect, evaluation, and problem solving.

We develop cognitive structures  over time through our experiences. We use cognitive structures that support our goals and needs. I suggest that President Trump is using a dynamic evaluation process to maintain a positive self-image. This explains why President Trump stated that there were things in the healthcare bill that he did not particularly like; it was okay that the bill failed to pass.  In the same manner, he uses alternate facts to support bogus claims and denigrate his foes, both of which support his fragile self-image.