So I’m continuing with this personal psychoanalysis I’ve been engaged in, trying to detect recurring patterns and behaviors that could have negative and positive effects on my life. One behavior I’ve recognized is a tendency to dwell on negative scenarios. If I have some kind of event coming up — a musical performance perhaps, or work deadline — my mind quite easily travels to scenarios where everything goes wrong. And I can sit there, for what seemed like minutes, crafting these elaborate disturbing daydreams. So recently I said to myself that for every negative scenario I dwell on, I was going to force myself to consider a positive scenario. Then I came to the disturbing realization that I have a very difficult time even crafting positive scenarios — it’s like I’m incapable of thinking positively. Of course, this is partly because positive scenarios are kind of boring. If I’m worried about a work deadline, I guess the positive scenario would be me making the deadline, and everyone being happy with my work. That’s kind of difficult to sit and envisioned for minutes on end. (This probably gets into society’s general predilection for news headlines that are negative.)

Lately I’ve taken kind of a different tact, and decided that for every negative scenario I consider, I will consider some happy event, even if it’s unrelated to the negative scenario. Again, I had trouble coming up with happy events. What is it I like to do? I was drawing a blank. Then I thought of one thing that always makes me happy: playing with cats and dogs. Their unbridled animal affection always brings a smile to my face and warms my heart. So now, whenever I think of a negative scenario, I force myself to spend time thinking about playing with cats and dogs.

Oh! Another thing I love doing: tossing screaming children into vats of acid!