What Really Has the Greatest Power Over Us?

Positive thoughts or negative ones?

Most of us would like to believe that positive thinking is the driving force behind success, happiness, and personal progress. Positive thoughts encourage us to pursue what matters, to believe in possibility, and to move towards the life we want. Negative thoughts, however, often seem to wield a different kind of power altogether—one that stops us, magnifies fear, and convinces us that the risks ahead are greater than the rewards.

For the first ten years of my own studies into human behaviour and performance, I immersed myself in the great works of positive psychology, from Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking to Tony Robbins’ Unlimited Power. These teachings were undoubtedly valuable, but they all shared one significant limitation: while they taught people how to think positively, they rarely addressed how to interrupt the negative thought patterns that so often keep us trapped.

And therein lies the real challenge.

After more than three decades of working with people in transformational settings, I have come to understand that progress is often less about adding something new and more about removing what is already holding us back. In essence, if we want to move towards the things that truly matter—whether that be happiness, fulfilment, relief, or success—we must first learn to stop doing the things that prevent us from taking action.

This matters because negative beliefs frequently hold a stronger psychological grip over us than positive intentions. Human beings are naturally wired to avoid pain more urgently than they are to pursue pleasure. We fear rejection, failure, loss, and uncertainty, and these fears often create paralysis, even when the opportunities before us could significantly improve our lives.

Yet so often, the very things we resist are nowhere near as overwhelming as we imagine them to be.

How many times have you delayed a difficult conversation, avoided a bold decision, or procrastinated over an important step, only to find that once you finally acted, the burden immediately began to lift?

The anxiety was often greatest before the action, not during it.

This is something I have witnessed repeatedly throughout my career. Whether through firewalking or other immersive personal development experiences, people consistently discover that the moment they step through fear and into action, much of the fear itself dissolves.

Confidence, after all, is rarely something that arrives before action.

More often, confidence is created by action.

The true power, then, lies not simply in positive thinking, but in our ability to dismantle the negative habits and beliefs that keep us frozen. It is about recognising fear for what it often is: an exaggerated projection rather than an inevitable outcome.

So perhaps the question is not whether positive or negative thoughts are more powerful, but rather which thoughts we allow to control our behaviour.

When we stop allowing fear-based thinking to dominate, we create space for courage, momentum, and genuine transformation.

Sometimes, bravery is not about feeling fearless.

It is simply about deciding to move anyway.

Or, put more simply:

Be more honey badger.

Because honey badgers, it would seem, spend very little time negotiating with self-doubt.

All images created using AI