3 hours ago
3
Growing up, I was envious of one type of person. It was never the kids who were smarter, sportier or more popular. My awe was reserved for a rarer breed of people: optimists. I was hypersensitive to the ease with which they sailed through exams, social gatherings or teenage milestones with a sunny conviction that things would more or less work out. To me, they were the chosen people. “It’ll be fine,” one such friend would reassure me. “Or you could embarrass yourself,” my mind would purr like a villain. “Be rejected. Fail.”
I was a chronic worrier. A negative Nancy. I couldn’t fathom that people’s brains weren’t hardwired to compulsively fear things might go wrong. I grew up as the eldest daughter in a turbulent household where my father’s moods would plummet quickly and I walked on a knife-edge. Every morning, the second my eyes opened, I would force myself to accept it was going to be a bad day – an act of self-preservation so the rug could never get pulled from under my feet hoping for better. My thinking was that if you always expected the worst, things had a tendency to turn out better than you imagined.
It intensified in adulthood, even long after my incredible stepfather came along, and my mum, my brother and I moved in with him. Before a date, a job interview, or a presentation, I’d tell myself it wasn’t going to go well. If the opposite was true I’d convince myself it was a one-off fluke. Ruminating on worst-case scenarios would keep me up at night. In therapy I learned I was prone to catastrophising and while things like exercise, journalling and meditation helped over the years, it flared up at times of stress.
Early last year, everything changed when I found a £20 note on the ground, crumpled up in the gutter. I pocketed it. I didn’t want to forget how fortuitous it felt, so I wrote it down in my notes app. Later, as I walked up to a traffic crossing, the light turned green, as did the two directly after. It was such a funny Truman Show-esque moment, I jotted it down again.
From that day on I began to make a list of every single good thing that happened to me, big or small. A train pulling in just as I got to the platform. A neighbour bringing over a slice of cake. Discovering I had an umbrella in my bag on a rainy day. Being invited on a work trip to a place I’d always wanted to visit. All day, every day, I diligently added to my notes app. I began to notice that people were constantly going above and beyond to help me out. In making a list of all the great things happening to me, my brain began to hunt for more evidence of it.
When my alarm went off, I knew good things were going to happen that day because I had a bounty of proof of it. I went to social events alone, but now I assumed people were friendly and would be interested in chatting to me, and I to them; I had no reason to think otherwise because my list supported this irrefutable and concrete reality. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and more wonderful things came. Or were they already there all along?
Of course I’m still prone to fretting, but on trickier days I sit and reread my list – which stretches on in my phone – and it reminds me that good stuff is on the way. A friend observed it’s just another way of practising gratitude, which made me wince at first. I know the benefits of gratitude lists are extolled in pretty much every self-help book under the sun, but I always found the process of doing them a little fake and draining. If it had been a genuinely bad day, why was I being guilted into writing down that I was thankful for my warm bed, the gift of my breath, or the smell of the rain? What a slog.
This list, instead, is real and evidence-based. It’s not part of a morning positivity ritual. It is as simple as: this happened and it was objectively good.
Not too long ago, I used to be convinced that some people had lovely, pleasant thoughts because good things always happened to them. But now, I’m sure it’s the other way around.
