Force Force positivity looks wonderful, but it is, it's an avoidance coping strategy.

It is denial.

It's denial wrapped up in rainbows and sparkles, but it's denial.

And it doesn't help us to be in the world as it is.

And so a crucial part of my work has been in the idea that there are no good or bad emotions.

Our emotions are signposts of things that we care about and that when we engage with the

discomfort that tough emotions bring us, we learn more about ourselves and we develop

greater levels of resilience and agility rather than fragility and shrinking.

There is a body of research that shows that when we just say, oh, I'm going to win the

marathon, gee, I'm going to, you know, all of the sort of positive affirmation stuff.

There is a body of research that actually shows that what it does is it tricks your brain

into thinking that you've actually done the work now.

So you don't need to do it.

So actually people who engage in only positive affirmations do worse than people who say,

I believe in this possibility, but here are some other things that could go wrong and

I'm going to think about how to plan for these.

You hold the bothness of the vision and the what could go wrong with courage, the fear

with courage.

We can hold both and we can walk forward.

Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.

We don't get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better

place without stress and discomfort.

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