If you're like me, however, you may find it difficult to just switch gears, or your negative thoughts are too random to prepare for in advance. I find it much easier to work with second choice. Start playing with thought until mood or energy around it lightens up. There are a number of different ways you can do this. You can visualize thought (the easiest way to do this is to put it in a word balloon, like in comics). Make it big. Make it small. Make it tall and narrow, or short and wide. See it close up, then far away. Add color to it. Take color away. Add sound. Just play with it!

What works well for me is to say it out loud, using funny voices, changing pitch and rhythm, slow, fast, drawing out different words. I find is that after a while, I'm smiling at how silly whole thing is. And negative thought? It just loses its juice. It stops controlling me once I start controlling it. I am constantly amazed at how effective such a simple thing is, that it's possible to start enjoying every thought I have.

'There's nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.' -- William Shakespeare

-------------- Adapted from work of Dr. Christian Almayrac, as described in book 'The Enlightened Smoker's Guide to Quitting' by B. Jack Gebhardt.

I took letter upstairs to apartment to read it. I sat down at kitchen table, and inside envelope was a single sheet of note paper covered with elegant, spidery handwriting. I glanced at name on bottom but didn’t recognize it, then I went back to top and began to read —

“Thank you for all of your kind words to my sister, Hannah Paulson. I don’t know who you are, but you must have had a special, wonderful relationship with her. Unfortunately, Hannah died day before your letter arrived…”

I sat there for a few moments, stunned.

Hannah was dead? And she hadn’t read my letter?

You see, for some inexplicable reason, a few weeks before Christmas I was overcome by strongest feeling that I ought to write to our former neighbor and thank her for being so kind to me when I was a little girl. Although — longer I considered idea — more ridiculous it seemed to write to someone I hadn’t seen in about fifteen years just to say thank you for being nice to me when I was a kid. So, I kept telling myself I didn’t have to do it right now — that I could always do it “tomorrow.”

I knew my mother still occasionally exchanged letters with Hannah, and when I finally concluded nagging feeling was not going to go away, I called my mother in Wisconsin, got Hannah’s address, wrote a letter and sent it in a Christmas card. After I mailed envelope, I felt a certain sense of satisfaction, as if I had finally paid off an old debt.

Except that now Hannah was dead. And she hadn't read my letter.

As soon as shock wore off a little bit, I called my mother. And when I told her that Hannah had died, we both began to cry.

“All those years when I could have written, but I didn’t,” I said in a choked voice. “And now she’ll never know—"

I heard Mom heave a deep sigh. “Oh, sweetheart, of course Hannah knew. Besides, she enjoyed your visits as much as you enjoyed going to see her.”

Nothing my mother said made me feel any better. If only I had written a week earlier. Or even just a day…

Twenty years later, I still can’t help wishing that Hannah had been able to read my letter. She was one of best friends I've ever had, but I never told her what her kindness meant to a lonely little girl who had no one to play with.

Then again, maybe that was Hannah's greatest gift to me. Through my procrastination in writing one simple letter, I learned that I should never put off until tomorrow telling my dearest friends and loved ones how I feel about them. No one knows, after all, when there might not be any more tomorrows.

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