Seeking out positive news stories is often promoted as an antidote to doom scrolling. I’ve tried it, and I continue to do it, but I often find that instead of being inspired, uplifted and given hope, I feel unsettled and disempowered.

This is important, not just for our individual mental health, but also for how we communicate and engage with others in our work for sustainability, climate, nature etc.

I think I’ve got a handle on what the problem is, and I have some ideas about how to tell positive stories better. I’m going to be putting this into practice with our new podcast Thrivable Scotland.

The positive news stories that don’t do it for me, seem saccharine – artificially sweet. They present the positive stuff while stripping out the reality - the past, present and future realities.

They strip out the reality of the past by ignoring, or skipping over, the hard work that went into making the achievement happen, all the trials and failures, the false starts and the dead ends.

They strip out the reality of the present by implying that the achievement is pretty near perfect, that the achievement is enough despite everything that’s going on in the world.

And most importantly, they strip out the reality of the future by stopping at the most important bit – how can this achievement grow, be replicated or copied to have impact at the scale we need?

Does this feeling of dis-ease with some positive news stories resonate with you? If so, have I missed anything above? Or perhaps you have a different take?

(Maybe I’m being harsh, but I’m not thinking about all positive stories here, just those that score high on my private saccharine scale.)