One saying that really annoys me is, "Look on the bright side." Another version of the same thing is, "Focus on the positives." You have to focus on the negatives - the things that suck - if you want to have success.

People who encourage you to look at "the positives" are trying to distract you and get you to settle for less than you deserve. Occasionally they may be well intentioned, but often there's an agenda at work. Whenever someone tells you to focus on the positives, the first thing you should do is ask yourself what their motive is.

If you examine the history of great inventions, you'll see that they came about because someone wasn't satisfied with the way things were. And if you read the autobiographies of the world's richest people you'll find an interesting pattern: many were born poor, or were immigrants, or both. Discontentment with their circumstances is what drove them to become what they did. Were they wrong for not wanting to "cheer up" or "be happy" about living in slums? Misguided? Please!

Despite all this evidence, you still get a great many people insisting that it's wrong to be discontented. What's worse, they feel threatened when you want to change your own life. If you're trying to lose weight, for example, they'll try to convince you that "you look fine," or that "there's nothing wrong with your body." Don't swallow it though. If you're not happy, that's all that matters.

Besides for spouting all the nonsense I mentioned above, they also like to repeat junk like, "The grass always looks greener on the other side." Just what is this supposed to mean anyway? If someone's grass looks greener, that's because it is greener. Are these people honestly trying to say that everyone envies what they don't have? Interesting idea, but consider this: How many Olympic gold medallists are jealous and depressed that they don't have the bronze? I rest my case!