Positive thinking used to sound like nonsense to me.
When I was drinking, I didn’t want someone telling me to “just think positive” while my life was falling apart. I was stuck, angry, anxious, broke, comparing myself to everyone else, and convinced that life was against me. Facebook was the worst thing ever invented because it became a mirror of everything I wasn’t doing. Other people were getting married, buying houses, having kids, progressing in their careers, looking healthy, looking happy, and I was reaching the end of my twenties still posting drunk photos, pretending it was all fun when, if I’m being honest, it was starting to look a bit sad.
Not “wild lad living his best life” sad. More “this bloke is stuck in a loop and everyone can see it apart from him” sad.
At the time, I genuinely believed life was unfair. I was what you would call a victim of life. Why always me? Why does nothing ever work out? Why does everyone else seem to move forward while I’m still here, hungover, anxious, skint, and starting again every Monday with the same empty promises?
That mindset didn’t arrive overnight, but over time it became toxic. My own mind attacked me at every opportunity, and alcohol, drugs, and gambling became light relief from living inside a head that never shut up. The problem is that light relief eventually becomes a darker prison. The things you use to escape your mind end up making your mind a thousand times worse.
There is a quote from Epictetus that explains one of the biggest mindset shifts I have had to learn in sobriety: “Don’t hope that events will turn out the way you want, welcome events in whichever way they happen: this is the path to peace.”
That, to me, is what real positive thinking is.
It is not pretending everything is fine. It is not walking around with a fake smile while your life is on fire. It is not telling yourself that bankruptcy, addiction, anxiety, shame, grief, failed businesses, health problems, or being humbled by a tiny blue Pilates spring are all “positive experiences” because someone on Instagram told you everything happens for a reason.
Positive thinking is learning to stop fighting reality long enough to choose a healthier response.
Positive Thinking Is Not Toxic Positivity
This is where most people get positive thinking wrong. They think being positive means denying pain, ignoring problems, or pretending difficult things are blessings when, in the moment, they feel like absolute hell.
That is not positive thinking. That is avoidance with a motivational quote slapped on top.
Real positive thinking is much more practical than that. It is being able to say, “This has happened. I don’t like it. I wish it was different. But what now?”
That question changed everything for me.
During my drinking days, my brain was constantly asking the wrong questions. Why me? Why is life unfair? Why does everyone else get ahead? Why can’t I catch a break? Why am I like this? Those questions didn’t help me move forward. They kept me stuck in the same victim loop, looking for someone or something to blame, while I kept making the same destructive choices.
Sobriety forced me to ask better questions. What can I control? What is the next right step? What do I need to accept? What am I resisting? What am I learning here? Who do I need to become if I don’t want to keep living like this?
That is the difference between negative thinking and positive thinking. Negative thinking keeps you trapped in the problem. Positive thinking helps you look for the next useful step.
I Had To Accept That My Old Life Wasn’t Working
By the end of my drinking, I had lost almost everything. My mental health, money, self-respect, physical health, career direction, emotional stability, and any real sense of hope had all taken a serious beating. I ended up in rehab because my life had become unmanageable, and at some point you have to accept something very uncomfortable: whatever you were doing up to that point was obviously not working.
That was hard for my ego.
My ego wanted to blame people, circumstances, bad luck, the economy, Facebook, the weather, the referee, and probably a few other things I could have dragged into the courtroom of my mind. But sobriety made the truth impossible to ignore. If I wanted a different life, I had to become a different person.
This is where positive thinking began for me. Not with affirmations in the mirror. Not with vision boards. Not with pretending I was suddenly full of joy and wisdom after years of chaos. It began with acceptance.
I had to accept that alcohol wasn’t working. I had to accept that drugs weren’t working. I had to accept that gambling wasn’t working. I had to accept that my mindset wasn’t working. I had to accept that if I kept living as a victim of life, I would keep finding evidence that life was against me.
And believe me, when your brain is looking for problems, it will always find them.
From Victim Mindset To Growth Mindset
Around the early part of my sober journey, I did some life coaching certificates, which still gives me the ick to admit because I personally can’t stand most life coaches. Little life, high prices, no thanks. But to be fair, I did learn something invaluable, and it became one of the main ideas behind Mindset Mastery.
You can either live with a victim mindset, where everything is happening to you, or you can develop a growth mindset, where everything becomes something you can learn from, grow through, or respond to differently.
That does not mean life becomes easy. It does not mean awful things stop happening. It does not mean you float through life like some enlightened monk who never gets annoyed by Amazon publishing issues, bad golf shots, traffic, builders, injuries, or Liverpool’s defence looking shaky.
It means you stop handing over your peace to every external event.
A victim mindset asks, “Why is this happening to me?” A growth mindset asks, “What can I do with this?”
That shift sounds small, but it is massive.
When I was drinking, I lived in the victim mindset almost all the time. I thought life was unfair, other people had it easier, and my circumstances were the reason I wasn’t moving forward. But in sobriety, I slowly started to realise that my mindset was either going to become my prison or my way out.
This is why I wrote Mindset Mastery. I wanted to share what I had learned about rewiring negative thoughts, building self-belief, developing a growth mindset, and becoming someone who can handle life without reaching for the self-destruct button every time things get difficult.
How To Think Positively In Real Life
Thinking positively does not mean you wake up every day feeling amazing. I certainly don’t. Some days I wake up feeling anxious, tired, irritated, or like I have been emotionally drop-kicked by life before breakfast. The difference now is that I do not automatically believe every negative thought that turns up in my head.
That was a big lesson.
Your thoughts are not always facts. Sometimes your mind is just tired. Sometimes it is scared. Sometimes it is repeating old patterns. Sometimes it is trying to protect you in ways that used to make sense but now keep you stuck. In addiction, my brain was always looking for danger, injustice, rejection, failure, and reasons to escape. In sobriety, I have had to train it to look for possibility, responsibility, acceptance, and opportunity.
That is how you think positively in real life. You catch the old thought, question it, and choose a better one.
Instead of “my life is ruined,” you ask, “What is the next step I can take?”
Instead of “everyone is ahead of me,” you ask, “What am I building now?”
Instead of “this is unfair,” you ask, “What can I control?”
Instead of “I always fail,” you ask, “What can I learn from this?”
Instead of “I can’t handle this,” you ask, “What support, structure, or action would help me handle this better?”
That is not fluffy positive thinking. That is mental strength. It is a practice. It is reps in the mind gym. And like the actual gym, you do not get stronger by thinking about doing the reps. You get stronger by doing them, especially when you do not feel like it.
Acceptance Is The Fastest Path To Peace
One of the biggest reasons people struggle to think positively is because they are still fighting reality.
I know this because I did it for years.
I fought the reality that I had a problem with alcohol. I fought the reality that my mental health was in trouble. I fought the reality that I was behind where I wanted to be. I fought the reality that my choices had consequences. I fought the reality that some things had happened and no amount of rumination would undo them.
But what you resist, persists.
Getting sober in 2018 meant accepting that my life needed to change completely. I could not keep one foot in the old world and expect a new life to appear. I had to accept that alcohol, drugs, and gambling were not harmless habits. They were destroying me.
In 2019, I had to accept that Covid grounded planes around the world and wiped out the golf travel business I had been building, along with a year’s worth of savings. I could have spent years arguing with that reality, but what good would that have done? It had happened. The only useful question was what I could take from it and where I could go next.
In 2022, as a personal trainer who was still body conscious, I had to accept that one of my biggest childhood insecurities was now staring me in the face. I had been a fat kid growing up, and suddenly I was walking around a gym asking people if they wanted a free PT session. That probably sounds simple, but for me it was one of the hardest things I have done because it forced me to face a very wounded inner child. The old part of me wanted to hide, shrink, avoid, overthink, and assume everyone was judging me. But I had to accept the discomfort and do it anyway.
Having been bankrupt twice in two years from 2017 to 2019 also meant accepting that money was going to be tight for a while. There was no magic wand. No overnight transformation. No pretending. Just rebuilding, making better decisions, living within my means, and slowly proving to myself that I could be trusted again.
Acceptance is not passive. It is not giving up. It is not lying down and letting life happen to you. It is seeing the situation clearly so you can make the next best move.
That is why acceptance and positive thinking go together. You cannot think positively while constantly arguing with what has already happened. Peace starts when you stop wasting energy fighting reality and start using that energy to move forward.
Sobriety Was The Start Of My Positive Thinking
Sobriety did not magically make me positive overnight, but it gave me the space to start changing how I thought.
When you are drinking, hungover, anxious, ashamed, and stuck in the same cycle every week, it is very hard to build a healthy mindset. Alcohol keeps pulling you back into emotional chaos. It makes problems feel bigger, confidence feel smaller, and life feel heavier. It also gives your negative thoughts a megaphone.
Once I stopped drinking, I could actually hear myself properly. That was not always pleasant, by the way. Early sobriety can be noisy because all the emotions you have been numbing start turning up like they have been waiting outside your house for years. But once I stopped escaping, I could start rebuilding.
I could start choosing healthier thoughts. I could start building better habits. I could start taking responsibility without drowning in shame. I could start seeing challenges as training rather than proof that life was against me.
This is one of the reasons I believe sobriety is so much more than “not drinking.” Stopping drinking is the start. Then comes the real work of rebuilding your mindset, identity, confidence, health, relationships, purpose, and life.
That has always been the bigger goal of Sober On A Drunk Planet. Not just helping people stop drinking, but helping people build lives they do not want to escape from.
How Mindset Mastery Can Help
I wrote Mindset Mastery because I know what it is like to be trapped in a negative mind. I know what it is like to spend all day ruminating, catastrophising, comparing, blaming, worrying, and feeling like life is happening to everyone else while you are stuck watching from the sidelines.
I also know that change is possible because I have lived it.
I went from someone who saw himself as a victim of life to someone who now genuinely believes he can keep growing, improving, learning, and building a better future. I still have difficult days. I still have anxiety. I still have moments where my brain tries to pull me back into old patterns. But I no longer live under the weight of negative thinking every day.
Mindset Mastery is about learning how to rewire your thoughts, build a growth mindset, stop letting your inner critic run the show, and develop the kind of self-belief that helps you move forward in sobriety and in life.
Not in a fake, “just think positive” way, because that makes me want to stick my head in a blender. More in a practical, honest, do-the-reps kind of way. The aim is not to become someone who never struggles. The aim is to become someone who can struggle without destroying themselves.
That is the difference.
The Weight Of Positive Thinking Is Lighter
One thing I have learned is that positive thinking is not about being happy all the time. It is about carrying less unnecessary weight.
Negative thinking is heavy. Resentment is heavy. Victimhood is heavy. Rumination is heavy. Constantly comparing yourself to everyone else is heavy. Waking up every day expecting life to go wrong is heavy. Believing you are broken is heavy.
Positive thinking does not remove every problem, but it changes the way you carry them.
It helps you accept what has happened. It helps you look for the next step. It helps you stop turning pain into suffering. It helps you build trust in yourself. It helps you become more resilient. It helps you see that maybe life is not against you. Maybe life is just life, and your job is to keep becoming someone who can meet it properly.
That is what Epictetus was pointing towards. Do not hope that life turns out exactly the way you want. Welcome events in whichever way they happen. Not because everything is easy, fair, or enjoyable, but because this is the path to peace.
I think that is also the path to real positive thinking.
Not pretending.
Not escaping.
Not blaming.
Accepting, learning, growing, and moving forward.
A Question For You
What are you resisting at the moment?
What are you still arguing with in your head?
What has already happened that you keep replaying, as though replaying it will somehow change the outcome?
And what could you accept, not because it was fair or easy or deserved, but because accepting it might finally give you enough peace to move forward?
If negative thinking has been weighing you down, Mindset Mastery might be a helpful next step. It goes much deeper into the inner critic, victim mindset, growth mindset, self-belief, and the practical work of changing the way you think in sobriety and beyond.
You can also explore the full Sober On A Drunk Planet series here: www.soberonadrunkplanet.com/books
Because getting sober is only the beginning. The real gift is building a life you no longer want to escape from.
Keep up to date with the Ramble every Friday – join below:
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