It's impossible for me to think positively.

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My dad keeps giving me the cliched advice that "positive thinking saves the day". It doesn't at all. I've tried thinking positively, but it's completely ineffective, be it in school or at home.

This advice only works on primitive proles. You're more complex than this, and you need to figure out your own ways to deal with it. You have a whole submarine inside you, and when it starts to sink, you need to know which levers and buttons to push. Usually it starts in morning. When you wake up, you need to push a series of levers and buttons, figure out things that make a light inside you, no matter how small it may seem.

It's something that people want to think is true, I think, because it makes them feel like they have more power/control over reality than they really do. The truth of things, of course, is that the universe is cold and indifferent, and what we can do about anything has limits.

OTOH, cynicism can be as bad as thinking that a positive attitude will magically make life better. It can cause lost opportunities, and a sense that things are much worse or more unchangable than they really are. It's also a trap and a bad approach.

I guess the thing is trying to find the balance between over-optimism and over-cynicism that most accurately reflects how the world works, so that one can make the best progress with least mistakes.

Thinking positively on it's own will do nothing. You also need to be motivated to do something positive to change whatever it is that's making you think negatively in the first place.