Positive Illusions

Feb. 20, 2007

Reading Marc Buckingham's book on managing, leading, and succeeding, entitled "the one thing you need to know," I came upon a section that discussed the one thing you need to know about (a) happy marriage. It was just a parallelism to what he's going to tackle in the book but it had a very strong point in itself. It can also be applied to life, in general. And it supported some of the beliefs I subscribe to. To rephrase what Mr. Buckingham offered, the one thing you need to know about happy marriage, or I'd like to replace it with the term commitment, is that you have to give the best, most generous, and positive explanations for your partner's characteristics and behavior. It's a positive illusion. It may not totally be true but you have to believe in it. And if you think about it, yes, if you will maintain a positive outlook towards your partner and relationship, it will affect you just as positively. Notice how people and their relationships start to sour once they notice, keep noticing, and dwell on something not so likeable about their partner or the relationship they're in. Notice how quickly we get dismayed or depressed when something doesn't go as we planned it or when we hear something not too nice about ourselves. It's a natural reaction to feel bad and to not ignore when something isn't to your liking. But if play up the good things more and keep on believing in those things, life may seem better and easier too. It's pretty basic actually - just "think positive" or "look on the bright side" but it's not that easy to perform. Why else do you think when we were children we'd ask why it's so much easier for adults to see our mistakes rather than the good things we do. Well, if you're a parent yourself now, you'd notice you're doing that to your children too. But you still might not have the real answer as to why. No, it's not because we want our kids to be good and behave well and become better citizens when they grow older. Well, it's not exactly the reason why we notice the bad things first. So, I think, once we commit to someone, we'd have a better chance for that relationship to last if we keep on believing the positive things that we saw in our partner in the first place and that made us fall in love. Sounds a bit too idealistic? Sounds impractical, huh? What would you do if you find out your husband cheated on you? That could be a subject of another post but if we were to follow the positive illusions principle, I'd think what you'd do is ask yourself if you want to save the marriage and if the husband is repentant and if you think everything can still be saved. Ask yourself what is important to you and how much do you love your husband. Anyway, there are exceptions to every rule but this particular idea of positive illusions can be very helpful. To a child with no one to encourage him, he can still believe in himself to try to best in something he wants to do; to a spouse who catches her husband cheating on her, she can still believe that who she married is the man for her and that man commited a mistake he's sorry for and that man is still the one she sees herself spending the rest of her life with; to the ordinary man who works hard and yet just barely gets by each day, he can still believe that a brighter future waits for us all if not at least for the next generation, and that more and more people will help to ensure that future. These things may be positive illusions now but they can also guide us so that we can make them the reality very soon.