If you are anxious about something, you probably already know exactly what I mean. You have examined the situation from every possible angle, considered everything that could go wrong and imagined conversations that have never taken place with people who may never say the things you fear they will say. You may have gone to bed worrying and then woken during the night only to find that your mind has immediately returned to the same subject. By morning you are exhausted, but the problem remains exactly where it was. Nothing has been solved; you have simply spent several hours worrying about it.
This is where I want to challenge one of the more simplistic ideas about positive thinking. Positive thinking does not mean that you should never have a negative thought because that is impossible. Nor does it mean that you should tell yourself that everything is wonderful when your life is currently anything, but wonderful. If you have lost your job, are struggling financially, have experienced the end of a relationship or are facing a serious uncertainty, pretending that you are perfectly happy is not positivity. It is denial, and denial is rarely a useful strategy.
You are allowed to be frightened. You are allowed to be angry. You are allowed to grieve, to feel disappointed and to have days when you simply cannot see the positive side of anything. Those emotions are part of being human. The problem is not that they exist; the problem begins when they become the permanent lens through which you see your life. You cannot always choose the first thought that enters your mind, but you can gradually learn to decide how much authority that thought is going to have over you.
Anxiety is destructive
Anxiety becomes particularly destructive when it stops being a response to a specific problem and becomes the way you live. The original event may have happened weeks, months or even years ago, yet your mind continues to behave as though the danger is happening right now. Your circumstances may have changed, but the internal alarm remains switched on. You become constantly alert for something else to go wrong, and eventually you begin worrying not only about the original problem but about your own anxiety and what it might mean.
This is one of the most difficult aspects of anxiety because the mind does not always make a clean distinction between something that is happening and something that might happen. You can be sitting safely at home while your imagination constructs an entire future catastrophe. Your body can react to that imagined future as though it were already real. Your heart races, your muscles tighten, your sleep suffers and your ability to concentrate disappears. You then become frightened by those reactions, which creates another layer of anxiety and keeps the cycle going.
That does not make you weak. It means that a mind designed to protect you has become overprotective.
So, what can you do about it? The first thing is surprisingly simple: stop demanding that the anxiety disappear immediately. The more desperately you try to force an unwanted thought out of your head, the more attention you give it. You end up fighting with your own mind, and the mind is remarkably good at winning arguments that never needed to take place in the first place. Instead of declaring war on every negative thought, begin by taking back a small amount of control.
What is worrying you
One approach is to give your anxiety an appointment. If you have spent every waking hour worrying, do not suddenly announce that you are never going to worry again. Your mind will probably reject the idea completely. Instead, choose a period during the day when you deliberately allow yourself to think about the things that are troubling you. Ten or fifteen minutes may be enough to begin with. Write down what is worrying you and, most importantly, separate the things you can actually do something about from those you cannot control. If there is an action you can take, decide what it is and when you are going to take it. If there is nothing you can do at that moment, acknowledge that fact and stop feeding the thought. Then move on.
The problem has not necessarily disappeared, and you are not pretending that it has. You are simply refusing to allow it to occupy every remaining minute of your day. When the thought returns later, as it almost certainly will, you can acknowledge it without allowing yourself to become trapped inside the same chain of thinking. Remind yourself that you have already considered it and that you will return to it at the appropriate time. It may feel strange at first, but what you are actually doing is teaching yourself that a thought can exist without automatically becoming an instruction.
During the periods when you have decided not to worry, you also need to give your mind something else to inhabit. Go for a walk, listen to music, cook something, exercise, read, talk to somebody you enjoy being with or work on something you have been putting off. It does not particularly matter what you choose, provided that it brings your attention back into the real world. Anxiety has a remarkable ability to shrink your universe until everything becomes connected to the one thing that is frightening you. You stop noticing what is going well because your attention has become fixed on what might go wrong.
Positive thinking opens that door again. It does not do so by promising that nothing bad will ever happen, because nobody can make that promise. It does so by reminding you that one difficult aspect of your life is not the whole of your life. There can still be friendship, humour, music, work, nature, family, curiosity, achievement and countless ordinary moments that have nothing whatsoever to do with the problem currently occupying your mind.
What can you achieve
Another important part of taking back control is learning to distinguish between what you can influence and what you cannot. If you are worried about money, perhaps you can review your finances, increase your income, learn a new skill, seek advice or change your spending. If you are worried about your career, perhaps you can improve your qualifications, investigate alternatives or begin looking for another opportunity. If you have damaged a relationship, perhaps you can apologise, communicate honestly or give the other person the opportunity to respond. These are things within your sphere of influence.
There will always be other things that are not. You cannot control what another person thinks. You cannot guarantee the outcome of every decision. You cannot change yesterday. You cannot know exactly what will happen tomorrow. Trying to control the uncontrollable is one of the most exhausting occupations available to the human mind, and yet we do it constantly. We rehearse conversations that may never happen and catastrophes that may never arrive, believing that somehow this preparation will protect us. Most of the time it simply steals the present.
Let it go where you can. That does not mean that you stop caring. It means that you stop pretending that endless thought gives you control where none exists.
This is also where faith has a place in Powerful Positive Thinking. Faith should never be confused with sitting back and expecting the Universe to solve everything for you. Faith is the belief that there is a way forward even when you cannot yet see the entire route. You take the step that is available to you and then discover what comes next. Perhaps the route changes. Perhaps an opportunity appears that you could never have predicted. Perhaps something you initially regarded as a disaster eventually sends your life in a completely different direction. Or perhaps you simply discover that you are stronger and more capable of dealing with difficulty than you previously believed.
You cannot know the future, and that is precisely why worrying about every possible version of it is such a futile exercise.
What you can change is your relationship with uncertainty. You can stop treating every unknown as a threat. You can stop rehearsing disasters that have not happened. You can stop allowing somebody else's opinion from years ago to determine what you think of yourself today. You can stop making yesterday responsible for tomorrow and, perhaps most importantly, you can start living some of your life now. That word matters. Now.
Not next week when the problem has been solved. Not next month when you have more money. Not next year when your circumstances are finally perfect. Now. Have the coffee. Take the walk. Phone the friend. Listen to the music. Look out of the window. Do something useful. Do something completely pointless if that is what you need. Give yourself permission to laugh. Remind yourself that you are still here and that your existence consists of considerably more than the problem currently occupying your mind.
If your anxiety is severe, persistent or interfering with your ability to live normally, positive thinking should never become another reason to blame yourself. There are circumstances in which professional help is appropriate and seeking that help is not a failure. Sometimes taking control means recognising that you do not have to handle everything alone.
You are not broken because your mind sometimes overwhelms you. You are not weak because you are frightened. You are not a failure because you cannot simply switch off unwanted thoughts. You are human, and being human means that difficult emotions will sometimes arrive without asking permission.
But they do not have to stay forever.
The objective is not to eliminate every anxious thought that enters your head. It is to regain enough control to decide which thoughts deserve your attention and which ones can be allowed to pass. Give your problems their proper attention, take whatever practical action you can and then give yourself permission to live.
Because there is a whole world outside your worries, and it has been waiting for you to notice it.
Frequently asked questions about this story
1. Is it possible to stop anxious thoughts completely?
Probably not, and trying to eliminate every unwanted thought can actually make you more aware of them. The more useful objective is to change your relationship with those thoughts. You can notice them, question whether they require action and then decide whether they deserve any more of your attention. The aim is not an empty mind but a mind that you have greater influence over.
2. What is the difference between thinking about a problem and worrying about it?
Thinking can lead somewhere. You identify the problem, consider your options and decide what you can do. Worry tends to repeat the same questions without producing a useful answer. If you have considered the available options several times and are still going around the same mental circle, you may no longer be solving the problem; you may simply be worrying about it.
3. Can positive thinking make anxiety disappear?
Positive thinking should not be regarded as a cure for anxiety, nor should anyone feel guilty because they cannot simply “think positively”. What it can do is help you develop a more balanced way of responding to difficult thoughts. Recognising what you can control, taking practical action and deliberately returning your attention to the present can all help you avoid allowing anxiety to dominate your life.
4. Why do I keep worrying about things that I cannot control?
The human mind naturally tries to anticipate threats and find solutions, but some situations have no immediate solution or are dependent on other people and circumstances. Repeatedly thinking about them can create the illusion that you are doing something useful when you are actually exhausting yourself. Learning to distinguish between what you can influence and what you cannot is an important part of regaining perspective.
5. What should I do when an anxious thought keeps returning?
First, do not treat its return as evidence that you have failed. Acknowledge the thought and ask whether there is anything practical you can do about it. If there is, decide what that action is; if there is not, consciously redirect your attention towards something happening in the present. With practice, you can begin to understand that having a thought does not mean that you have to follow it wherever it wants to take you.
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