Jollying the Unhappy Brain

I thought to myself this morning that I wasn’t feeling all that exuberant for the day ahead. I don’t like the feeling of feeling down so I kind of grappled around in my mind for a better head on the day.

Hey, I thought to myself, remember that great exercise that one of your book editors told you? Why don’t you just do that, for Heaven’s sake, instead of just hanging out in this icky gray world . So that’s exactly what I did. This exercise always works. The only hard thing is to remember to actually do it. It’s Exercise #12 in my book Brainswitch out of Depression called “Practicing Scales.”Here it is in the words of my editor:

“Yesterday the pool-cleaning man told me he did not think life was worth living. He said he hated himself, and he was getting more tired of it all each year. I told him I had used a exercise to get me out of depression for years, and I proceeded to tell him about it. I gave him my “scale” from 0-10. 0 being suicidal and 10 being joyful/ecstatic, 5 being ‘no feelings at all.’ I told him I had learned to gauge throughout the day where I was on the scale, and once I knew whether it was 3, or 4, or whatever, I could find a way to bump myself up ONE POINT.

This could be done instantly by appreciating something—the comfort of one’s shoes, for instance, or the color of a plastic paper clip. And then you could bump yourself up another point by finding something else to appreciate even more. And before you knew it, you could find yourself in the positive range of the scale, above 5, and this was how your life would begin to transform. Garbage in, garbage out. Appreciation in, appreciation out. It has worked for me.

The pool-man was astounded. He told me he could see the scale right there in his mind, and he knew he could use it all the time. He told me it made complete sense, and that he had always known how depressed he was, but he had never been able to come up with the ‘initiative’ to change. Now he saw how he could make a difference in his own life.

The funny thing is that I almost went to my usual pool yesterday, but at the last minute decided to drive to my ‘old’ pool, which I almost never go to anymore. Why?? I think I was meant to cross this pool-man’s path and offer him this small thing. A small scale, literally, but with big implications.”

I guess I thought of the exercise because I was swimming in my own pool and although I didn’t remember the entire exercise (I didn't remember the ten point scale, but I remembered she had said something about thinking about the comfort of your feet in your shoes, and even noticing the color of a paper clip) but I remembered that something as simple as thinking about small things like that could move you, mentally, into a better place.

I didn’t even remember that I was supposed to APPRECIATE or FEEL GRATEFUL about the good feeling of my feet in my shoes or the color of the paperclip. But I did want to get into a better place, so I started looking around and noticing something to feel good about.

I thought about the good feeling of my arms moving through the water in a back stroke. I hadn’t noticed that good feeling before. I guess I was too busy thinking I felt icky. Then I noticed the loveliness of the small cloud overhead. And since the brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought, I started noticing all the pleasant things around me—the trees, the movement of the palms.

So simple. The gray icky feeling was no longer being processed by my brain. It had moved on to noticing the beauty around me and I had moved on to a better place. Not only did I no longer feel icky, I had learned something. I realized that just the simple process of bothering to NOTICE the good about anything around you is the same thing as gratitude. Noticing is the same as appreciating. Noticing is the same as gratitude. I didn’t know that before.

As I climbed out of the pool I realized that I had moved away from my gray, icky place. I just wasn't there anymore. I was in a good place.