Behold the Stars

We’ve talked about paying attention to what is working in our lives. We write gratitude journals and success lists to train ourselves to shift our focus off what doesn’t work for us toward what does. Here’s a simple idea from Marci Shimoff’s Happy for No Reason for quickly shifting our thoughts to the positive.

Marci refers to this as leaning into the thought that makes you feel better. It works like this: whenever you find yourself burdened with negative thoughts, find an equally true thought about the situation that makes you feel better — and lean into it.

In her example, suppose you’re working on a project that is very close to deadline. Your stress level rises and you begin to tell yourself, “I’ll never finish this in time.” What happens next? More stress, more negative self talk. Instead, search for some thoughts that are equally true about this situation that would make you feel better, like “I’ve done this before and always finish in time,” or “If I truly get stuck, I can always ask for help.”

What you’re looking for is evidence to counteract the negative chatter going on in your brain, not simply positive affirmations, like repeating “I can get this done in time,” 100 times. We don’t want to fight our negative thoughts with happy talk, we want to overcome them with reasonable argument. Choose to focus on that alternative, positive, argument. Then stick with those thoughts. Lean into them.

This is a trick that you can use on the fly. You biggest difficulty will be to recognize when it’s time to use it and to remember to us when the time comes. Put it on a note card to carry with you. When you feel yourself veering off course, pull out the card and follow the instructions. Simple!

Make a great day.

Photo: Clearly Ambiguous

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