Positivity is something that almost everyone strives to achieve, and there always seem to be people preaching how they can do so. From motivational speakers teaching people to go and bring a positive good to the world, to books detailing how you can remove negativity and hate from your life, positive thoughts are always being forced onto everyone, even if they don't want them, and they'd have a very good reason not to.

Just a few weeks ago, I was sitting in a leadership seminar, and the speaker was giving a presentation on how you can easily achieve success. I expected to learn about decisions you could make in life to end up achieving what you wanted regardless of what that goal is - instead I got a 45-minute presentation about how keeping a positive mindset leads to positive results. One of the main points of the presentation was that having a positive mindset and attitude, even if you weren't happy, would result in positive results and ultimately happiness.This attitude sounds like a fantastic idea to achieve happiness, but in reality, it would almost never work.

Having a positive attitude all the time is essentially just like someone setting themselves up for sadness if they fail. Some would argue that a positive mindset would incline you to see failure as a way to grow and learn rather than an actual failure. This also might sound like something that would work to ensure happiness, but it's much harder to put these plans into action than it seems. After countless attempts and failures, anyone's morale would lower, regardless of how positive they were. Because of this, it's typically beneficial to just keep a negative attitude, and avoid the problems associated with constant positivity.

Being negative doesn't necessarily mean that you have to hate everything and be completely pessimistic towards what your future holds, it just means that you have to be slightly realistic in an overtly optimistic world. Similarly, it doesn't mean that you have to be pessimistic to the point that you lose all of your self-confidence; it means that you have to know when to expect good results and know when you may not do as well as you would like in what you pursue, in order to ensure that you can prevent being hurt if you don't succeed.

Thus being negative is just the same as being realistic, which can save anyone from potential heartbreak in the long-run, if they remain too positive. Despite what the motivational speakers and books may say, a positive mindset won't magically lead to a successful life, and it could even lead to more pain. The only way to be successful is to just try hard and be realistic with yourself.