There is a strange amount of pressure to be positive. We are told to look on the bright side, be grateful for what we have and focus on the good. None of those things are necessarily bad advice, but when life is genuinely difficult, they can feel completely disconnected from what we are actually experiencing.

If you are worried about money, hate your job, feel lonely, have had your heart broken or simply woke up feeling awful for no obvious reason, being told to “stay positive” probably isn’t going to help. Sometimes things are shit.

Pretending otherwise doesn’t make us more positive; it just gives us another emotion to deal with because now, on top of everything else, we feel guilty for not being happier.

Maybe we have misunderstood what being positive actually means.

You can be positive and still be pissed off

Positivity doesn’t have to mean constantly feeling happy. You can be grateful for your life and still want parts of it to change. You can love someone and be angry with them. You can know that you are lucky in many ways while also admitting that you’re struggling.

Those things don’t cancel each other out.

There is something freeing about allowing yourself to say, “This isn’t great at the moment,” without immediately having to follow it with a reason why you should be grateful. It is simply an honest description of where you are right now.

The important part is what happens next.

A difficult week can very quickly become everything is going wrong. One rejection becomes nobody wants me. One mistake becomes I’m terrible at this. One period of uncertainty becomes I have no idea what I’m doing with my life.

Most of us have done it.

The problem isn’t having the negative thought. The problem is how quickly one thought can start writing the story of our entire life.

A bad day is allowed to be a bad day

One of the simplest things we can do is stop giving temporary feelings permanent meanings.

You can have a terrible day without deciding you have a terrible life. You can fail at something without deciding you are a failure. You can feel lost without deciding you will never find your way again.

This isn’t about replacing every negative thought with a positive one. Sometimes the more believable thought is somewhere in the middle.

Instead of everything will work out perfectly, perhaps it is I don’t know how this will work out yet.

Instead of I’m going to be fine, perhaps it is I’ve dealt with difficult things before.

Instead of I need to figure my whole life out, perhaps it is I only need to decide what I’m doing next.

There is far less pressure in that.

Look for the good without pretending the bad isn’t there

Gratitude can be useful, but not when we use it to tell ourselves we aren’t allowed to be unhappy.

The point isn’t to stand in the middle of a disaster and desperately search for three things to be grateful for. It is simply to remember that life is rarely completely good or completely bad.

You might be worried about work and still have a brilliant conversation with a friend. You might be lonely and still enjoy walking somewhere beautiful. You might be going through one of the hardest periods of your life and still laugh at something stupid on the internet.

The good thing doesn’t erase the bad thing.

The bad thing doesn’t erase the good thing either.

Both are allowed to exist.

And perhaps that is where positivity becomes genuinely useful. Not as a way of convincing ourselves that life is wonderful, but as a way of stopping the difficult parts from becoming the only things we can see.

Trust yourself a little more

There is another side to positivity that gets talked about less: self-trust.

We spend a huge amount of time trying to know what is going to happen. We want reassurance that we’re making the right decision, choosing the right job, dating the right person or heading in the right direction.

Most of the time, nobody can give us that certainty.

But perhaps confidence isn’t knowing that everything will work out. Perhaps it is knowing that if something doesn’t work out, you will deal with it.

You will change your mind. Ask for help. Try something different. Start again. Learn something. Get angry. Have a cry. Make another decision.

Whatever it looks like, you will respond.

You have probably already done it hundreds of times.

Positivity doesn’t have to be loud

You don’t need to wake up every morning believing today is going to be incredible.

Some mornings, getting out of bed and making coffee is enough.

You don’t need to love every part of yourself. You can simply stop attacking the parts you don’t.

You don’t need to know where your life is heading. You can decide what matters to you now and move a little closer to it.

And you certainly don’t need to turn every difficult experience into a lesson.

Sometimes something was just hard.

Perhaps real positivity is much quieter than we have made it. It isn’t pretending everything is good. It is remembering that when something isn’t good, it isn’t necessarily the end of the story.

You don’t have to know that everything will be okay.

Sometimes it is enough to know that whatever happens next, you’ll meet yourself there.