This piece is a companion to The Language Beneath Our Conversations.
If you haven’t read that one yet, it’s worth starting there. This article continues the inquiry by looking at a familiar phrase that often appears when things get hard.
“Stay positive.”
Not wrong.
Not unkind.
Just often mismatched to the moment.
Gut, hara, and center
In Eastern traditions, the organizing center of the body is often called the hara.
In the West, we usually call it the gut.
Different words. Same place.
It’s where breath naturally deepens, where attention can settle, where experience organizes before it becomes a thought or a story. When that center is present, things flow more easily. When it drops out, attention tends to lift upward into the head, into the future, into explanation and control.
I experience that lift as upward tension.
Why “stay positive” can miss the mark
“Stay positive” usually shows up with good intentions. It often arrives when someone is facing uncertainty, loss, or a situation that feels overwhelming.
But when the body is already braced, positivity can land as pressure. It works on attitude while what’s unsettled lives deeper. Instead of helping energy settle, it can reinforce the upward lift, encouraging orientation before the system has had a chance to re-center.
That’s what I mean by the stay-positive mindset trap.
Not because positivity is bad.
Because it can arrive too early.
A tricky reaction I’ve noticed
When I’ve approached this subject with some people close to me, I’ve occasionally met a visceral response.
“So what, we should just wallow in self-pity?”
It’s a sharp moment. Defensive. Understandable. And, I think, another variation of the same trapping mechanism.
The concern underneath often sounds like this: if we don’t push toward positivity, we’ll get stuck.
What’s surprised me is that the same simple noticing practice tends to help here too, sometimes only in retrospect, sometimes after a bit of turbulence in the conversation. Not as an argument. Not as a correction. Just as a way to check what’s actually happening.
If you notice the impulse, or receive it
If you feel compelled to say “stay positive,”
or you’re on the receiving end of solicited or unsolicited positivity,
try this instead. Not as advice. Just as an experiment in attention.
Did your breath deepen, or did it get thinner?
Did your body soften, or did it brace?
Did attention settle, or did it lift upward?
There’s nothing to fix. Nothing to force. Just notice.
Sometimes that noticing alone is enough to let energy drop back toward the gut, toward the hara, toward center.
About storms
Life is not all sunshine and rainbows.
There are storms. Sometimes deep and long ones. Periods where we don’t have the right gear or shelter, where there’s a real gap between where we are and where we wish we were.
In those moments, what I find helpful most isn’t positivity. It’s a commitment to return to center again and again so energy can flow instead of stagnate and remain stuck or constricted.
I’ve noticed that when energy is flowing, even in a storm, there are often moments or phases where possible and probable breaks in the weather pattern emerge. Not permanent relief. Just enough space to keep moving in a more regulated way.
That difference matters.
A quiet distinction
This isn’t an argument against hope.
It’s a distinction about timing and layer.
Presence before orientation.
Center before meaning.
And yes, sometimes the advice “just keep moving” is exactly right.
And sometimes it isn’t.
That’s a story for another time.
⛩️🌿
