With all of the positive processes I study and use, you might think that I’d be a pretty happy person, and you’d be right most of the time. There is one area in which I fail miserably to be happy, however, and that area is often described as obsessing or overthinking. When something happens that causes me to regret an action or a conversation, when I feel like I’ve wronged somebody else, or someone has wronged me, I tend to think in circles (like the proverbial hamster on his wheel) for at least 24 hours. I hardly ever solve anything and I frequently lose at least one night’s sleep. As I replay conversations and “what if” myself over and over, I can feel myself getting more and more anxious.

Within the last year, many of the academic researchers in positive psychology have begun to write books for popular audiences. One such book is The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky. Thankfully, Dr. Lyubomirsky has an in-depth section on overcoming overthinking. She suggests a three step process I’ll describe here. The first step is to “cut loose.” This means literally to distract yourself in some way from continuing to run the hamster wheel. Some things you might try include:

• Get some physical exercise; walk, run, swim, dance–anything you enjoy.
• Watch a movie, play, sports, the house going up next door.
• Read a book, magazine or blog about something unrelated to your overthought issue.
• Talk to a friend about the issue. This gets you off the hamster wheel and into relationship.
• Meditate. Any technique will do; visualization, paying attention to your breath, a mantra.
• Write about the experience in a journal. There is something about this that helps to get it out of your head and at some greater distance from your obsessing.

The point is to distract yourself from thinking about the thing you were overthinking.

The second strategy is to STOP by some means such as imagining a red light or stop sign. You may have to do this more than once but as you keep practicing, this becomes easier. You can then replace the overthought issue with a distraction above.

Finally, Lyubomirsky recommends a Dear Abby technique that I have also used. In a column many years ago, Abby suggested that you set aside 30 minutes and overthink yourself silly. But limit yourself to 30 minutes, or 20 if you think that will be enough. If you find yourself thinking about your issue at another time, remind yourself that you have set aside a time later in the day. By the time you sit down to overthink, you may be done with the issue.

I tested out several of the strategies under distracting when I found myself recently overthinking. First, I meditated for 15 minutes before I went to bed. When I still found myself awake at 2 AM overthinking, I visualized a flashing red light. I went back to sleep. In the morning I was refreshed and I was done with further thinking about the issue. I didn’t even need my strategy in reserve which was to set aside 30 minutes on day two.

If overthinking is something that plagues you even occasionally, try one or more of these simple strategies. I promise they work.

Wow, two messages in one week. It must be the holiday feeling! At my monthly women’s group this month we spoke briefly about “homework” we might do daily or weekly to be prepared to be more joyful. Here is Robert Emmons’ (thanks!, Houghton Mifflin) take on homework for gratitude, not quite the same thing, but appropriate for Thanksgiving nonetheless.

1. Keep a gratitude journal - catalogue gratitude-inspiring events every day

2. Remember the bad- then the good in the present shines by comparison

3. Ask yourself these three questions;

1. What have I received from ____?
2. What have I given to ____?
3. What troubles and difficulty have I caused ____?

(Helps to see the reciprocal quality of relationships)

4. Learn prayers of gratitude- these needn’t be religious, and can be said silently.

5. Come to your senses- be grateful for the functioning of your body.

6. Use visual reminders- pictures, stones from favorite hikes, other grateful people. Gratitude comes with awareness.

7. Make a vow to practice gratitude- swear an oath in front of others.

8. Watch your language- language determines the nature and content of thought; what you say to yourself influences how you feel about yourself.

9. Go through the motions - “act as if,” as we say in AA. Act happy to be happy.

10. Think outside the box - be grateful for your enemies, for what they teach you about how you want to be. Be grateful to those you help.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Neuroscience tells us that novelty, or learning new things, keeps our brains healthy. That means that if you are a veteran crossword puzzler, doing tougher crossword puzzles will not necessarily make your brain’s neurons fire more actively. What you need is novelty, perhaps learning to write haiku (poetry) rather than doing sudoku. While novelty is good, neuroscientists also tell us that stress is bad for brain health. So, if you put pressure on yourself to write beautiful haiku and writing it only makes you feel like a bad poet, that trumps the benefit of novelty. So, to keep our brains healthy and full of firing neurons, we need to learn new things, novel things, but not things our boss tells us we have to be good at by next Thursday.

I’ve recently begun to sing again after thirty years of not singing. I have a trained voice. I was a church soloist, and a member of numerous community choruses. Then life and work got in the way. Singing was one thing I could give up in order to lead a somewhat sane life. Now I find that reading music again, creating harmony, and learning all kinds of contemporary songs makes me happy in a sustained way. I look forward all week to my singing class and sing with pleasure while I’m there. While singing is not strictly novel for me–I did, after all, sing as a much younger person–it does bring an old/new element to my learning without stress. Nobody cares if I sing well, and I love making music.

In Appreciative Coaching we encourage clients to review their past experience, to mine it for expertise and wisdom. We then encourage them to apply that expertise to a new situation, to take their past experience and retrofit it to something in the present or something they want to create for their future. Given the brain research we now have, we might also think of trying things about which we have not established expertise to create what we want, as long as the trying doesn’t also create stress. What would you like to try if nobody was watching and there was no pressure to be good at it? If this thing would add pleasure to your life, AND keep your brain healthy as you age, what’s stopping you? What activity, or process could add to your vision of the future, could enable you to do or be something you are not now? How can you make use of novelty in envisioning and realizing your dreams? On the other hand, what stressful activities that are currently part of your life could you lessen or stop?

There once was a time when others marveled at my organization skills. Since I have worked out of a home office, however, my space is hardly visitor friendly. Piles of stuff have formed a mote around my desk. I step over the mote in the morning, and it keeps people away from my desk when I’m not here. I guess this is an advantage, but it hardly qualifies as organization. I say that I know where everything important is, but increasingly this is not only not true but an excuse for the lack of organization, transparent even to me.

So I bought a book, Getting Things Done, by the guru of time and self-management, David Allen. I cleaned up the pile next to my bed this morning. I’ve made the surface of my desk mostly visible. I know this is just the tip of the iceberg because as Allen says, we have to understand and implement a whole system of organization before we actually get organized. I’ve only read the first three chapters and I feel like much more is possible.

He says that we have to organize our thinking before we can organize our actions, that we carry around all the stuff we have not organized into some formula for ultimate action and that it weighs us down psychically. I see a correlation with Appreciative Coaching here. If we do not organize our thinking around our strengths and our skills to think deeply about them, we will not be able to act in a purposeful way to achieve our greatest dreams. We won’t procrastinate so much as run around in circles accomplishing something but not necessarily what we want.

So, Allen suggests writing down all of the projects in our heads. These can be as simple as “finish Aunt Millie’s scarf,” to “write the proposal for my next book ” or “write the book.” I suggest writing down all of your strengths. These can be as simple as “makes a mean grilled hamburger” to “manages complex IT projects to completion on time and on budget.” Allen suggests that we then write our ultimate hope or plan for each project, such as “the book sells a million copies in the first six months.” I suggest you write down a really big goal or dream that uses the strengths you have now. Finally, Allen says to write down one action that you can do now or today that moves you toward the vision of your ultimate hope for each project. I suggest that you write down one way in which you can use your strength today to move you closer to the dream or vision you have for your future.

Over the last week or so I’ve been dipping into Mike Robbins’ Focus on the Good Stuff, and Robert Emmons’ Thanks! Robbins’ book is a more conversational version of our Appreciative Coaching: A Positive Process for Change, and Emmons’ focuses on one aspect of living positively, and that is living with a grateful attitude. Another fascinating book that came out recently is entitled, Change the Way You See Everything, by Kathryn Cramer and Hank Wasiak. This book really gives specific tools for what they call “asset-based” (as opposed to deficit based) thinking: weighing everything in our lives from a positive, hopeful and possibility laden perspective.

What strikes me about each of these books and their authors is that we have perhaps reached what Malcolm Gladwell calls the tipping point, that is the point at which we are aware of more resources for viewing life positively than we are of viewing problems and weaknesses. I hope this is true.

At the same time, I’m also worried (as I am a worrier) that the positive perspective will be translated as happy talk, that folks who are sad, diagnosed with serious illness, or devastated in some deep way, will see all this as excluding them. To these people I say that the newish focus on emphasizing the good in life in no way diminishes its challenges. Being gentle with oneself, acknowledging pain and challenge, finding a sympathetic person to talk to, and waiting (as time does diminish many wounds) are all legitimate tools on the way to having a more positive outlook. I had personally held in such a wound for too long. Recently a friend invited me to talk about that wound in a safe and empathetic conversation. Just speaking it out loud released so much blocked energy, that I’ve found ways to return to my normally optimistic and thankful perspective.

If you find yourself wishing “if only I COULD feel positively about this situation” remember that it may take time, empathy, and patience to access that formerly positive person in you.