MARK MY WORD: MR. NEGATIVE FINDS WAY TO DWELL ON POSITIVE

Walk into any bookstore and you'll see them -- row after row of those mental self-help books just oozing with positive thoughts.

It's enough to keep you up nights, or send you in search of Donald Smith.

Smith is Mr. Negative. He's been that way for over 20 years. He views positive thinking as a deadly disease.

The author of "How to Cure Yourself of Positive Thinking" has a new book out. It is called "The Joy of Negative Thinking."

Smith says there is nothing positive about positive thinking. He loathes team players.

"It is an unworkable, completely ineffectual bit of chicanery that always fails the poor, sad people who need help the most," insists Smith.

"Positive thinking," he writes, "gave business the opportunity to go on governing with a sledgehammer and yet appear to be enlightened at the same time.

"From this came the idea of a team player, which is a wonderful euphemism for someone who looks the other way when the Cossacks plunder the village."

Smith says his negative attitude ended his career in corporate America.

He says he was shunted off to meaningless assignments in remote buildings, made to work for people who once worked for him, and generally humiliated on a daily basis. And those were just the good things about his job.

A positive person would have embraced such a career and become a federal employee.

Smith, however, took a different road.

Armed with a good negative attitude, he said no to everything, except, of course, royalties on his books.

Smith says people need to learn to say no. "The little word no is easily the most powerful word in the English language."

According to Smith, people who constantly cave in under pressure never feel good about themselves. Standing up and saying no, however, is an experience not unlike being reborn.

Smith is downright positive about no. And why shouldn't he be?

No is big these days. People are saying no to everything from drugs to baseball.

Is the glass half empty or half full?

The optimist figures it is half full, unless he or she is a parent. Then, you know better. You know that half that glass of chocolate milk has been spilled on your kitchen floor.

My wife, Joni, is an optimist. She often accuses me of being a pessimist.

"I'm just being realistic," I reply as I clean up the Cocoa Puffs my daughter, Becca, spilled on the dining room floor for the 20th time that day.

Personally, I think Smith would like parents. Parents have to say no a lot. "No, you can't run into the street and get hit by the car" or "no, you can't use the television set as a hockey goal."

Smith probably subscribes to the mathematical reality that two negatives make a positive.

Of course, that could be a troublesome problem for negativity gurus. If they all show up at a convention, they just might end up being too positive.

As to Smith's book, I just have to say no. No, I won't buy it.

I'm sure Smith would understand. Why, he would be proud of such a negative attitude.

It would probably motivate him to write another non-selling book.

After all, even a pessimist has to be positive sometimes.

~Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.