Happy, happy. Joy joy.

My family is pretty evenly divided between two types of people: the positive thinkers and the more “realistic,” (some might call it “pessimistic”) sort.  I fall squarely in the latter category.  From this pessimist gene pool, I also inherited worry warts and an insatiable passion for doomsday predictions.

With a tendency to dismiss the “don’t worry, be happy” mantra (my mother sings this reggae classic at the top of her lungs while vacuuming), I often find myself in a state of anxiety, whether I’m worrying that I will give myself diabetes from one too many sugar binges, or fretting about some passing comment I made to a coworker.

So I was surprised when I found myself rethinking my pessimistic worry habit, when Jackie Kelm, author of The Joy of Appreciative Living, came in recently to shoot her Tarcher TV segment.  During her interview with Michael, she revealed that she was able to overcome her depression and anxiety by shifting her thoughts.  “It’s what you focus on,” she said – we have to be deliberate on what we focus on.  If you focus on the small things you enjoy or that make you feel content, and you do it over the course of several weeks, you’ll discover something: you feel better, more optimistic… less apt to worry.

It seemed almost like a revelation – I can change the way my mind works. It’s just a matter of persistence.  Though I don’t think I will join my mother, dancing with a dish towel and singing another chorus of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” I think I might start those exercises Jackie outlines in her book.

Kelli Daniel-Richards
Publicist