Thinking happy thoughts

I'm riffing on the power of positive thinking, or, as my wife calls it, "Talk a Good Life." It goes something like this: If you always see your life as positive and talk about what you're doing as something you're excited about, you'll feel good about that and, incidentally, people will feel good about it. My immediate reaction: phony, phony phony.

My more considered reaction: For a long time, I've pictured my thoughts as liquid circuits, and my brain as a planetary surface, cut by channels like Martian canals. Unhealthy thoughts run over and over again in hard cut channels, and change direction only by great force of will. Like 'talking a good life'.

I say this because I tried thinking something nice about something I did yesterday: how I contributed to an office brainstorm. While most of my liquid circuits flashed the "roll your eyes sarcastically" signal, there was this small, happy wave of clarity, like a pair of hands brushing away some dust and papers from a cluttered desk.

I will continue explore this. But first, back to my real cluttered desk.