The following strategy will change your life.  Only read further if you think your friends and family can take the new you.

Strategy:  The REVERSE, Pt. 1

Okay.  If you completed your assignment (See: Intrigue Your Friends! Frighten Your Relatives!)…and gave up one automatic, annoying negative response to a feature in your world you were previously unable to keep yourself from commenting on.…. you’ve progressed.  At least for one day.  I can’t advise going more than one day at a time squelching those automatic negative responses….That could cause some kind of brain implosion.

Thus, it’s safe to say:  You are no longer allowing your Emotional Guidance System to determine your response to _____________.  I cannot honestly say I have accomplished my goal….I could fake it, but there were quite a few witnesses to my comments aimed at the gate attendants WHO WERE NOT EVEN AT THE COUNTER 12 MINUTES BEFORE THE FLIGHT.  The gate attendants who returned to the counter….after they closed the flight…and CLAIMED they had not left the counter until 5 minutes before departure time.  But that unfortunate encounter is in the past. Letting it go….

Note: “But, wait, dear Mysteryshrink, the other people out there need to know what I think.  My friends and family appreciate my astute analysis of the flaws of others and my sharp description of what’s wrong with the world today.”

Trust me.  No one misses our negativity.  I’m in no way advocating giving up efforts to change what we believe would benefit from change.  Go for it.  Sign up for the 5K, add your favorite charity or political party to your monthly bills.  I’m not talking about doing; I’m talking about talking.

You’ve learned to silence your automatic response.  (Or at least you recognize the concept.)  But what now?  Now you’re ready for an advanced strategy.  You’re ready for an even more powerful way to stun those friends and relatives who think they “know you.”  Who think you are a completely predictable person.

You’re ready to take on THE REVERSE.

The Reverse is a simple skill…simple like downhill skiing without lessons, poles, or a soft place to land.

Start by once again identifying which subject which, when it is mentioned, or when you are reminded of it by billboards, television ads, or some little random, nagging thought squiggle zipping through the private world in your head….your Emotional Guidance System perks up.  An old adage in clinical practice is:  What makes a person happy is the same for most all of us.  What makes a person unhappy is unique to that person.

 So, what is your trigger?  Right-wingers?  Left-wingers?  Immigration?  Sarah Palin?  Francisco (Pancho) Villa?  The Yankees?  Trailer Inhabitants?  Mansion Inhabitants?  Taxes?  Healthcare?  Nancy Grace?  Letterman?  Cellphones?  White/Black/Brown People?  Racists? Bicyclers? Soccer? Professional Athlete Salaries?

Only last week I shared my genius by remarking to a cashier at the neighborhood grocery:  “Does it really seem like such a good plan to have sale displays taking up the middle of every aisle, then provide miniature, double-decker SUVs with steering wheels and squeaking mobiles for people with kids?”

The grocery store clerk was as impressed with my store arranging ideas as the American Airlines gate attendants were impressed with my suggestions for changing their flight readiness systems.

You accomplish the REVERSE when you examine that negative remark before you share it with the world…and then you say something which is the opposite of your automatic response.  I could have said to the cashier, “It’s so nice of your store to provide basket vehicles for parents with small children. Keeping the kids safe and occupied must help the parents get through a tough task.”

Okay, that’s as far as I can go with Part One of the Reverse Strategy.  Just writing the above words has made me a bit queasy.  Next entry attends to all the questions about being authentic, real, and the rest of the treasured bunk we have left over from our viewing the world as a child.

Dateline: Hilton World Headquarters Branch, San Francisco.

The Scene:  A writers’ conference, the ballroom of the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel…high on Nob Hill.  The room is magic.  The guest speaker is to be a woman whose memoir (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less) was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

As writers, we’re a thoroughly insecure lot…and before meeting the guest speaker, the room is electric with admiration and envy at the same time.  The writer’s wonderful and supportive agent, Amy Rennert introduces the movie from the stage. We still haven’t seen the writing star.    

The writer is Terry Ryan.   Returning to her family home after the death of her mother, she had gone through closets and chests, as all of us must at those times. While clearing the out her mother’s things, Terry came upon the jingles her mother had written to win prizes from companies like Proctor and Gamble, and Post Cereals…prizes which literally kept the family of a housewife, a working man with a serious drinking problem, and ten children…afloat.

We watch the movie. 

Terry Ryan had served in an advisory capacity for the film, Amy Rennert explains from the stage after the movie. Amy gives a signal. The huge ballroom crowded with would be storytellers…enjoying our wine and ready to praise the movie…wait.  Wondering why the woman living out our dreams doesn’t bounce in from the wings.

Instead, we follow as Amy’s eyes drop to the floor in front of the stage. Four men lift Terry Ryan’s wheelchair up on the platform.  Two men would have been plenty.  Terry is bald and so whispy, she looks as if ready to blow away at any moment. She is in the end stage of cancer.  She knows it.  We know it.

The microphone is situated to catch her slight voice. She smiles…and shares with each of us how much finding those jingles changed her life.  We’re thinking…well, yes…you’re the lucky woman whose story was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson. 

But we’re wrong. Terry’s excitement comes from remembering the incredible positive face her mother put on every family fear and disappointment, and there were many. Her father was frequently unemployed….and did I mention?…10 kids….

Terry is here to share her mother’s strength with a bunch of people she doesn’t know. She hopes people who see the movie realize how powerful her mother was in her life and the lives of many others.  And we do.  Oh, how we do.  The night is magic and we know how privileged we are to hear this incredible, brave woman….We know her mother is with her now, speaking through her daughter’s beautiful face, taking time to pass on her wisdom to all of us fools in our ivory tower.

Fools?  Oh, yes.  Idiots.  Idiots thinking….I’m not so happy now….but when ____happens….when I get a great agent….when I lose thirty pounds…when I fall in love…when…when…when…yes…fools, all.

Ms. Rennert asks if Terry feels up to a few questions and she agrees.  The first questioner asks, “What about the movie-making process surprised you the most?”

Terry answers, “How many people are actually on the set for each shot…inches out of camera.  There are hundreds.”  Her genuineness comes through and we send her every healing vibe we can. “But the most fun was seeing things that actually happened come back to life.”  She smiled then, and shared a few mother stories that didn’t make the cut.  We laugh with the tiny fading woman on the stage.

She tells us how privileged she feels to have had the incredible childhood she had.   

Then the “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” waving in the second row, is acknowledged by Ms. Rennert. 

The “Woman Who” clears her throat and asks Terry Ryan:  “I was wondering….Have you ever been able to forgive your father?”

The frail lady with the bald head and the shaky voice, tilted her face as if briefly confused. “Forgive him for what?” she asked.   

The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” stayed true to her name. (Sometimes you have to up the ante, have to shout or repeat yourself to get another person to see things the way you do.)  “But your father punched in a wall.  He came home drunk so many times!”

Terry Ryan peered from her sunken shoulders as if looking at a creature from another planet.  “I don’t know you, Ma’am (I’m paraphrasing, it’s been a while)…But I think you’re talking about how you see my life, not the way I see my life.  I haven’t spent any of my lifetime forgiving anyone.  I didn’t need to.”

Terry Alan died 5-17-2007 at 11:11:07 PDT.

Okay, guys, Anxiety Management Pop Quiz Challenge.

Tomorrow… Okay, that’s asking too much.  Pick a day next week. A sudden change in your personality could lead friends and relatives to the wrong conclusion. You know…bring up that troublesome branch of the family…and how you do look just like Aunt Franny…you know, when you get that look in your eyes…

So, we’re talking about change here, but no sudden moves.

First, think about your typical day…from the moment you open your eyes until you close them again.  Now, find an event, person, wardrobe, phone user, disaster, profession, religion, publication, television show, politician, political viewpoint….that when you encounter “it” you just can’t stop yourself from making a negative comment.

I tried this, and I didn’t make it out of bed.  I didn’t even make it to a sitting position before my tiny brain was awash in negative thoughts the world really needed to hear.

You see, my special person was watching ESPN “Around the Horn”…with no sound of course, because he wouldn’t want to disturb me. (At least, I like to think that is the reason, though I strongly suspect he mistakenly thinks that with the sound off, it’s possible I won’t start his day off with an arrogant remark about the ESPN, Tiger Woods and his trumped up “disease,” Lance Armstrong and how he made a big deal out of saving his sperm so that he and his wife who saw him through cancer could have children later…then left her and the kids for Cheryl Crow, or how the NBA is such a height-elitist sport, or how if the overweight, over fiftyish man delivering the sports was a woman, she wouldn’t have a job, how I don’t get soccer, how boxing shouldn’t be a sport, how it doesn’t make sense that young boys are supposed to consider sports figures as role models…and the Olympics, what’s that about?  A kid spends seventeen hours a day ice-skating and I’m supposed to proclaim her a national hero?    

Or, there’s the more personal route, in which I take a dig at my special person’s character by pointing out that ESPN just repeats the same stories over and over (This from a woman with an addiction to true crime shows, Reno 911, and, yes, there was the embarrassing streak of Nancy Grace back before Casey Anthony went to jail…)…To accomplish the more personal complaint, I turn to him and say, “You’re not buying this, are you?” with the thinly veiled implication that, if he is enjoying the show, he’s clearly mentally defective.

Okay.  You pick your little sore spot.  And challenge yourself to…just for one day…keep your (clever) but negative remarks to yourself.

Oh, sure. Laugh. It’s not that easy.