How to stay relentlessly positive, in spite of the news

"What should my resolution for 2026 be?", I mulled as I cooked dinner last week. *Relentless Positivity* were the words that flashed in my mind. Not being an optimist by nature, I was somewhat excited by the prospect of experimenting with a different mental mode for the ensuring 12 months but then, I read the news ... It's not going to be easy, I realised. The world events inspired me to get clinical about positive thinking; what it means in practice and how to deal with a mind that resists!

Willow the Wonderer learns a new superpower in Inner Worlds!

An ancient art

We ended 2025 with the publication of our fifth and final book in the Willow the Wonderer series, Inner Worlds. The central message can be boiled down to seven words:

If you must dwell, dwell in positivity.

Those who read the end credits would know that this story is in part, inspired by an ancient meditation practice that comes from the Buddhist tradition called Metta or Loving-Kindness meditation.

This meditation is based on the insight that dwelling in memories that are charged with positive forces like loving-kindness, generates a potent feeling of wellbeing within ourselves.

We can use to this force to counteract any negative feeling that we harbour towards ourselves or others. With continued practice, it reduces the hold that bad memories, difficult people and negative emotions can have on us. One starts feeling lighter, if not happier inside, and no longer weighed down as much by the past. Another positive side effect is that it lessens feelings of "us and them" and instead cultivate a feeling of oneness towards all beings.

It is important to understand that metta meditation is a 'mind training' exercise. It may have originated in the Buddhist contemplative tradition but there is nothing religious or sectarian about it. The yogis were dealing with a human condition. The remedy they developed has universal application; it applies to and exists for the benefit of all human beings.

Having practiced metta meditation for over a decade now, I can attest to these positive transformations in my own life. At a very practical level, it also transformed the quality of my personal relationships, and continues to be a wonderful tool to use to work through the heavy emotions that difficult situations and people tend to trigger.

Having said this, the real world does have a way of getting in the way and upending feelings of wellbeing. Sometimes it even dampens my enthusiasm to generate and share 'metta' with the world ...

Coping with life (and the news)

Take this past week, for example.

When the theme of relentless positivity popped into my mind, I felt genuinely excited about spending a year in this mindstate. Being an optimist is not my natural disposition. I have always been more of a realist, which in the past few years has meant, largely pessimistic ...

So a year of focusing the mind to see the positive side of life felt good. If nothing else, I was curious to see what would happen.

Then, Trump decided to kidnap Maduro ...

Cue - The ruminating mind

It felt like watching a movie we've seen before: The US government declaring a premature victory on an ill conceived plan ...

The last two decades has (unfortunately) made 'regime change' experts of us all. At some level we knew that this signalled the start of whole new mess, and possibly a fundamental shift in the world order.

As all the doom and gloom scenarios played out in my mind, I started reading through the comments that Venezuelans were making on social media. For the most part, Venezuelans could not be happier that someone/anyone finally got rid of Maduro. To them, things could only get better.

This again changed my line of thinking: I realised that there was a chance that ordinary Venezuelans would seize the moment. They would galvanise behind the right leader, who, with their backing could defeat the insidious forces that have caused so much suffering. They may even succeed at maintaining sovereignty over their resources.

But the events that followed made it clear that this was not the intent of the Trump administration. They had no interest in improving the lives of ordinary Venezuelans. They just wanted to drill oil ...

Even as I write this blog, things will no doubt have moved. It is no different to the chaos that was unleashed last year on global trade that continues even to this day. It's hard to believe but Trump has changed the tariff policy pertaining to China 17 times in 2025!

How to stay positive in the chaos of the world?

So, how is one supposed to stay positive?

I use the Venezuela example because it is topical and admittedly, rattled me. But this dilemma can relate to any situation that one finds upsetting, whether it be international conflicts and wars, events in the local news or indeed, conflicts within the family or with friends and colleagues.

So, how does one stay positive.

I set a very high bar when it comes to positive thinking: I am not interested in staying positive in a self-deluding kind of way, where one ignores or refuses to acknowledge the reality of what is transpiring. Rather, the state of mind I am curious about is one that stays balanced and hopeful whilst being fully acquainted with reality, no matter how bleak.

Most of the advice around positive thinking in our popular culture tends to fall in the former category ie be removed from reality rather than being grounded in it.

On scrutiny, they always fall flat. Here's why:

1. Burying one's head in the sand does not help

"Stop watching/reading the news."

This is a popular advice often doled out to people worried about the state of our world.

News by its very nature has a negativity bias so reducing one's consumption of the news does improve one's mood.

News has also moved away from simply reporting of the facts, to expression of opinions and commentary, not all of which tends to be grounded in reality either. Increasingly this takes up much of the airtime. Avoiding engagement with these discussions in particular, can be very freeing for the mind.

I experimented with this for a good three years; I went cold turkey on all news (except the essential feed I needed for my work) and can attest to have been a very happy ignoramus.

However, it is not something that can be sustained.

At some point we need to inform ourselves about the goings-on in our world out of necessity e.g. when planning a holiday overseas, running a business or for work.

2. Running away from problems does not make it go away

Hermits amongst us would be quietly thinking that there is always the option to leave society (with all its chaos and problems) behind and live a life of complete seclusion (and peace).

The first practical difficulty hermits would encounter is finding a suitably secluded place on our heavily populated Earth, where every inch of territory is spoken for. Even if one manages to find their own piece of paradise, they'd need extraordinary survival skills to make it entirely on their own.

Having watched all eleven seasons of Alone ... I can safely say that even the most skilled survivalist would struggle.

Most renunciates today, whether they be the 'naked babas' in the Himalayas or Buddhist or Christian monks and nuns, tend to stay connected with their community in one way or another. In fact, a supportive community is seen to be critical even for people following a path of renunciation.

People who have spent a lot of time in seclusion or in retreats (e.g., for a spiritual, religious or meditative purpose) will also be the first to confess that isolating oneself from the world is the easy part -- convincing your mind to follow, is where the real challenge lies.

I remember coming across a story about a buddhist monk once; he lamented from his mountain top retreat that although his body was up here in this tranquil setting, his mind was still trapped with the noisy villagers in the valley below.

My own experience in meditation retreats has taught me the futility of trying to escape from reality or indeed, running away from my problems.

I usually head off on 10 day silent meditation retreat in a group setting every year. My longest solo retreat has been for 60 days. Regardless of the length and relative solitude, I have found (time and again) that the issues I'd been dealing with in the real world, always found a way to manifest (in some shape or form) during the retreat! When it did, it always felt worse, almost amplified, as there was no way for me to distract myself.

I had little choice but to find a way to work through the issues. This ended up being very helpful as when the retreat ended, the very same problems lay waiting for me back at home. It also taught me that regardless of the event or person I was attributing the "issue" to, the real problem lay in my own mind ...

The lesson: Running away from problems does not make them go away ... neither is it much of an escape!

3. Not caring is not an option either

Whether we like it or not, our fates and futures are highly intertwined.

One way or another, even wars transpiring on the other side of the world will find their way into our lives. The recent shooting at Bondi beach is a poignant example of this.

Besides, humans are empathic by nature — we even cry in movies we know to be entirely fictional! At some deep psychological and emotional level, we feel other people's pain.

4. False optimism is a hiding to nothing

Another common suggestion to stay positive is to pitch one's hope on some slim possibility or fantasy that is not grounded in reality. I have always resisted this approach as it only delays the pain.

Jim Collins wrote about this in his classic business book, Good to Great. He told the story of Admiral James Stockdale, a U.S. military officer who was a prisoner of war (POW) for over seven years during the Vietnam War. 

One of the things Stockdale had observed during this time as a POW was that the extreme optimists in the camp were the ones who didn't survive. They would set deadlines for their release (e.g., "we'll be out by Christmas") and then die of a broken heart when those deadlines passed. The survivors, in contrast, faced their grim reality head-on but never lost the fundamental belief they would eventually succeed. 

This became known as the Stockdale Paradox which posited that you must:

1. Confront the brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.

2. Maintain unwavering faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties. 

This story had a profound impact on me when I first read it as a 20-something. To this day I believe that it is better to be a realist than a blind optimist.

Faith, however has never been my strong point — I've always found it incredibly difficult to believe in something/anything, just because... I've long wondered what it would take someone like me to maintain unwavering faith (or a positive and optimistic mindset) in the bleakest of situations ...

5. Taking action is not always an option and can have limited impact

One of the other popular remedies proffered in our Western culture is to take action.

'Doing' is how we achieve things, fix problems and if nothing else, distract ourselves. I have to agree that most of the time, it is good advice -- certainly beats sitting around and moping.

But what if there is a problem we can do very little or maybe nothing impactful about?

Take all the chaos that Trump is unleashing on the world, for example. I can see that everything can go pear shaped very quickly but as an ordinary Aussie, I have no influence on the situation, whatsoever. Had I been an American, at least I could have gone around trying to rally everyone to vote ...

What about climate change? Sure I can be conscious of my consumption and do what I can to minimise my footprint but all this means nothing when governments remains unwilling to take the sort of action that will drive wholesale, global change.

The reality is that sometimes even our most earnest actions can amount to very little in the grand scheme of things. It may still feel good but I cannot help but think it's just another form of self-delusion.

So, how do we keep going?

The enlightened advice

The issues and dilemmas I just walked through are not new. People have been having the same conversations for at least five thousand years, well before the advent of 24 hour news channels or social media.

Thankfully contemplatives and philosophers have come up with some nifty solutions for long suffering humans as well. On face value, these seem deceptively simple, but in practice, it has to be amongst the hardest things to do. Perhaps that is why a lot of it has fallen away from our popular culture.

Here's their advice:

1. Stop worrying — It does not help

Humans may be emotional creatures but there is always a chance that we'll listen to reason ... the first piece of advice draws on this faculty (or maybe possibility) and very reasonably suggests to punters to drop the worrying.

Take a moment to review your life: Has worrying ever changed anything?

The answer your heart quietly muttered is, no.

Then why waste all that time and energy worrying? Why create more angst and anxiety than is warranted? Why add to the suffering?

The other point of logic/fact that gets usually inserted here is the notion of impermanence: Nothing lasts forever and that includes anything that is causing you angst. So why worry?

Now that may sound all well and good to our rational mind ... but our emotional side is generally still not satisfied: It raises the obvious question, but how does one *practically* stop the mind from worrying?

2. Stay grounded in the reality of the present moment

Contemplatives and philosophers have long realised that the cause of mental suffering (worrying) either comes from dwelling in the past that no longer exists or ruminating about a future that has not transpired.

Neither of those two states exist in any real sense — the past has gone and the future has not arrived. Yet, much of our time tend to be spent in both these make-belief worlds.

(Yes, even our recollection of the past can be fairly inaccurate, as most people have incredible fallible memories. Things may not be as glorious as we make them out to be decades years later. Neither were they probably that bad.)

The central advice is therefore to stay grounded in the present moment:

• Don't suffer a past that has already gone.

• Don't suffer a future that has not transpired

• Stay grounded in the reality of the present moment

• When you do catch yourself ruminating in the past or future, congratulate yourself for being conscious enough to recognise it

• Then, gently return your mind to the present, grounding the attention onto something 'real' occuring at that point in time e.g. the work you are currently occupied with, the physical sensations you can discern in your body or focusing on your ever-present companion in life, your breath.

When I first came across this teaching, I was still working in the corporate world as a strategist; planning for an uncertain future is what I did for a living. To do the job effectively, I also had to understand history. So, most of my time was spent either learning from the past or projecting into the future.

This advice sounded completely impractical, if not infuriating to me...

I'm not alone in this. It's very hard for most of us who grew up in the West to swallow this advice as, on face value, it seems to denigrate thinking and thought.

Now, thinking is something which held in very high esteem in the Western culture:

"I think, therefore I am" is a famous quote attributed to Descartes, one of the fathers of Western philosophy.

In contrast, the central teaching in Eastern contemplative tradition for centuries has been, 'You are not your body and you are not your mind.'

I used to think that the two philosophies were irreconcilable ... It is only much later that I learnt to see the nuance: Not all thought (about the past or future) constitutes worrying.

The human mind is a marvel of creation and thinking is not only its nature but also its super power. By making the effort to focus our mind and making thought a deliberate process, we are able to harness this super power and put it to good use e.g. to solve the riddles of this universe.

But if we just let the mind ruminate endlessly, we start being led by every random thought that pops up in the mind -- and that is a hiding to nothing.

Both the yogis and Descartes were trying to get us to see this in different ways. Neither was suggesting to stop thinking altogether nor to waste time in idle worries and pointless rumination.

Many folks new to meditation mistakenly think that the point of the practice is to stop thinking; that's like trying to stop water from being wet ...

It is near impossible to do, as thinking is its very nature of the mind. The point of the practice instead, is to see thoughts for what they are - merely thoughts.

There is nothing solid, permanent, absolute or even true (let alone divine) about it. It's just thoughts.

Yet, we give these so much credence; we believe in them and allow ourselves to be led by them. For those of us who are superstitious we even think them to be divine messages from the universe. It's extraordinary!

Staying grounded in the present moment helps us to focus our mind. This is the first step everyone needs to take. Everything else follows from there.

Now, as profound as all this is ... the inner cynic will still ask -- "But what if the present moment is pretty bleak as well? What if all you are getting is bad news? What then?"

3. Give your mind a positive charge

We have now come full circle to the same lesson that little Willow learnt in the fifth and final book, Inner Worlds ...

If the reality is so bleak that no logic, reasoning, grounding is helping shift the mindset, then we need to call a timeout and practice some self-care. And that is what metta meditation is: Self-care for the mind.

The metta or loving-kindness meditation is very deliberately crafted to help one shift out of negative mind states and the sense of separateness that this breeds. This does not simply come about from remembering happy thoughts, but from sharing the good vibes with one self and all others. I have based the second half of Inner Worlds on the way this meditation is typically taught and practiced, so just follow Willow's lead!

"Willow knew what to do for the final part, and sent love to all beings from the depth of his heart." - Inner Worlds

For those who are interested in learning and practicing this meditation, there are also plenty of guided sessions and talks by preeminent teachers available online these days. It'll helps to keep a few things in mind.

The loving-kindness memory you choose to focus on does not need to be some grand happening that is worthy of the great Australian novel ...

It could simply be the way your dog greets you when return from work, a kind smile from a passing stranger or a moment of gratitude you felt towards someone who helped you out -- or whatever moment had even a glimpse of loving kindness in it. Everyone has experienced some form of loving-kindness at some point so don't put too much pressure on yourself to find the perfect memory.

The second thing I would say is that when you get to the stage where you are sharing the goodwill with all other beings, you can can expand the practice to include people and beings that your heart may ache for; those that you know are suffering and wish you could help.

Now, whether this makes a difference to those people in actuality, I don't know... But what I can tell you is that it helps to unburden the heart and mind enough so it can once again, stop pointlessly worrying, and start thinking and acting with clarity -- and as we all know by now, that is our super power.

It's a choice

At the end of the day, the most defining part of human existence is that we have agency: We get to choose who how we feel about life ...

As the Dalai Lama very succinctly put it,

"Choose to be optimistic. It feels better."

Happy 2026! Click your heels as you embrace the new year ...

---

Complete your Willow the Wonderer collection - They really are wonderful books to grow up with :)

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