practise pronoia

on everything2:

“The overwhelming suspicion that a vast network of powerful people are secretly conspiring to help you.

This makes exactly as much sense as paranoia does, but has a much better effect.”

Which makes sense.

Aretha Franklin once sang ‘I don’t need praise, I don’t need pity’. I wondered why she would say she doesn’t need praise, but now I understand it. It is good to receive praise, but not a good thing to need it. Positive confidence is being confident in the actions you take, the decisions you make, how you look, and if you receive praise it’s appreciated, definitely, but you don’t depend on it or search for it.

Not that I’m there yet. It will happen.

This is going to involve such a major shift in my thinking, so putting on hold for now. Accomplishing the other goals will hopefully make me not give a damn what people think either way, anyway!

Pronoia:

“The overwhelming suspicion that a vast network of powerful people are secretly conspiring to help you.

This makes exactly as much sense as paranoia does, but has a much better effect.”

Well, it beats thinking the opposite like I usually do.

Thank you 43things for telling me about pronoia! I stumbled upon it and was intrigued, so looked it up on Everything2:

“The overwhelming suspicion that a vast network of powerful people are secretly conspiring to help you.

This makes exactly as much sense as paranoia does, but has a much better effect.”

And why not? I’ve enough experience with paranoia and general pessimism to know they don’t help with anything.