Week Sixteen: Catching Yourself Doing Things Right

There are themes we’ll return to again and again, and one of these is focusing on possibility. I probably already shared with you that there is an approach to doing therapy called “solution-focused therapy.” In solution-focused therapy, the emphasis is on being aware of what’s going right and then building on that.

Ever since I started this practice with myself, I’ve noticed that old feelings of not being good enough, not having anything to offer – all that kind of stuff – has diminished so much that I rarely run into those thoughts and feelings anymore. Instead, I seem to have taught myself to focus on catching myself doing things right rather than wrong. To say that this had led to a greater lightness in my everyday experience of myself and the world is an understatement, so I’d like to share some thoughts with you about catching yourself doing things right.

It’s really all a matter of perspective: is the glass half empty or is it half full? It’s both – depending on your point of view. So, what we’re going to explore is about developing a point of view that tends to see the glass as half full so that you can notice when things are going well, or well enough. If you’re someone who was taught to see what isn’t working, what’s out of place, what isn’t good enough, this experiment is going to be a definite challenge. It’s been my experience that folks who grew up in homes where half-full was the primary world view tend to feel that the half-empty point of view is more “realistic”, more true than seeing things as half full.

This week’s experiment is straightforward: for the next week, pay attention to each and everything you notice that’s going right and ignore the things you think are going wrong. When you become aware of thinking that something isn’t as it should be, that you’re making mistakes – whatever form your half-full thinking might take – let those thoughts go and shift into looking for something that’s going right. At first, you may think that you won’t be able to find anything going right, but there’s always something. It may be the smallest of smallest things, but it will be there if you pay attention.

As with all the experiments, be sure to allow mixed feelings. Your mixed feelings automatically reveal beliefs about yourself and the world, and create an opportunity to decide if you really want to continue to hold attitudes that may be limiting, or promote fear or a sense of lack.

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