I remember so many times when my mum used to walk around our house ‘counting to ten’ to try and prevent herself from losing the rag as one of her beloved children (never me of course!) had smacked/broken/hidden/destroyed/punched/drawn over something – possibly one of her other children!

I always wondered, as a child, how effective it was and why counting to ten seemed so important.  “Weird grown up stuff” is more than likely the conclusions to my youthful pondering.

But as I’ve grown up and learned more about the mind and emotions I have discovered that many of the ideas that we now see as clichés, the little rituals that we dismiss as silly, make fun of or say sarcastically to our stressed out colleague when 3 days of work disappears in a random computer blip are actually true and can really work to calm us, chill us out and help us when times are tough.
Here are five of my favourites:

1. Count to 10 –  Many of our most powerful emotional responses happen instantly and therefore bypass the part of our minds that rationalises, calculates and has an awareness of other people’s emotions.  In some cases, like joy, love or even ecstasy, this is a good thing and allows us to lose ourselves in a wonderful moment free of our usual inhibitions.  In others, like anger, having some time to think – even 10 seconds – allows that rational part of our mind to try and work out the most effective response to get us our outcome before we act on impulse and say something we might regret.

2. Take a Deep Breath – When our emotional state changes our body changes with it.  When we are happy or excited we breathe deeply from the bottom of our lungs, when we are anxious or stressed our breathing becomes quicker, shallower and higher in our chests.  Just try breathing big, deep steady breaths and then try and feel anxious..it doesn’t work!!

Here’s a wee experiment.  Sit up straight and, wherever you are now, take 10 long, steady, deep breaths.  Go.  Now, where did you lose count? The lower the number the more your mind is controlling your body and the more you need to breathe.  Try again later until you can get all 10 in a row.

3. Go to a happy place – All of our feelings are based on our interpretations of reality – not reality itself.  If you don’t like flying, it’s not the plane or the pilot that’s the issue it is your thoughts about what might happen to the plane.  But we can literally ‘jam’ this ‘negative’ signal on purpose and replace it with something more positive if we choose to.

Think of somewhere that is your idea of bliss.  It might be a real place or a fantasy, somewhere you’ve been or somewhere you’re going.  Now, next time you are in a place or situation that you don’t like, ‘jam’ your mind’s negative signal by running your happy place again and again and again.  If you slip out of it, just go back and make it so good you find it easy to stay.

4. Sing a Happy Tune – Well if going to happy place can work then so can singing a happy tune.  I lost count of the number of times I would start singing one of my all time favourite songs inside my head before doing presentations or even going to interviews because it changed the way I felt so radically!

Think of the happy tune or the happy place like a jamming signal for negative thoughts.  If you can flood your mind with something else then there is no space for anything else.  This gives you time to return your breathing to normal and start feeling better.

Even better, choose a tune that is filled with some sort of positive meaning and emotion for you and you will get a big dose of all that good feeling and emotion back again.

Try it now, choose a tune that is packed with good memories – the first dance, the school disco favourite, the football chant, that tune that means so much to you – and notice how you feel.  Next time your thoughts begin to run away with you, sing goddamit!

5. Positive Mental Attitude (PMA) – If you live in the UK you might remember that advert that was on a few years ago, “you just need PMA, positive mental attitude”.  Mix that in with countless satirical comedy sketches, painful attempts at motivation from so called experts  and people who lie to themselves about how great everything is as their lives turn to dust and it’s no wonder the thought of anyone ‘thinking positive’ has become one of the biggest clichés of them all.

Why?   Well, because we are told that once you start thinking positive then you can’t stop.  But that’s now how to really make it work.  The simplest explanation of thinking positive is to start thinking about what you DO want rather than what you DON’T.  For example, imagine you have to do a presentation in front of 15 people.  For lots of people this is their idea of a nightmare.  But many people lie to themselves, thinking that they are ‘thinking positive’, by telling themselves “I’m fine, I’m OK.  I’m going to be great” when inside they feel terrified and are worried about all 15 audience members wetting themselves with laughter at everything they say because they don’t really know what they are talking about!!

Making ‘Thinking positive’ work is about asking yourself how you DO want it to happen, to accept that you feel nervous, discover what you feel nervous about and know that you have the skills and ability to deal with it.

It’s also about knowing that you can go to a happy place, sing a happy tune, take a deep breath and, if all else fails, count to 10 before you make your next move!!