NDUMISO NGCOBO | The power of negative thinking

How do you spend the first five seconds immediately after you accidentally knock over a glass of milk and it shatters into smithereens on your kitchen floor? No, silly; after you’re done yelling bloodcurdling expletives at yourself that would put to shame Oom Schalk yelling at the Bok backline for fumbling the ball just short of the try line during last week’s loss to the All Blacks.

How I usually spend that post-disaster five seconds is earnestly bargaining with the universe to turn back the hands of time until just before I knocked it over. And then I chastise myself for lacking the requisite levels of negative thinking to circumvent the accident. No, you didn’t misread; I just extolled the virtues of negative thinking. Allow me to explain myself.

For the past 12 years, one of my rituals before starting the engine to drive anywhere is playing a short clip of my vehicle on its roof five seconds after overturning, the wheels still spinning, the car stereo still blaring the thumping bass of Tupac’s So Many Tears, accompanied by the hissing noise of airbags deflating. This was exactly the scene 12 years ago after I rolled the family sedan at the Samrand off-ramp on the N1 North.

In those few moments before the acceptance set in that disaster had struck, the optimistic Catholic boy inside me was chanting prayers, invoking St Expeditus, the patron saint of time travel and other emergencies, to rewind the clock just two seconds. You see, all I needed to avert the crash was just two seconds to select any of the other three options available to me rather than the one I chose. I finally understood why a childhood friend, Nkosi, got out of his father’s Hilux van that he’d just crashed into a concrete barrier and started pulling at the bent bumper with all his might in an attempt at the world’s first recorded case of bare-hand panel beating.

Your household insurance has already talked you into believing that your house will burn down

If you’re thinking to yourself what a morbid habit it is to play such a gory scene in my head before embarking on a drive, please hear me out. I may just convince you yet of the power of negative thinking.

The 1952 self-help book The Power of Positive Thinking by American pastor Norman Vincent Peale has shaped the thinking of at least three generations in the Western world. The central themes in the book include the power of a positive outlook on life, faith, and tools such as positive affirmations and visualisations. These are sentiments that just never resonated with my father. He was always at pains to describe himself as a “realist”, which I have observed is how all sceptics, cynics, pessimists and other naysayers prefer to characterise themselves.

A few weeks ago I found myself thinking that I could write a great book on the power of negative thinking. I should have known better than to believe that this was an original thought. Back in the good ol’ 20th century I might have enjoyed the delusional sensation of harbouring this “original thought” until my next visit to the library.

Alas, I live in the era of walking around with unlimited access to pretty much all information in one’s pocket. My delusion was shattered within seconds when I discovered that US college basketball coach Bob Knight had already authored the bestseller The Power of Negative Thinking: An Unconventional Approach to Achieving Positive Results in 2013.

If I had written a book with this title, I would have dazzled my hypothetical audience with many insights about all the industries already practising the power of negative thinking. Medical aid and insurance companies, personal protective equipment manufacturers, health-care facilities and a slew of others are already betting on your own intrinsic pessimism that terrible things will happen to you.

Because I am pessimistic about the chances of yet another bestseller on this subject, I have already discarded the idea of writing this book. I believe I have already done my bit in popularising the notion of achieving positive results using negative thoughts. But for good measure, imagine that your phone will get water damage or just pack up for good an hour from now. What would you do differently? Have you backed up sentimental photographs? Is your insurance up to date?

That, my dear reader, is the power of negative thinking. Your household insurance has already talked you into believing that your house will burn down, and your medical aid company has got you believing you’re next on the swine flu roster.