When we get a few moments to ourselves or go to bed at night, it is a good bet that we rifle through our mind for negative things that have built up all day.

Just as we can remember negative thoughts so easily, the mind can be trained to also recall positive thoughts.

• Start by remembering acts of love and kindness.
• Move next to the gratitude you have for not only major things but the many little things that often get pushed aside by negative thoughts on replay.
• Don’t forget to appreciate family and friends, letting go of anger and animosity not for their sake but for yours and start or maintain a program of health and wellbeing that aids the physical side of stress reduction.

Phones, constant communication, too much screen time, digital distraction, not enough alone time to think and trying to multi-task are sources of anxiety that can be uprooted from our minds with three positive steps.

My two favorite sources for stress reduction are Dale Carnegie’s How to Stop Worrying and Start Living and Mayo Clinic’s anxiety and resilience expert Dr. Amit Sood.

Lowering stress begins with this:

• Assume that everyone around you is struggling and is special. Be kind.
• If it won’t matter in five years, it isn’t worth stressing out about today.
• Sometimes a step back can be a move forward. An adversity may be preventing a catastrophe.

“Not only does our response to stressors — real and perceived — start with the brain, but in the form of chronic, toxic stress, it ends up harming the brain.  It’s a kind of perfect feedback loop.”  — Amit Sood, MD

One thought can make you resilient as long as you keep thinking it.

• The day we quit is the day we fail.

You can’t fail no matter what happens as long as you don’t give in.

And there is a gift in getting headwinds on your way to success.

For every failure that makes you redouble your efforts is a reminder of how badly you want to achieve your goal.

Studies show those who remain cheerful and enthusiastic show less cognitive decline in their mid-life and later.

More important is that an attitude of positivity is accretive to our health from the moment we adopt it.

• Eliminating can’t and won’t is the first place to start.
• Balancing a negative thought or bad outcome with something good.
• Cultivate an attitude of never judging yourself in the eyes of people who don’t approve of you but see yourself the way people who like you do.

Some people are raised in negativity but they can change it with a commitment to these three things.

Look up not down, out not in, toward others not away.

We don’t get into a car and wish it to its destination — it takes a roadmap or at least knowledge of where we want to go. 

In the meantime we find a way to enjoy the ride.

But in our lives we often do not know our destination let alone have a plan for getting there.

• Without a plan it’s hard to enjoy the ride because we have to rely on luck to keep us engaged.

There’s been a lot of talk about living in the present but living in the present is happier when we know where we’re going.

Happiness increases when we can see the finish line.

Why do we obsess about a single mistake instead of constantly repeating our many successes?

• Our ears hear and our brains record every mistake we make or for which we are criticized and then we put them on replay – what if we hit STOP. 

• To that end, try to look at yourself through the eyes of those who love you – whether two legged or four legged.

• Do not outsource the precious real estate of your brain to those who make you feel undeserving. 

No negative thoughts can exist in an atmosphere of healthy self-love.

Recognize your fears and turn them into action.

• Busy people have less anxiety so come up with an action plan at the first signs of concern.
• Fear is fed by compounded worry so acknowledging fear prevents us from piling one worry on top of another and another.
• The feelings you embrace are multiplied so if they consist of many layers of concern and anxiety, they never need to become reality to make us ill. The more positive things we can cram into our brain, the more it dominates our head.

First acknowledge the fear and turn it into action.

No matter what is bringing you down, there are two things that can be done to pick up your mood.

• Relentlessly find ways to be grateful – This doesn’t just mean show gratitude, it means spending time and effort busily finding things for which to be grateful. A friend told me he was actually grateful for the seasonal flu.  Why?  Because he knew it would go away within a week and that his health would return.  That’s working at gratitude. (He was almost back to 100% in less time).

• Never giving up hope – Try this: the next time you or someone else is down in the dumps, see if you can identify their lack of hope.  Humans don’t do well without hope and sometimes we are the ones to kill it off because of how we think.  Think of hope as fuel – the more we pump it in, the further we can go.

Only 40% of our happiness is in the genes, the other 60% is up to us supported by research in The Journal of Happiness Studies.

“[It’s] completely possible to rewire our brains for happiness … You have a choice.  It’s no different than deciding what to wear or what food to order.  When it comes to happiness, there’s a lot we can do about it.”

The words of Santa Monica psychotherapist Susan Zinn who suggests:

• Abandoning the pursuit of perfection.
• Volunteer, laugh, feel grateful, eat well, exercise and connect with a higher power.
• Be spontaneous and enjoy short-term pleasures to achieve peace of mind.

More than half our happiness is from nurture not nature according to Zinn.

Bucket lists are a popular way to live the life you want to the fullest so why not make one for COVID isolation.

• Accept the feeling of loss and even anger and let go of anxiety that makes close quarters isolation even tougher. 

• Spend more time in the present – being close together does mean being closer in relationships. Cultivate periods of 100% presence with others not just being close by.

• Practice gratitude by thinking about those who have it worse and the simple joy of survival as an individual, family or group of people.

Fear, anger and anxiety fades when you focus on acquiring skills needed to endure and by letting go of the roadblocks to acceptance.