Flip the switch and ask: What CAN I do?
There’s nothing wrong with being negative.
In fact, in some moments it’s not only acceptable, it’s vital.
If your doctor tells you that you have bubonic plague, that’s not negativity. That’s reality. That’s the truth you need in order to act.
This stands in sharp contrast to the teachings of Napoleon Hill, Norman Vincent Peale, and the late Robert Schuller, none of whom I was especially fond of. Their philosophy was simple: keep a positive mental attitude and everything will somehow work out.
Action, apparently, is optional.
I once watched a man lecture a small group in a church about this very idea, after offering a flimsy metaphor about hitting a golf ball buried in the grass by pretending the grass wasn’t there.
He concluded that our problems don’t actually exist. According to him, they only exist in our minds.
I asked him if I should tell that to my friend who had lost nearly his entire family in the death camps.
He shuffled his feet, fell silent, and the room quickly turned against the absurdity of such a delusional claim, that denied pain, loss, and physical reality itself.
I’ve mentioned before that my parents survived the Manchester Blitz, when wave after wave of bombers destroyed thousands of homes with incendiaries.
Did Britain deny the destruction as “negative thinking”? Did they put on a forced smile and pretend everything was fine?
No. They rose against despair with the now-famous slogan Keep Calm and Carry On. They used the firebombing as fuel to rally, to unify, and to push back with all their strength.
And that’s the heart of it: there’s negativity that gives us clarity and power, and there’s negativity that traps us.
The dangerous kind is when we fall into the habit of believing we’re stuck, that no options exist. That’s the kind that paralyzes us.
And stuck states demand action. They require us to move, whether the challenge in front of us is a small irritation or a devastating diagnosis. It isn’t about plastering on a smile and hoping things magically shift.
It’s about asking, with conviction: What do I still have the power to do? And then doing it, without hesitation, no matter how large or small the problem.
Here’s a simple example. I love pull-ups. They’ve strengthened my arms, my back, my grip, and my entire connective linkage. In Toronto, I keep a bar in a closet doorway in my house. But in this tiny cabin, there’s no place to hang one without damaging the eighty-year-old structure.
It would be easy to shrug, give up, and say, “Well, I’ll just wait until fall when I’m back in Toronto.” Or worse, to pat myself on the back with a positive attitude and declare, “It doesn’t matter. I’ll stay strong anyway.”
But strength doesn’t come from waiting. It doesn’t come from pretending.
So yes, I’ve discovered something I can’t do.
But the real power comes from the next question: What can I do instead?
That’s the key to everything. Life is not about attitude alone. It’s about action. It’s about refusing to stay stuck. It’s about flipping the switch and saying, “I may not be able to do that, but I can still do this.”
And as it turns out, those big water bottles sitting nearby might be exactly what I need to work those muscles.
Because strength—whether physical, mental, or emotional—is built not in theory, but in practice. Not in attitude, but in action.
In the end, we all face limits. But those limits never define us. What defines us is what we choose to do with what is still possible, still within reach, still ours to act upon.
- Mike Mandel
(Image here is AI-generated to represent the concept, not actually Mike)
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