Simon on TOXIC POSITIVITY

8 Mar 2023 · 1 min

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0:56

A short YouTube video segment where Simon distinguishes "toxic positivity" from genuine optimism. He defines toxic positivity as denying or minimizing real struggle, and contrasts it with realistic optimism — acknowledging current hardships (he cites an example: "this is gonna suck for about eight weeks") while believing in a better future if people work together.

Chapters

There is such thing as toxic positivity, but toxic positivity is different than being an eternal optimist. Toxic positivity is blindly believing everything good when it's not like, everything's fine, everything's good here, and telling your team, hey, look. Hey, look, everything's fine, everything's good. Look at. Look. Look at the bright side. Look at the bright side when you're going through stress and horrible things. If you're truly an optimist, it means you believe the future is bright, but you can absolutely be realistic about darkness that we're in. Currently, I'm an optimist. I'm also a realist. I can also say, hey, this is a really tough time. I'm struggling. We're struggling. The team is struggling. This is gonna suck for about eight weeks, but I know if we work together and take care of each other, we will get through this in better shape than we went into it. So that's optimism, but it's also realism. Toxic positivity is ignoring and denying reality where struggle may be part of it.