How to 'Stay Positive'

“The most powerful thing that will affect the quality of your life, and the lives of those around you, is having a positive mindset.”

Those were the words of the consultant neurologist as I sat across from him in his office.

For the previous five months, my body had undergone a series of unusual changes. I had been living with symptoms of a disease I knew all too well from my time in neuroscience research, and the MRI report, which I had already read before this appointment, confirmed beyond doubt what I suspected to be true.

Still, nothing quite prepares you for hearing it out loud.

“You have relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis.”

When news like this arrives, the mind doesn’t stay in the room. It detaches and rushes back to a time before anything went wrong, and then forward again, projecting itself into an imagined future filled with uncertainty, loss, and unanswered questions.

How bad will the pain be?

Will there come a time when I won’t be able to walk?

How will a sudden relapse affect how I can show up as a father?

“You must have a positive mindset” is a powerful and important thing to say after someone has been given such a diagnosis. But something I didn’t ask, and something I would have to work on myself over the following months was - How.

The Problem with 'Stay Positive'

At some point, we’ve all been given the advice “Stay positive”, offered to us as well-intentioned encouragement. But often during times of adversity, the problem isn’t that we lack the will to feel more positive. It’s that our current happiness hinges on the recent events that have taken it away.

Instead of thinking “how do I become happier in this moment”, we think, “if only that thing hadn’t happened” or “if only I had done something differently”. And even though it’s painstakingly obvious that this line of thought doesn’t help - as we know we can’t change the past, we know there are things outside of our control, and we know that replaying these moments only deepens our frustration - these thoughts always find a way to creep in.

I felt this especially sharply one afternoon as I was out for a walk, pushing our two-month-old daughter in her pram. We were passed by a couple of runners who effortlessly glided by us, and the longing to run again stung more than I expected. I have always loved running, but I’m currently unable to do it, and I don’t know if I ever will again. The mind gravitated towards if-only, despite my best intentions.

Trying our best not to think a certain way does not work. Attempting to avoid a specific thought almost guarantees its return. Spend one minute trying not to think about a polar bear, and you’ll see how futile it is. But instead of a bear, it’s grief, loss, and disappointment banging on the door of our minds, demanding attention. And the harder we try to silence them, the louder they come back, resurfacing with even greater force.

Once they break through, it’s hard to resist turning them over again and again in our minds, constantly replaying how things used to be, missing them deeply. And this doesn’t just make us feel worse; studies have shown it has a significant impact on multiple areas of our lives.

Rumination can magnify and prolong emotional distress, interfere with our ability to solve problems or take meaningful action, and reduce our sensitivity to the fact that circumstances can change, meaning we can become trapped in a cycle of overthinking, where our problems feel larger and heavier with every replay, spiralling further and further downward.

The problem with “have a positive mindset” is that it’s incomplete. A positive mindset is the destination, not the map. And the way to reach it isn’t by flipping a mental switch or forcing negative thoughts into silence.

If resisting the darker thoughts only gives them more power, but allowing ourselves to replay them in our minds can leave us stuck in a rumination spiral, then there must be a different approach that reduces their effect on us, one that doesn’t rely on suppression, avoidance, or denial.

There must be another way forward.

Beyond What’s Lost

Bethany Hamilton was a rapidly rising surfing prodigy. She landed her first sponsorship at just nine years old and, by twelve, had already won the Open Women’s Division of the NSSA Regional Championships. The surfing world was at her feet for the taking.

But her rise to surfing stardom was suddenly cut short in October 2003. As Bethany went for a morning surf at her local beach in Hawaii, a 14-foot-long tiger shark attacked her, ripping off her left arm just below the shoulder. She lost 60% of her blood and went into hypovolemic shock, but against all odds, she survived.

After the attack, she knew her life was changed forever - things would now play out very differently. Speaking at a Q&A event hosted at Stanford University, she reflected on waking up in the hospital: “I was upset that I lost my arm, I was also sad as a list of things I couldn’t do came to my mind. I was sad because surfing came up in the list - I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to surf again.”

As she lay in her hospital bed thinking about what she had lost, she was visited by another surfer, Mike Coots. Like Bethany, Mike had started surfing at a young age and had survived a life-altering shark attack during his teenage years, but instead of an arm injury, Mike lost his right leg. This visit was especially important for Bethany because, despite his injury, Mike continued to surf - he learned to ride the waves with a custom prosthetic leg.

After talking with Mike, Bethany’s view of her situation shifted: “I was very grateful to be alive. Gratitude really helped project me towards thinking of what’s possible instead of focusing on my arm.”

It would have been easy for Bethany to continue her downward spiral of negative rumination, to let what had been so unfairly taken from her determine everything that came next.

But instead, just 26 days after the attack, Bethany was back surfing.

She added a handle to her surfboard and made the board slightly thicker and longer for more buoyancy. She changed her technique to suit her body. And she got back out doing what she loves.

Bethany’s return to surfing wasn’t driven by denying what she’d lost, or by forcing herself to “stay positive.” It came from redirecting her attention towards what was still possible and acting on it, a process that, over time, cultivated a deep sense of gratitude. Rather than allowing the loss of her arm to dominate her focus, she adapted to the reality in front of her and fully re-engaged with the life she still had access to.

This same shift in attention, followed by taking action and a deep appreciation for what remains, shows up again and again in people who have lived with happiness despite extreme circumstances, preventing loss from becoming the focal point of their lives.

---

Nick Vujicic is a motivational speaker who has spent years speaking about resilience, joy, and purpose - and today he’s arguably one of the happiest people on the planet, radiating confidence and lifting everyone he meets.

Yet his early life was marked by pain rather than happiness. Nick was born with tetra-amelia syndrome - a rare condition characterised by the absence of arms and legs. As a child, he was relentlessly bullied, swallowed by isolation, and by the age of ten he had attempted suicide.

In his book Life Without Limits: Inspiration for a Ridiculously Good Life, he describes how hopeless those early years seemed, but then how the turning point came when his high school janitor, Arnold, saw Nick’s potential and relentlessly insisted that he share his story and become a speaker. From that point onward, Nick changed his focus and took a different path. Instead of being consumed by what he lacked, he saw that he could still live with purpose, contribute to others, and build a meaningful life.

“Often people ask how I manage to be happy despite having no arms and no legs. The quick answer is that I have a choice. I can be angry about not having limbs, or I can be thankful that I have a purpose. I chose gratitude.”

Nick has now spoken on more than 3,500 stages across 74 countries, reaching hundreds of thousands in person and billions more through digital and print media. He has met with world leaders and helped influence positive legislative changes for children with special needs and access to education.

Nick’s happiness isn’t due to the absence of hardship, but as a result of him choosing purpose, action, and gratitude in spite of it.

---

Christopher Reeve, best known for playing Superman, broke his neck in a horseback riding accident in 1995, leaving him paralysed and reliant on a ventilator to breathe. In the documentary Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Reeve recalled thinking at the time, “I ruined my life and everybody else’s. I won’t be able to ski, sail, throw a ball to Will. Won’t be able to make love to Dana. Maybe we should let me go.”

In the immediate aftermath, it seemed as though the accident had taken everything. But over time, Reeve came to see that while his body had been profoundly changed, his capacity to love, to connect, and to have an impact on others had not disappeared with it. In a later interview, he said, “The fact is that even if your body doesn’t work the way it used to, the heart and the mind and the spirit are not diminished.”

He remained fully present as a father to his son, often spending hours talking with him and offering guidance, encouragement, and support during difficult times. He became a tireless advocate for spinal cord injury research and disability rights, helping to raise millions to support scientific studies and improve the quality of life for others living with paralysis. And five years after the accident, Reeve began to regain some physical sensation. He could once again feel pain and tell the difference between hot and cold. “To be able to feel just the lightest touch is really a gift.”

---

Different circumstances. Different losses. The same shift in attention.

They focus on what they can still do, they act on what remains possible, and they choose to value it deeply.

What Hamilton, Vujicic, and Reeve demonstrated wasn’t a naive form of optimism, or a forced insistence on “looking on the bright side.” They didn’t pretend the loss didn’t exist or minimise the reality of their suffering.

They refused to let the loss become the total centre of their existence.

Instead of spending their lives wishing for a version of reality that is no longer available, they made a deliberate and conscious assessment of what is still open to them. And then they moved towards it.

Research has shown that the people who cope best with loss are not those who cling relentlessly to the life they had before, nor those who collapse into resignation, but those who:

1. Release what is no longer possible

2. Re-engage with what remains

Psychologists call this goal disengagement and goal reengagement. The ability to stop mentally investing in an unattainable future, while actively moving towards a meaningful one, is strongly linked with greater purpose and a deeper sense of control.

A positive mindset, then, isn’t just about changing our thoughts; it is a practice of doing. It is acting in line with the principle: The absence of one part of my life does not erase the value of everything that remains.

The therapy is in the action. It’s shifting the cycle away from ruminating on what has been lost and towards re-engaging with what is possible, then being fully present inside it. Not trying to “think yourself happy,” but doing what we still can, and drinking every last drop of value and enjoyment from it.

How Things Look Now

So that is exactly what I will do.

Not because I can simply decide to feel positive - it isn’t about denying the reality or trying to find the silver lining. Feeding the same downward spiral of if-only, replaying the anger and disappointment each time my mind circles back to how things were, is so painful because there’s no ‘next step’. There’s no action to take - the focus is on what can’t be done or changed. It’s a focus on the unattainable.

That’s why shifting attention to what can be done opens a way forward, because the natural next step is action, and in doing so, the next becomes gratitude. The next steps are positive; they’re progressive. It’s not the absence of something, but the presence. It’s the act of moving upwards, towards meaning, joy, and a life built on what I can do, rather than one overshadowed by what I can’t.

I realise now that this is something I should have been practising long before my diagnosis, as it doesn’t take multiple sclerosis for life to change in an instant. Any of us can be thrown into a new reality without warning, through illness, injury, loss, heartbreak, circumstance, or we may already be living with something that has reshaped the world as we knew it.

In one way or another, we all carry constraints. We all have parts of life that feel limited, altered, or out of reach. And we are all, at times, guilty of feeding the mental loop of focusing on what those limitations have taken away. But gratitude, grounded in action — in asking, what is still open to me? — is powerful no matter our situation. It always offers a way forward.

And so the question beckons: what happens if I find something I’m still capable of, action it, be grateful for it, and then something happens to take it away? What if I shift my focus away from running to pour energy into swimming instead, building my strength in the pool, appreciating every length, and then a stroke of bad luck or a relapse steals it away from me?

Then, I will do the same as I am doing now. I will assess what is still available to me, act on it, and be grateful.

Once we’re always grateful for what we can do, it gives us the power to face whatever comes our way, no matter what’s in store.

And that’s how a positive mindset is built.