CHAPTER 5
Calming negative thoughts
Life is full of ups and downs. But, strange though it may seem, research has shown that it isn’t events that have the biggest influence on our emotions: it’s the way we react to those events. As the seventeenth-century poet John Milton wrote:
The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan Make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven
Think about it. Don’t you know someone who is capable of finding the negative in even the most positive situation? On the other hand, we bet you can think of a person who can find something to smile about during even the toughest of times.
What this means is that we all have at our disposal an incredibly powerful tool to boost our happiness. That tool is our mind. To be content, we ...
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