The heroin addicts of Swansea and the uselessness of positive mental attitude

Contrary to what the personal development industry and countless self-help platitudes will tell you, a positive mental attitude, on its own, really is quite useless.

This point is driven home in this heartbreakingly raw documentary about heroin addicts in the city of Swansea in the UK.

An admitted junkie in the documentary talks extensively about a positive mental attitude. The junkie talks about...

• Waking up in the morning with a positive mental attitude.
• Maintaining a positive mental attitude while he is not using.
• He even made a poster on his wall that says P.M.A. to remind him.

At the end of the film, we see him, as the truly tortured soul he is, relapsing into heroin abuse, completely failed by his positive mental attitude. The documentary is about an hour long and worth a watch if just to put your own problems in perspective.

So what is the problem with a positive mental attitude?

It's highly subjective to environmental factors. How often is it that you start the day with a great attitude and then...

• Something negative happens at work.
• You get some bad news.
• You get into an argument with your family.
• Traffic stresses you out.

And now your positive mental attitude is broken, if a few negative factors compound, you may fall into a bad mood for the entire day.

The Law of Attraction Disproved?

There is a very popular theory that our thoughts become our reality and that we have the ability to create whatever life we want for ourselves by controlling our thoughts. While there is some truth to this idea, the self-help heroin junkie in the documentary does a pretty good job of proving that our environments have significantly more influence over our thoughts than our thoughts do over our environment.

The Takeaway: A positive mental attitude alone is not a sustainable strategy for living healthily. A positive mental attitude is a result of controlling your environment. What does controlling your environment to maintain a sustainable positive mental attitude entail?

• Biohacking yourself to deal with stressful events better.
  
• Applying memory systems and Dual N-Back software to increase your mental discipline.
  
• Exercise to release the feel-good endorphins.
  
• Nootropic brain supplements to sustainably raise your neurotransmitter levels.
  
• Watching documentaries and traveling to expand your mindset beyond your own immediate environment.

Am I anti-positive-attitude? No. I'm pro-things-that-actually-work, in my nearly 10 years of investigating mindset, one of the most effective tools for mindset transformation is the epigenetic meditation protocol developed by Dr. Joe Dispenza, described in his book which I reviewed, here...