Dear Dani,

I’ve re­alised my in­ner voice can be pret­ty harsh. I al­ways ex­pect the worst or talk my­self out of things be­fore I even try. I want to learn how to flip these thoughts in­to ones that ac­tu­al­ly build me up in­stead of tear me down, but with­out turn­ing in­to one of those fake ‘good vibes on­ly’ peo­ple. How do I fo­cus my thoughts on the pos­i­tive in a re­al, au­then­tic way?

Dear Friend,

First off, give your­self some grace. You’re al­ready win­ning by notic­ing that your in­ner voice has been play­ing the role of chief crit­ic in­stead of hype man/woman. That aware­ness is the first step to trans­for­ma­tion.

Here’s the thing: our brains are wired to look for threats first. It’s an an­cient sur­vival set­ting. Way back in the day, it kept us alive. Now? It just keeps us stressed and pressed. But the beau­ti­ful part is that your brain is al­so train­able, like a mus­cle. With enough con­sis­tent reps, you can shift that in­ner com­men­tary from “You’re go­ing to fail” to “You’ve got this, I be­lieve in you!”

Start small. When a neg­a­tive thought comes up like “I’ll prob­a­bly mess this up”, catch it and ask your­self, “Is that a fact, or just a fear?” Then flip that script with a pos­i­tive spin to “I’ve pre­pared, I’ve done hard things be­fore, and I can do this too.”

This isn’t about fake “good vibes on­ly” en­er­gy, it’s about re­al­is­tic op­ti­mism. You’re not pre­tend­ing bad mo­ments don’t ex­ist, you’re just re­fus­ing to give them the steer­ing wheel and let them run the show.

Sci­ence backs you up here. Dr Masaru Emo­to’s fa­mous wa­ter crys­tal ex­per­i­ment showed that frozen wa­ter mol­e­cules changed struc­ture when ex­posed to dif­fer­ent words. They made beau­ti­ful sym­met­ri­cal pat­terns with pos­i­tive words like ‘love’, ‘joy’, and ‘har­mo­ny’. When neg­a­tive words were used, those beau­ti­ful pat­terns be­came dis­tort­ed, chaot­ic shapes; even the colour turned murky. Re­mem­ber, our bod­ies are most­ly wa­ter, so imag­ine the im­pact of your thoughts and words on you. Pos­i­tive self-talk isn’t just fluff.

And here’s the mag­ic: pos­i­tiv­i­ty cre­ates up­ward spi­rals. It fu­els bet­ter de­ci­sion-mak­ing, at­tracts op­por­tu­ni­ties, strength­ens re­la­tion­ships, and makes you more re­silient. So the next time some­one side-eyes you for “al­ways want­i­ng to be pos­i­tive”, re­mem­ber, your joy is your choice, your pow­er, and your peace. If they find it an­noy­ing, that’s a “them prob­lem”. You just keep bub­bling like soup; who don’t love a bess soup with pro­vi­sion and re­al dumplings?!

Dani