264: Should We Always Try to Think Positive?

Last Updated on July 19, 2024 by Alicia Michelle

Do you tell yourself “Just think positive and be happy!” when life hands you challenging moments? We hear a lot about the power of positive thinking, but can being positive actually be more harmful than helpful? What are healthier ways to address negative thinking and find joy?

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN:

• [04:00] What is The Difference Between Happiness, Joy, and Thinking Positive?
• [07:43] Challenging Emotions Are Check Engine Lights From God
• [11:08] We Need to Embrace Challenging Emotions Before We Fill Ourselves Back Up with Positivity
• [16:25] Are You Going to “Regularly Water” Healthy or Unhealthy Mindsets?
• [19:59] Ask Yourself These Questions: What is Going on Under The Surface Emotionally + What Will be Helpful in The Moment?
• [24:23] Myth 1: “I'm Only Able to Find Joy When Life is Good”
• [26:00] Myth 2: “I Am a Bad Person if I Tend to Focus on The Negative and Don't Feel Positive About an Outcome.”
• [28:03] Myth 3: “It is Impossible to Hold Positivity and Frustration at The Same Time”
• [30:51] Myth 4: “The Other Shoe Will Drop If I Lean on a Positive Thought”
• [33:38] Is There Something Getting in The Way of You Accessing Joy?

[04:00] What is The Difference Between Happiness, Joy, and Thinking Positive?

There is a difference between being happy, finding joy, and thinking positively. Happiness is an emotion that fluctuates up and down. We may feel happy when we get a bonus, are about to go on vacation, or get an A on a test. Happiness is typically conditional on a circumstance. 

Joy is an unconditional state that we get to rest in as God’s children. As Galatians 5:22 says, “Joy is a fruit of the spirit.” Joy is something that has to come from God and can be steady like love, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Joy is a place to go when life gets crazy because it is a gift from God to help us look beyond what we are currently walking through. 

Godly joy first comes from having a relationship with Jesus. If you do not have a relationship with God or you are just going to church to check a box, please check out this resource so you can build a relationship with Him + find joy in your life. 

Positive thinking is generally conveyed as turning our thoughts towards positive “good” things. 

Yet sometimes the things that we label as good are not necessarily the things that are easy or that may be pleasant, but they are still good because they are healthy. It can either be healthy or unhealthy to think positively.

[07:43] Challenging Emotions Are Check Engine Lights From God 

In our culture, we generally hear “Just rise above it, think a positive thought, and push down anything negative.” While yes, it may feel “good” to live in a state of “good vibes only” but is it healthy? To get the fullness of what God brings, we sometimes have to sit in a challenging emotion. These “negative” situations, feelings, beliefs, or triggers are getting in the way of the ultimate joy we are seeking. 

We can think of challenging emotions as check engine lights from God. They are signals going off inside of us around things that may not be fully healthy. If we see a light on in our car, we know that we need to check the tire pressure, change the oil, or address another part that needs attention. These challenging emotions are God’s way of alerting us that something inside needs to be addressed. They are meant to be managed in this loving partnership with God, not stuffed down. 

Imagine if astronauts in a space shuttle were getting an alert that oxygen was low and they just kept ignoring it. They would be facing death. All this to say, we cannot keep ignoring and pushing down these things. 

What I often see happen is that when someone feels challenging emotions, they instantly feel like they are supposed to think positively. Although God wants us to focus our minds on heavenly things, we sometimes need to pass through a difficult path to get there. 

[11:08] We Need to Embrace Challenging Emotions Before We Fill Ourselves Back Up with Positivity

Philippians 4:4-9 says, ”Always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again – rejoice! Let everyone see that you are considerate and all you do. Remember the Lord is coming soon. Don't worry about anything. Instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank Him for all that He has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. And now dear brothers and sisters, one final thing, fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right and pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me, everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.” 

This verse encourages us to fix our thoughts on things that are good. But we need to notice that this happens after we have done the work of praying and working through what is troubling us. We are not ignoring the challenge, we are working through it with God. Then after we have released it, an empty space opens up that we can fill back up with what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, and admirable. 

There are many psalms that David has written where he was first honest and vulnerable and then realigns his mind with what is true about God. He works through and honestly expresses his emotions, releasing anything that could get in the way of joy. We need to lovingly process the challenging emotions before we can just get to the positive or “good” side. 

We may get in ruts where we are stuck in negative thinking and thought patterns. This is why it is important to deal with what is underneath. If we just slap on a positive thought and say “God is good” then these negative thought patterns will not go away. Our brain is smart enough to know that there is a real reason why we are feeling that way. There are often deeper issues that are going on. 

Now another situation that could come up is that we need to redirect ourselves. There might not be a big issue underneath that needs to be addressed. It may be something little that we have dealt with and we can now just focus on what is right and true. We can always ask ourselves “Is there something underneath this?” and if it is just a minor reaction we might need to refocus our thoughts on what is healthy in the moment. If someone cuts you off in traffic and you are mad, you might not have to go down a whole trail of being angry and upset – this is where focusing on a positive thought is healthy.

[16:25] Are You Going to “Regularly Water” Healthy or Unhealthy Mindsets?

Depending on the situation, positive thinking can be toxic or life-giving. Instead of thinking about what we have in our mind as “positive or negative” think about what we have in our mind as “healthy or unhealthy.” This makes room for those things that might be challenging to think about without giving them that label of being “negative”. 

We get to decide whether we are going to regularly water healthy or unhealthy mindsets. God cannot make us choose to work through a difficult situation or quickly refocus on something that is more heavenly-minded because we are not His robots. We have the power and free will to choose. 

We “water” a mindset the same way we water a plant. When we water a mindset, we are growing it, focusing on the thoughts repeatedly, and attaching emotions to it so it is more likely to stick to the brain. We can build ways to access joy more easily and we can do this based on what we are focusing on and how we are handling the emotions in the moment. 

[19:59] Ask Yourself These Questions: What is Going on Under The Surface Emotionally + What Will be Helpful in The Moment?

If we want to learn towards healthly mindsets, we need to have an honest, ongoing dialogue with God about two things: “What is going on under the surface emotionally? and What will truly be helpful at the moment?” So if you feel that difficult emotion or hard thing coming up, you have the choice to focus on the joy or to choose the challenge and work through it. 

Here is a question you can sit with if you are feeling that pull to sink into the challenging thinking: 

“Am I dealing with an in-the-moment frustration that is going to be gone relatively quickly or is this negative thinking a check engine light to something deeper?” 

We have to be honest with ourselves before God about what this truly is. Unless God is showing you that there is a deeper cause for the negativity, typically the healthiest thing to do is to redirect to that positive. This is fixing our thoughts on what is true, right, pure, excellent, and worthy of praise. 

When my husband and I were walking through one of our seasons of intense unemployment, I had a list of things that I labeled “Things that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and worthy of praise.” I looked at this list when I found myself sliding down the pole toward negativity. I was consistently dealing with feelings of sadness, fear, grief, and questions about when God would deal with this. I was continually asking God, “What do I need to deal with in this moment to access and receive your joy through this? Do I need to lean into these challenging emotions or lean into this list?” 

If I knew that I did not have to rehash things with God, I would fix my thoughts about what was true in our situation. I was thinking about what was honorable about my husband finding a job, how so many people were helping us, and how my family was learning so much about God. Since I already dealt with what was underneath, instead of letting the scary thoughts fill the hole that was there, I kept planting those positive thoughts in the soil and knew I needed to focus on that healthy mindset. 

[24:23] Myth 1: “I'm Only Able to Find Joy When Life is Good”

The first myth around positive thinking in our society is that we think we are only able to find joy when life is good. As we said, having healthy thinking is an ongoing rhythm and practice. Joy is not a feeling, it is a state of mind and a foundational truth that we are accessing. Joy does not get affected by difficult circumstances. Having that hope-filled lens as our rhythm and having these things in place where we are willing to process what is getting in the way of joy is key. 

This is an essential element that many people miss when they are trying to find joy through something hard. They think that God is supposed to give them joy or they are just supposed to look beyond it. Sometimes to look beyond it we have to deal with the challenges that are blocking it first. If we are only able to find joy when things are working out the way we want, then we have to ask ourselves: “Am I seeking joy or happiness?” – because there is a big difference.  

[26:00] Myth 2: “I Am a Bad Person if I Tend to Focus on The Negative and Don't Feel Positive About an Outcome.”

Many of us feel like we are a bad person if we tend or focus on the negative and do not feel positive about an outcome. We are all human and have ebbs and flows within our feelings. We are going to naturally think about what may be harmful, our brain is designed to keep us safe.  There is a famous psychologist who talks about this idea of our thoughts being like Velcro towards the negative and Teflon towards the positive. As humans, it tends to be this way and it makes sense because again, our brain is trying to keep us safe. 

Some of us may think “Oh I am just a negative person” but I believe that accessing joy and learning to harness our feelings are learned habits. Make sure to check out the free training 10 Habits and Mindsets to Cultivate Extraordinary Joy to learn what we can do to tap into joy. 

If you tend to move towards negative thinking, you are not bad, it is a protective mechanism. We are often afraid of being caught off guard and hurt again. Just know that there is hope and that there are ways we can allow ourselves to be set up to work through these emotions and also make joy more easily available in our lives.

[28:03] Myth 3: “It is Impossible to Hold Positivity and Frustration at The Same Time”

The third myth is that we feel like it is impossible to hold positivity and frustration at the same time. If we are positive then that means we are dismissing all of the frustration we feel. This was me for a very long time. I thought “If I am focusing on things that are right, pure, lovely, and true, then what does that mean for all the things that are frustrating me?” I wondered if God would think that everything was fine and I was over it when I was in fact still struggling. 

Many of us are afraid to let go of the negativity because we are afraid that if we pretend everything is good, then our feelings will not be validated. 

If we go back to what it means to be joyful versus happy, joy is not a state of up and down emotions. It is a continual unconditional gift of the Holy Spirit. 

Joy has room to hold frustration.  If we think about Jesus and the garden of Gethsemane, the night before He was crucified, He had a lot of frustration about what was ahead of Him. Yet, the Bible says that it was for the joy set before Him that He went to the cross. He did what He did because He was able to release and let go of those fears, leave them in the hands of God, and rest in the joy that was set before Him. 

We have the ability to hold the frustration and the thoughts that are true – and to know that God has not forgotten the ways that we were slighted. He even sees the things that we do not want to admit to or are aware of. We are not giving up all of that by allowing ourselves to rest in healthy mindsets of joy.  

[30:51] Myth 4: “The Other Shoe Will Drop If I Lean on a Positive Thought”

The last myth is that we are sometimes afraid to lean towards a positive thought beyond what we have because we feel like the other shoe will drop. I cannot tell you how many times I lived like this (and still sometimes catch myself in this). It is normal to do this but we have to be bigger than it and ask ourselves “Am I protecting myself? Can I just rest and enjoy?”  

We cannot force joy, we have to be aware of why it makes sense that we are afraid but we can ultimately permit ourselves to rest in it. We have to come to that point where we realize that we cannot know all of the outcomes and we need to release control.

When I was a brand new Christian, the young woman who led me to Christ and who discipled me for several years told me something that still rings in my heart today. I told her that I was really stressed out about some stuff and that some big decisions were coming up. I told her “ It feels like everything is up in the air and I am never going to be able to decide.” She said to me “Alicia, life is up in the air. You're never going to have a specific answer to a question and know exactly what comes next. You will be led by the Holy Spirit. He will be directing your path and you will know just enough for what's in front of you.” That was what I needed to hear because I was trying to keep myself safe by living in this little small area – but in this place, joy was never going to be able to get in. 

[33:38] Is There Something Getting in The Way of You Accessing Joy?

My challenge to you today is to ask yourself: “Is there something getting in the way of my ability to access joy?” 

The great thing about every gift of the Lord is that it is 100% available to all of us. It is not like some people have special access or we have to work harder to get it. It is like having a radio show that is broadcast out to a specific area. It is shared equally to every person in that county, but those who have good receivers are going to be the ones who can listen to it.  If you have a receiver that is old or does not work, you will not get the message the same way. 

This is how these messages work within us. God is sending gifts out and although there are times when it feels more difficult to access them – if we are plugged into the vine, we have full availability to receive them. Our responsibility is to make sure that we are plugged in and not glossing over things that could get in the way of this joy including being super positive to try to feel better. We are tapping into the source of joy, addressing anything that might be in the way of that, and creating mindsets and habits that allow us to receive the joy. 
If you want to create these mindsets and habits, I encourage you to watch the free training 10 Habits and Mindsets to Cultivate Extraordinary Joy. I am so excited about how women can be set free in this area by learning how to build these things in their lives. These habits and mindsets do make a difference!

RESOURCES:

Godly joy is a fruit of the spirit, but our physical, mental, and spiritual states (things we’re in charge of) play a huge role in our ability to receive godly joy. Let me show you 10 practical ways to tap into everyday Christ-centered joy in my new free video training:  10 Habits and Mindsets to Cultivate Extraordinary Joy. Download it now!

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