The Power of Positive Thinking

Our thoughts have a lot of power over how we feel, and ultimately how we act.

Robert Puff Ph.D.

Posted March 26, 2021 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

Have you ever had a really intense dream that felt so real, even after you woke up? For example, I’ve had dreams where someone important to me passes away and it takes several minutes for me to realize that this didn’t actually happen.

Have you ever wondered why that is? Why is it so hard for our thoughts to catch up to our emotions? It’s because our emotions are very powerful. Sometimes the only way we can bring ourselves out of the emotions attached to our dreams is to adjust our thinking. Meaning, we’ll have to tell ourselves it was only a dream, that it didn’t actually happen.

The power our thoughts have over our feelings bleeds into our everyday lives, too. Life is not always consistent. There are times when it’s easy to make life go well for ourselves, while other times it can feel really difficult.

You’ve maybe even found yourself in the same situation at different points in your life and each time you handled it differently. This is because our thoughts have a lot of power over how we feel, and ultimately how we act.

In fact, oftentimes our thoughts shape the way we feel. Our happiness is dependent on the quality of our thoughts. We’re not happy because we’re happy, we’re happy because we interpret the things that happen to us as good. On the flip side, if we interpret the things that happen to us as bad, we tend to feel unhappy. Our thoughts interpret the things that happen in our lives and as a result, they have a strong influence over our happiness.

This is where things can get a little tricky. When reality happens, we think that there is only one way of interpreting it and there is little room for negotiation. It feels black and white to us—X happened and as a result, I feel Y. But, as we move through life and collect experiences, we may find holes in this way of thinking.

In life, there are lots of bumps and things don’t always go the way we envisioned. Sometimes we handle these bumps with grace and we do what we can to find a resolution. Other times, it’s much harder to find a solution because our anger overwhelms our ability to problem-solve. When the latter happens, it’s usually because our thoughts are telling us “this shouldn’t be happening—this wasn’t in the plan!” But when we handle unexpected situations with ease, it’s because our thoughts are in solution mode. The situation may be the same, but our thoughts make us experience it differently.

Let’s look at an example. You wake up with a headache one morning. The average person will most likely try to make their headache go away. They may try drinking water, taking an Advil, or stretching their body. The key here is that this person is searching for a solution rather than fixating on why they’ve found themselves in this situation.

Another person who is more prone to negative thoughts may say “This is so annoying, I wish it would go away! Why did this have to happen to me?”

An even darker and more problematic train of thought may be “I wonder if something is wrong? What if I have a brain tumor and die? I should make a doctor’s appointment immediately to get this looked at. This must be something really serious.” This train of thought is the most dangerous because it jumps to the worst possible conclusion versus looking at the situation with objectivity.

If you’re someone who relates most with the person in the first example, it can be hard to picture experiencing it any other way. However, each situation is true for the person experiencing it. Ideally, we’d always like to handle it as the person did in the first example, and the first step to achieving that is recognizing that our happiness is dependent on our positive thinking.

I want to take this one step further, and this thinking may be controversial—it doesn’t matter what happens to us; what matters is how we interpret those things. In life, things will go wrong. But we only deem these things as “wrong” because we had expectations for them to go a certain way in the first place.

For example, if we get in our car to drive somewhere, we are hopeful we will get from point A to point B safely. So when our car breaks down, we may feel angry or annoyed. But instead, we could choose to view it as something that happens and we’ll just have to get it fixed. The way we view situations has a lot of power over our reactions to them.

Another minor situation you may experience is getting stuck in traffic. Most drivers in this situation may not be thrilled, but they are still polite to their surrounding drivers. But there are always a few people who are angry and filled with rage, beeping their horns incessantly even though no one can move. We may have even been these people at one point! But, we must remember that they are the exception, not the rule. Those who get upset over the little bumps usually have challenging lives because their thoughts are focused on being upset rather than finding solutions and letting things go.

When big things happen, we tend to think “I have a right to be upset.” And it’s true—terrible things that happen to us will most likely make us upset—but at the same time our thoughts create our reality. If we associate experiencing something upsetting with needing to feel unhappy now, perhaps for longer, then this is going to be our reality. No matter the situation, I can almost guarantee you that someone else has gone through the same thing and they are doing absolutely fine. They may not have liked what they were going through, but they adjusted and are still living a good life.

Let’s look at divorce as an example. There’s a 50 percent chance of getting divorced when you marry someone. This doesn’t mean we should automatically assume we’re going to divorce the person we choose to marry, but we shouldn’t assume that recovering and moving on is impossible if a divorce was to happen. If you and your partner divorce, it’s important to make space to grieve and mourn. But we should also make space for recovery and positive thoughts, too. The most helpful thing we can do is take a step back and ask if our thoughts are helping us move on or keeping us stuck.

Our thoughts create our happiness or unhappiness. When we stop creating expectations around experiences, it may become easier to feel more positive. You know the saying “bad things happen to good people”? We cannot assume that bad things won’t happen to us, but it’s helpful to remind ourselves that we have control over our response to those bad things.

It’s inevitable that we will experience tough situations, both minor and big, during our lives. It’s essential that we carve out space to feel our feelings and grieve our losses before we consider moving on. But once we do that, it’s important that we do move on and adjust our lives to live in our new reality. This is how people overcome adversity and ultimately live a beautiful life. Those who are able to do this understand the deep power that thoughts have over our emotions. And once we can control our thoughts, we are capable of overcoming anything.