The hidden pressure behind positive thinking. What would happen if we stopped trying to change how we feel?

Have you noticed how exhausting it can be trying to think positively all the time? When life feels busy or difficult, we’re often encouraged to change the way we’re thinking about it. To remember what you’re grateful for, look on the bright side, or tell yourself it’ll be okay. Basically, to replace negative thoughts with better ones.

It sounds sensible, and can sometimes help, but I like to look at it a bit more deeply. 

I’m not suggesting that words don’t matter, because they do. But simply repeating words we don’t believe doesn’t make them true. And when we use them to try to change how we feel, they become another thing we’re doing to manage or change our experience - without creating any real shift underneath.

But let’s consider what really happens when we believe we’re responsible for thinking our way to a better experience of life. Because then a difficult feeling isn’t simply a difficult feeling anymore, it becomes something we need to fix. An anxious thought becomes something we shouldn’t be having, feeling stressed becomes evidence that we’re not coping well enough. And feeling low can leave us searching for another thought that might finally make us feel better.

So we try to change the thought, and when that doesn’t work, we try harder.

I think this is where positive thinking can become another source of pressure, rather than the relief we’re hoping it may bring. When you’re already carrying a lot, you can wake up thinking about everything that needs to happen that day. The presentation you have this morning, your parent’s hospital appointment, and whether you’ll get back in time to pick up your teenager from college. All the things you need to remember, plus the things you haven’t got around to yet.

And on top of all of that, you’re telling yourself: “I’m calm. I can handle today.” But if your body feels stressed and your mind is already racing ahead, those words don’t necessarily change anything. They can just become another thing you’re trying ‘to do’ to manage how you feel. And if you still feel stressed, it can feel as though you’re failing at that too.

That’s what I’m interested in, because the problem isn’t the affirmation itself, it’s what we’re asking it to do for us. If we’re using positive thinking to try to override an experience we’re already having, we’re still treating that experience as something that shouldn’t be here.

If we’re stressed - we need to feel calm.

If we’re anxious - we need to think positively.

If we’re having a difficult day - we need to find a better way of looking at it.

We’re then just continually trying to move away from what’s actually here - but that’s like painting over a patch of damp. You can cover the evidence for a while and it can look better on the surface, but the damp hasn’t gone and eventually it’ll seep back through. The real problem isn’t the appearance of the wall, it’s what’s underneath the paint.

We do something similar with our thoughts and feelings. We try to paint a better thought over a difficult feeling and hope it’ll disappear. Or we tell ourselves we’re not stressed when clearly we’re experiencing stress. But painting over a feeling that is actually true right now doesn’t get rid of it.

When we look at this, it’s obvious why we do it. When life is busy and there’s a lot of responsibility, of course you want to feel less stressed. You want to feel positive instead of anxious or overwhelmed. The problem arises when we start believing that the way to achieve that is to manage our thinking, because then we’re not just experiencing life, we’re monitoring our experience of it.

Am I thinking positively enough?

Why am I feeling like this again?

What should I be thinking instead?

Why can’t I just be grateful?

What am I doing wrong?

And suddenly something that was already difficult has become another problem to solve. This is why I don’t think the answer is to find a better way of thinking. It’s to understand what’s actually happening, by seeing where all the pressure is coming from in the first place.

Something else we rarely question is how we talk about thoughts as though we’re consciously choosing them - as though we can simply decide to think something more positive instead. But thoughts just arise. You don’t know what your next thought is going to be until it appears.

So when a difficult thought arises, trying to change it after the event can give that thought far more importance than it needs. We take it seriously, analyse it, argue with it, replace it, and then monitor whether we’re thinking the “right” way. And now we’re not just having a thought. We’re managing our relationship with every thought that appears.

We’re so accustomed to looking to the thinking mind for answers, that we rarely question how seriously we’ve learned to take it in the first place. We assume that if we can think the right thoughts, we’ll feel the right feelings, but what if our experience doesn’t work that way? What if we don’t have to think our way through every experience before we can meet life?

This is what I mean by being at The Point of Now more often. It’s about seeing what’s underneath all that mental activity - the part of you that was steady before the mind started trying to work everything out. When you begin to see this, things tend to change. You don’t have to catch every negative thought, or make sure you’re thinking correctly. You don’t have to keep trying to create a good experience through positive thinking: you can actually just allow yourself to feel how you feel, without immediately deciding that the feeling needs to change. And, perhaps ironically, when you stop trying so hard to change your experience, life can begin to feel lighter.

You have more space to actually be in your life, rather than continually thinking about how you’re experiencing it. You’re more present to what’s happening and can respond to what’s actually in front of you, rather than trying to work everything out in advance. And you may find that you’re naturally more positive, without having to spend your day trying to be positive.

A recent client wanted to feel more positive about life. She’d been trying to create that for herself for years, talking herself into feeling better and trying to look at things differently. It worked for a while, but the responsibilities and busyness of life would take her attention again, and she’d find herself back in the same loop.

As we worked together, we stopped trying to make her feel more positive. Instead, we looked at what was creating the pressure in the first place. She began to see the habitual patterns running in the background, and how much mental energy she’d been using to think her way through life. Over time, she no longer felt that she needed to work everything out in her head in advance. And after four sessions, she wasn’t trying to force herself to feel positive anymore, because she didn’t need to. She described feeling naturally more positive, less serious about everything and as if life was simply a little easier. 

And this is why I call my work subtractive. I’m not interested in adding another thing to an already busy life. The Point isn’t another technique ‘to do’, or another way to manage yourself - it’s about seeing what’s already here. Because when the thinking mind is no longer your only reference point, what’s left isn’t an improved version of you. It’s you - in fuller, more natural expression.

And perhaps that’s the part of positive thinking we don’t talk about enough. You don’t necessarily need to think better thoughts to experience more of life. You may simply need to see what’s getting in the way of experiencing what’s already here, unnecessarily. 

And that’s much simpler. It allows space to see more of what’s available and possible.