I never let negative thoughts define me

Standing at a window watching rain is not the same experience as standing out in it. Same weather, and the only variable is whether a pane of glass is involved.

Noticing a thought builds the glass. The moment you can say, quietly, that a familiar unkind idea has turned up again, you are no longer inside it. You are the thing looking at it, which is a different position altogether and cannot be occupied by the thought itself.

Nobody manages this all the time. But it is available more often than it feels, and it usually amounts to naming what is there. Not I am useless, but there it is again.