‘That’ll never work. It’s too long/ short/ complicated; loads of other people have done it already, what makes you think this is any better?’ ‘Well I’ve heard of hopeful, but this beats the band.’ ‘Ok Einstein, what have you got for us today?’ ‘All a bit same old, isn’t it?’
There you were, all fired up with enthusiasm and excitement, telling a friend, colleague, family member about your new idea. Brain buzzing with possibility, all set to go. And then – a series of lazy, semi-automatic responses pulls the rug out from under what seemed a great plan or idea, and you walk away deflated, upset, discouraged.
That’s the mindless power of cynicism. Lazy, unreflective groupthinking cynicism. We live in a culture that has integrated the negative view, embraced the ‘can’t do’ so thoroughly it makes ‘can do’ sound impossible. Negative thinking seems to have become synonymous with reality to a point where embracing a positive attitude can be seen as unrealistic at best, flaky at worst.
It’s insidious too. Just look at the word ‘but’. Three letters capable of delivering the most subtle and damaging undermining of hope and possibility. ‘Yes, I think it’s a great idea, but…’ ‘I do like you, very much, but I can’t live with you.’ ‘It went well, but it would have been much better if…’ It seems to me that ‘but’ is where cynicism begins, a short burst from the bigger guns coming up later.
‘Oh don’t exaggerate,’ you might be thinking. ‘What a weedy way of looking at things.’ Fine, that’ll be your inner cynic waking up to something it doesn’t like the sound of. Hello, inner cynic. Is it raining where you are?
Take a look what happens when you replace the ‘but’ with another three letter word, ‘and’.
‘Yes, I think it’s a great idea, and if you did…. it would be even better.’ ‘I do like you, very much, and I can’t live with you.’ ‘It went well and it would have been much better if…’
What’s happening is a complete turnaround from the negative perspective to the positive, done in a way that encompasses a reality every bit as real and much more inspiring than the previous ‘but’ model. The difference is immeasurable. The difference between stop and go. The fact is that it doesn’t matter what you say before the ‘but’, it doesn’t matter how many good and true things you might list first, that deadly ‘but’ deflates and diminishes everything that came first. That’s why so much feedback fails so badly: a list of good stuff precedes a fatal ‘but’, and the listener hears nothing but the negative implied by the ‘but’ – and now we have become so used to this we don’t even notice what’s happening.
All of which has really serious impact on our capacity to think well, to create fresh ideas, to aspire to new starts and to build different endings. Cynicism trashes our ability to think well and clearly for ourselves. Try it: try a whole day/ week/ month without ‘buts’ and see what happens.