Between the constant cycle of negative news online and social media culture, it’s easy for us to see the world declining day after day alongside our own lives. A natural response to all of that is, of course, to escape, whether that’s to video games, our own social circles, or other online spaces.

I can totally understand this kind of reaction, as I’ve been doing a lot of that lately in my own life too. But unlike other escapists, I know the dangers of leaning too much onto something or escaping all the time. It doesn’t really solve the problems that we’re facing in our lives, let alone provide the motivation to deal with those problems.

And so, early on my self-help journey, I created a plan to ensure that I’m at the very least confronting the problems in my life rather than running away from them. It’s a plan I’ve been tweaking for years now in my own life as I’ve been learning about moods, emotions, and myself.

And I feel like at this point what I’m building is good enough to address these issues. I call it building a resilient positive mindset.

By no means is it perfect, but I hope in this article it’ll help you approach emotions, positivity, and negativity in a healthy manner. So let’s talk about it.

Related: Check out the video version. Click on the image below to view it.

The first thing to know about this is really what this is about. Because I’m sure whenever people think of positive mindsets, they jump to toxic positivity.

Well, this is not that.

I’m acutely aware of toxic positivity and how inherently regressive it can actually be. After all, if you’re allowing only positive vibes and positive people into your space, you tend to create a more ignorant bubble around yourself. This is on top of being insufferable around other people, as no one is able to talk about troubles or problems in their lives lest they be deemed people ruining the vibes.

Instead, a positive mindset comes down to a series of core principles.

To me, positivity is looking at the abyss and giving it a big smile while being as prepared as one can be when facing the absolute unknown. What helps with that are the principles I mentioned, which are as follows:

• Be as informed of who you are and what you value as possible.
• Focus on what you can control.
• Reflect and pivot if you need to.

Let’s talk about each one.

The best way to know who you are is to practice self-discovery. It’s a simple thing to do, but I see time and time again how people don’t really practice that. In the self-help industry, people buy into the hype that gurus sell and don’t think about whether the strategies or the end goal really suits them.

What this tells me more than anything is that people are willing to be pulled in either which way and react to things immediately rather than think things over. As a result, people’s sense of preparedness boils down to just winging things or going with the flow.

Sometimes it works, but a lot of it doesn’t, especially around more important decisions.

The reason this is one of my principles is because self-discovery and identity give you an anchor point not only for yourself but also for your emotions in a sense.

When you know what you want in life, it’s a lot easier to focus on that rather than getting distracted by something else. You effectively build up a tolerance to all the hype that gurus try to sell you on and pressure from other people to go in a certain direction in life.

This further improves your own emotions because when you’re not being steered by someone else, you’re able to ask more questions and simply be curious about the world around you. You start to learn and expand your mind rather than passively react to things.

And most importantly, you use that opportunity to figure out where you fit in in all of this.

The thing with self-discovery and identity is that it’s fluid. For sure we have consistent values and beliefs, but everything around that can change. I can tell you how I view the self-help industry when I first jumped in is different from how I view it now.

How all of this ties back into positivity is really just a sense of preparedness. We don’t really know what’s ahead of us in our lives, but cultivating a sense of curiosity for what’s ahead and being prepared to explore it makes it just a little easier.

It changes our attitude from being anxious about what’s next to at the very least having an open mind about what’ll enter our lives next and giving us the space we need to pause and think things over. Overall, this makes us more optimistic and hopeful and creates a sense of wanting to explore.

All of this leads into the next two principles.

One of the other underlying things that self-discovery and identity give us is also a sense of confidence in ourselves. A confidence that we can generally figure out how things play out.

Obviously we’re not mind readers, and there is still a lot of unpredictability, but when you know who you are and where you want to go and take action, you can piece together some of that path.

I knew when working on this channel once more, it was going to be a grind. As such, I prepared myself for it and put in measures to ease myself into it. I also refined my expectations and beliefs surrounding this entire pursuit.

Things like not caring so much about the view count or trying to get this channel to monetization as quickly as possible.

All of this leans into this second principle that I’ve been dancing around: your sphere of control.

Specifically, this principle is to focus purely on what you can control and recognize how big events out of our control are going to affect us.

There is no doubt that big events will affect us in some way, shape, or form. The rise of AI for example, has largely affected how we work as companies lay off employees haphazardly and with little care. It’s not that surprising when you consider that mass layoffs have been a routine strategy for companies for decades.

The only thing that was different is what caused it.

What this principle encourages is instead of just reacting to the broad concept and making some adjustments in your life around it, ask yourself what you can reasonably do to lean further into your own values and how they mesh with these big changes.

For example, if you’re not a big fan of generative AI like myself, you can try developing a growth mindset. I made a video not too long ago on the subject that prioritizes learning and cherishing that process since it uses your brain—a thing that generative AI conveniently abhors us doing.

This principle essentially serves as a reminder that everything around us affects us on some personal level and how we live. The idea is to see this as a generally good thing, as it gets us to adapt and change and grow.

And when you know who you are and what you value, you get to steer that growth in the way that you want it to, even if it’s just a little.

The last principle is what ties everything together and how I’m not able to miss a beat when it comes to changing my behaviour.

It’s to take action and put what I established with my other principles into practice. To reflect further on my conclusion and to make any necessary changes.

It’s why I have a more balanced approach to things and a general openness to the world at large. I know full well that this strategy isn’t going to be a complete game changer from the very start.

But I also deliberately designed it to be like that because I know constantly chasing positivity is unsustainable. We have moods and we all experience negative emotions. But we’re better off learning to cope with them rather than avoid them.

Changing and developing a mindset doesn’t happen on a dime. It takes practice, reinforcement, and acknowledging setbacks. It’s also entertaining the idea you could be completely wrong about certain things, as we are prone to making mistakes.

This principle is a reminder to be deliberate about what we’re doing and how we’re building it. It’s to explore all the options we have and have an open mind to things.

It’s a means of challenging certain notions and looking at our behaviour and adapting accordingly.

Another good example of all this is looking at mistakes made in food you ordered. The typical reaction to someone screwing up your order is to get angry about it and ask for what you initially ordered. But I’d challenge you in that moment to instead give the mistake a try.

The reason being is that it breaks from the usual routine dish you order and gets you to explore something new. And it might be something you end up enjoying and ordering the next time you’re there.

That possibility doesn’t happen if your knee-jerk reaction is to get angry or annoyed that your order was messed up.

Beyond that, this principle reinforces us to be critical thinkers and have empathy as well. To try and make sense of what’s happening in front of our eyes and not only process it but also filter it into what we could be doing moving forward.

I’m no stranger to positivity being viewed with naiveté. We can turn to many other gurus who use positivity and positive vibes as a means of solving all of our problems.

And the reality is that it isn’t capable of that.

But at the very least, positivity does help us with moving forward. After all, being nihilistic or refusing to engage with the rest of the world and what’s going on in it isn’t the most sensible approach long-term.

Eventually, we have to stop running away or putting up barriers to our safe spaces in order to actually fix the world we’re all part of.

And positivity can help with that. Because when you temper it by pausing and thinking about what you can do moving forward and adapting, a positive mindset will give you the hope to push through it all. To work little by little in your own way.

And it’ll help you understand that that is what positivity can really do.