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I’ve realized that telling people to just think positive is one of the worst pieces of advice I’ve ever given. It seems so simple, right? Just be positive and live for the good stuff, but oh man, I was so wrong about that. Today, I'm diving into why it’s not really that easy and what we can actually do about it. We’re going to explore how our minds work and why we really can’t just flip a negative thought into a positive one on demand. So let’s unpack this together and figure out how we can take control of our thoughts instead of letting them run wild.

Just think positive, just look on the positive side of life. Really easy, simple anybody can do it. So why do the majority think in a negative way? It's not as simple as thinking positive, and in this episode of Stillness in the Storms I explained why.

Stephen Webb takes us on an insightful journey through the complexities of human thought in this compelling episode. He starts by addressing a common piece of advice—just think positive—which he admits is not as straightforward as it seems. After years of sharing this advice, he has come to understand that simply trying to force a positive mindset can be both unrealistic and unhelpful. Instead, he advocates for a more thoughtful approach to our inner dialogue, one that honors the intricacies of our emotional landscape.

He breaks down the concept of the mind into three distinct parts: the instinctual mind, which reacts quickly; the subconscious mind, which draws from past experiences; and the conscious mind, where intentional thinking occurs. Each of these minds plays a vital role in how we process information and react to life’s challenges. Stephen emphasizes that while we cannot change a thought once it has appeared, we can choose how to respond to it. He likens thoughts to trains coming into a station, suggesting that we can let unhelpful thoughts pass without boarding them.

In a world where positivity is often glorified, Stephen reminds us that negative thoughts have their place too. They can alert us to potential dangers and help us navigate life more effectively. By recognizing and managing our thoughts, rather than suppressing them, we empower ourselves to create a more balanced mental state. This episode is a call to action for listeners to engage mindfully with their thoughts, encouraging them to choose which ones to nurture. It’s a refreshing perspective that highlights the importance of embracing all facets of our mental experiences for a more authentic and resilient life.

Takeaways:

• The advice to just think positive is overly simplistic and often unhelpful.
• It's crucial to recognize that we cannot simply change a negative thought into a positive one.
• Our subconscious mind tends to reinforce the thoughts we focus on, whether they are positive or negative.
• Negative thoughts have evolutionary benefits that can keep us safe in dangerous situations.
• Learning to manage our thoughts involves choosing which ones to focus on rather than trying to change them.
• Emotional weight attached to thoughts determines how our subconscious mind prioritizes them in our awareness.

One of the most stupid pieces of advice I've ever given, and I've given it to so many people, probably over the space of 20 years, I've probably given it to tens of people.

And that advice is just think positive.

Just.

Just be positive about it.

Live for the positive in every situation.

Oh, boy, how I was so, so wrong.

Okay, for me.

I'm a positive thinker.

My subconscious mind bombards me with positive thoughts.

It's okay for me to think positive and to look for the positive in situations.

So I just, I was just looking at everybody and thinking, just think like me.

Be like me.

Why aren't.

Why are you not like me?

And I would look at them as if to say, that simple, you know?

So on today's podcast, I'm going to talk about why it is not that simple to just think positive and what I've learned about it and what we can do about it.

Because we can do something about it.

I'm Stephen Web, and this is Stillness in the Storms podcast.

And it's a podcast that will just help you to have a little more in life when things are going badly wrong.

It puts you in control, the driver's seat, instead of allowing for the universe or the weather or everything else to be in control of how things are going in your life.

But just before we get on with the show, I just want to tell you about a new app that I found.

It's called GoodPods and it's awesome.

It literally, it's.

It's like Facebook for podcasters and podcast listeners.

You can literally follow your favorite friends.

You can follow your friends, you can see what podcast they're listening to.

You can comment, you can share your podcast.

And not only that, you can keep an eye on, like my podcast, Stillness in the Storms.

And you can interact.

It's just brilliant.

It's called Good Pods.

It's available on Android and on.

What's the other phone?

Oh, yeah, itunes or I Apple or something.

Back to thinking positive, then.

Here's the thing.

You cannot change a thought.

Then this is one of.

This realization is literally life changing.

You cannot change a negative thought into a positive thought, a positive thought into a negative.

You cannot change a thought.

A thought is a.

A tangible object when it is, after it has arisen.

It's like, right, A thought is electricity and chemicals in the mind.

I'm not a neurologist.

I'm not going to go down that route too much, but bear with me just a moment.

You know, there's two types of electric D.C. and A.C. i don't know the difference.

Direct current and alternating current.

I don't know what they both mean.

I have no idea.

One's direct, one's alternating fine, but they're different, okay?

And they're different in ways that I don't know and don't understand.

But when you turn a switch on and that electricity flows through the cables, you cannot change that electricity.

It's already there.

You cannot go, oh, wrong electric.

You've then got to rewire the wires and you've got to then turn it off and then turn it on to give a new one.

Well, this is what we have to do with our thoughts, but it's slightly more complicated than that.

We have what's called three minds.

Now then, this isn't the brain.

I'm not talking about the brain, the different parts and the lobes.

I'm talking about the mind.

Now then, the mind isn't really separated into little parts, but the mind is more a collective of how it all works together.

Now then, you have the instinctual mind.

Nearly every single living thing has this.

Well, as far as I know, they do.

If they got a vertebrae, if they got a brain, they have this instinctual mind.

It's the fight, flight or freeze, or just things up.

Fight, flight, freeze or things up.

Sorry if children are listening to this, but yeah, that's the.

That's my four F's.

Anyway, I back.

I digress.

You've got the instinctual part of the mind that's incredibly quick.

That has nothing to really do with us.

You know, that's when somebody makes you jump from the eye and you turn around and you jump, or you drop the hot buns out the oven because it's too hot.

Things like that.

You're not in control of that decision.

It has.

It's taken out of your hands, literally, you know, it's so incredibly quick.

And it will tell your body or anything to react in such a way that it doesn't even consult you.

It doesn't go, hey, you know, should be duck.

It just tells the body and.

And this chemical boom.

It just does it.

So it's the first mind, the instinctual mind.

Then if it's.

Everything passes through the instinctual mind, everything, you know, even a conversation, somebody.

So if I ask you the question, what's the capital of England?

Your instinctual mind goes, am I under threat?

No, I'll pass it on to the second mind, the subconscious mind.

Then at this point, you're still not even aware.

This all happens within a few.

Within a few milliseconds.

So the subconscious mind then filters it and says, right, okay, what's going on?

And then it looks through a filing cabinet of everything that is done before and if it cannot come up with an answer, and then tries to work it out based on what it already knows, then this is slower than the instinctual mind, but still much quicker than the human mind, the third mind.

So the subconscious mind is constantly looking through the filing cabinet of what did I do last time?

Do I already know the answer?

So in every situation, whether there's a house burning, whether someone asks you what's the capital of England?

Or what do you think of Trump?

Whatever the question, whatever the problem, whatever the problem, beyond life threatening conditions or experiences or imminent danger, the subconscious mind just looks through the filing cabinet and then if it doesn't find the answer, so if I say to you, what's tiger plus five?

You're like, what?

Subconscious mind goes, doesn't make sense.

I'll pass that over to the human mind.

Then the human tries to make sense of it, tries to make sense of the question.

And this is, this is.

Well, often when you see people ask a really weird random question like how many gallons of fuel did you put in your house today?

You're like, what?

Don't you mean car?

Well, because your instinctual mind, your subconscious mind doesn't know the answers.

They're passed over to the human mind and the human just goes, ah.

And this is what they do to confuse things.

It's like the subconscious mind will carry on repeating the same patterns.

And Darren Brown did that.

Is it Darren Brown?

I think so.

He did this to someone that was, ran past him and took his wallet out of his jacket or something like that.

And he was running past him and he looked up and goes, excuse me, why are all the walls in Spain only 2 foot tall?

And he looks at me, goes, what?

The guy stealing this thing just stopped.

I don't know if I got the question right, so please don't repeat this, but you'll get the basis.

And it totally took the robber out of his subconscious habitable mind to the human mind.

And then he said to him, why do you want to steal my thing?

What do you mean?

Oh?

And he brought it to his attention.

And this is what you do after the first two minds doesn't know what to do with it.

When, when you jump out of that habit, you've then got the human mind in the end.

But here's the thing, we're talking about positive and negative thoughts.

The subconscious mind is like A computer.

And all it's doing is looking through its pre programing to see what response to give.

And it's constantly looking at the world around it.

Like when you're walking down the street and you don't.

You don't ever notice a certain top until you buy one yourself.

And then suddenly you notice it everywhere.

Oh, that's really unique in the shop, you think, and then you buy it and you go, really unique.

There's three people out tonight wearing it.

Well, they were out the night before.

But your subconscious mind didn't know you're interested in that top, so it didn't bring it to your awareness.

So your subconscious mind is aware of everything, is seeing, everything, is hearing everything.

It's got the intuitive everything.

It knows what's going on behind you and everything.

It really does have a massive amount of information going in, but we're only aware of a small fraction of it.

Like, you might not be aware of the air conditioner going on in your room right now.

You might not be aware of other things that are going on outside the car.

If you're driving, you might not be aware of a certain sound, the sound of the engine, until it makes an odd noise.

The same with sight.

You're not really aware of everything.

Your peripheral vision, if it's quite normal, it's only if it's abnormal, it's like, oh, take a look at that.

So your subconscious mind is just repeating the patterns and habits of what you've always done.

So if you tend to focus on a negative thought, and if you have a negative thought and you get on it and you focus on it, the subconscious mind says, I got it right, and it'll give you more of them.

And if you get.

And if it gives you a positive thought and you dismiss it and go, yeah, I don't believe in all that.

It won't bother giving you any more.

So it's bombarding you with thoughts, what it thinks you want to ride on, what it thinks you want to go with.

So that's why we have.

We tend to have a bias in one way or another.

You're training your subconscious mind on the flavor of thought that you want.

So you can't change the thought once it's there.

That's impossible.

Once the thought is in your mind, you can change it, but what you can do is allow it to just fade away again.

You can allow room for another thought to come along and you can choose to get on really is that simple.

The other thing is about a negative bias.

And I Just, I do want to address this on the podcast because we do have a negative bias.

Of course, I always use the example of, you got two bears running towards you, one's handing you donuts and one's carrying a machete.

Which one is the most benefit for you to concentrate on?

Yeah, you want the donuts, I get that, but you better sort the one with the machete first.

And if a group of you went into a forest and you were staying there in the middle of the night and you've got all, all of you playing around, you're playing the guitar and you're enjoying it, and you're having a good old knees up, you've had a few drinks, your marshmallows on the fire, and then suddenly someone hears something in the background.

Now then the happy, positive person goes, oh, don't worry about it, it's fine.

The negative, miserable, biased, negative person goes, shh.

Stop.

Everybody stop what you're doing.

Get the bloody marshmallows off the damn fire.

Shut the guitar up.

And everybody looks at him as a, you know, a real party pooper.

You know, he may have just highlighted a bear coming and he might have just saved all your lives, whereas the positive, happy person has just got you all killed.

You know, so, you know, we don't like the negative party poopers, but they are the ones that are going to survive more things, Even in the COVID 19 era, you know, oh, I'm gonna stay in.

I'm not gonna go anywhere.

They're gonna survive.

The ones that, oh, I don't matter.

It's not gonna affect me, you know, I'm okay, Trump.

Okay.

He was lucky.

He had the best of all medicines.

And he should.

He's the president.

I'm not saying he shouldn't, but he should realize that he has better medicines than nearly everybody else on Earth.

You know, I. I doubt even me in the UK with the incredible NHS would have anything near the medication he had, but, yeah, you can see how the.

Oh, everything will be fine.

Don't even worry about that.

Can get us killed.

So that's why we have a negative bias.

Served us evolutionary.

For evolutionary purposes, it served us to stay alive.

So don't.

Don't dish your.

Or don't be down on your negative thoughts.

You know, embrace your negative thoughts.

They're okay, but the thing is you can recognize them and go, well, do you know what?

That's a negative thought.

But that's not productive right now.

And I don't have to go with that's the wisdom you can you have the wisdom to be able to choose which thoughts to get on.

Think of the thoughts as trains, you know, trainer thoughts.

See what I did there?

And you're in the train station and you're sitting there and a train comes in, a thought comes in and you can look at it and go, do you know what?

Is this thought beneficial?

Do I need it?

Am I about to be eaten by a saber toothed tiger?

Is worrying about the meeting that I'm having in two weeks time right now beneficial to me?

No, I'll not get on the train.

I won't ride the train.

So then that train leaves the train station and you haven't got on it.

And then your subconscious mind learns a little.

It learns that you didn't want to get on that train, then it might give you the same train again.

I think they made a mistake, I'll send the same train again.

And then you go, yeah, no, I really don't want that thought.

And it passes out the station.

And then after about 20 or 30 times, the subconscious mind is really bloody stubborn and it will keep repeating the same patterns.

You have to literally tell it hundreds of times.

So much like training a, a puppy.

So after about 10 times of that train and you not getting it on, getting on it, the getting, getting it on with the train, getting on the train, it will eventually stop sending you those trains.

Now you see where I'm going now I think you're ahead of me.

If you choose to get on the trains that you like, let's say you choose to get on all past or colored trains, guess what the subconscious mind eventually is going to do?

It's going to send you only pastel trains.

Yes.

So you cannot change the trains.

You cannot change the thoughts from negative to positive just the same as you cannot change the T shirt in different color or the cup or the drink that you've been given into a different flavor drink, you have to replace the drink.

You have to choose to either suck that one up or go and get another drink.

And that's what we need to do with our thoughts.

We need to treat them as thoughts that come and go.

Now our subconscious mind is thinking up thoughts right now to give you and it will justify this podcast and it will give you all kinds of things.

Oh, wow, that's brilliant ideas.

That's amazing.

But then two days time it'll go, yeah, I'm still going to give you those trains, you know, and then you're going to get annoyed by the trains.

Here's the second part of the key to this.

The more emotional weight you put on each train, on each thought, the more important the subconscious mind thinks it is.

You know, you don't have to have many dates with a particular looking person.

If one of them that looked a certain way really hurt you or smells a certain way really, really hurt you, you're never going to date them again.

Simply.

And somebody else comes along that even looks similar, you're like, look, I know you're not so and so, but I can't date you because you smell the same as him.

So if you give emotional weight to a certain thought, it will put a bias on that.

And it will.

And it will, like mark it out of 10.

It'll go.

They really put a lot of weight on that.

That was important.

Now, notice I said about its importance.

It's not a bias either way.

If you put a negative feeling on a thought, it doesn't see that as a less important thought.

A negative feeling is the same scale as a positive feeling.

So if you put a strong negative feeling, important.

If you put a strong positive feeling, important.

So the idea is to not put emotional weight on the feelings that you do not want, on the emotions on the thoughts that you do not want.

So if you just split up with somebody, and I know this very well, because the moment you split up with someone, you suddenly think they're hanging from the chandeliers, they're doing all the things you, you wanted to do.

They are living the perfect relationship as what you want to do.

And of course that thought hurts.

That thought really, really does run deep.

Hello.

I'm just doing a podcast, Mitzi, and you know, if you want to join in, add something quite constructive.

Okay, the weight is important, but you got to choose what weight to give things.

So if an emotion is a negative one, don't give it a strong negative emotion.

Allow it to go as quick as possible.

Do not hold on to it.

Do not get on it.

Hello.

So, yeah, that is how to change your negative thoughts into positive thoughts.

You can't.

You've got to train your subconscious mind what thoughts to have.

And on that thought, check out GoodPods, the app.

Just look on the Play Store or the Apple itunes for good pods.

All one word.

So little yellow icon with headphones and you can check out my podcast on it.

There's a link below in the show Notes.

Follow me and you'll see what podcast I listen to.

And yeah, it's pretty awesome.

You've been listening to Stillness in the Storm podcast with me, your host, Stephen Webb.

And if this helps you, if you've gone at any point during this and gone boom, yes, I get it.

Wow.

I didn't know that.

Leave a review and share this podcast.

Share it with someone.

Share it with someone that perhaps has a negative thought pattern.

And perhaps instead of just telling them to think positive, you might be able to actually help them.

Instead of dishing out the same terrible advice I did for years and years.

Just think positive does not to work.

Take care.

Love you guys.

Have an amazing day.

Bye.