Acharya Prashant addresses the question of controlling negative thoughts by first critiquing the desire to only have positive thoughts, likening it to the proverb, "Gulp the sweet, spit out the bitter." He explains that the fundamental law of the mind is that the positive cannot exist without the negative; they are inseparable pairs. To want only the positive is a misunderstanding of how the mind functions. To illustrate this, he uses the example of a student's exam results. The happiness felt from passing a difficult paper, where there was a fear of failure, is much greater than passing an easy one. This demonstrates that the experience of happiness (the positive) is contingent on the prior tension and apprehension (the negative). Therefore, to experience happiness, one must first experience sorrow, and to have positivity, one must first have negativity. The direct way to increase positivity, he states, is by increasing negativity. He further exemplifies this by explaining that the simple act of breathing brings no joy, but after holding one's breath to the point of suffering, the subsequent breath brings immense relief and happiness. Acharya Prashant asserts that we do not understand the fundamental duality of the mind. Everything that happens in the mind comes with its opposite. Because we desire happiness, we inadvertently keep ourselves miserable, as the experience of happiness is merely a relief from misery. He dismisses the concept of "positive thinking" as a delusion where one interprets reality based on preference rather than understanding. He compares it to guessing the meaning of a text in an unknown language; a positive thinker will assume a pleasant meaning, and a negative thinker a harsh one, but both are ignorant of the truth. The real solution is not to think positively or negatively, but to understand. A person of understanding transcends this duality. The speaker explains that what is considered positive or negative is relative and depends on one's frame of reference or "origin," which is the ego. By changing one's origin (e.g., identity), what was positive can become negative. A wise person understands this game of the origin and does not become its slave. They are free, and in their life, there is only understanding, which leads to a state of equanimity beyond the pairs of opposites like pleasure-pain and positive-negative.