Who knew that an artist would have the advice I needed to hear this week. 

My girls and their friends went to a Cape Cod stripes art workshop with an incredibly talented local artist, Carolyn Mackin. During the workshop the girls picked any colors of their choosing to make some fancy horizontal stripes. Anything goes for stripe thickness, amount of stripes, the way to apply the stripes onto the paper and number of colors. 

Basically, there are no rules. 

I came back towards the end of the workshop and one of my girls was looking particularly upset about her stripes. Carolyn and I asked her what she was thinking and she said she didn't like the bold, thick stripes she had put on her papers. Carolyn gave her some suggestions, but my daughter was still looking unsure, upset and a little frozen. 

Then, Carolyn gave the mic drop speech. 

She said, art isn't about being fearless. There's no such thing as being fearless. We all have our...

"Why does it matter, I'm just going to fail the test anyways!" shouted my daughter as the car door slammed. 

"Out of all the possible thoughts out there, why are choosing to go with that one?" I asked. "Why not chose to think you're going to do great!"

"Mom, I do NOT want to hear any of your dumb coaching therapy this morning" she said firmly through clenched teeth. 

"Ok. who has something fun at school?!" was my attempt to shift gears which went over like a lead balloon. As we turned onto the highway, I searched for the Christmas station, because Mariah Carey can fix just about any bad mood. 

You know what else helps to shift your bad mood?

The power of positive thinking.

Reframing your thoughts and looking for evidence to disprove your crummy thoughts {I know you've got a lot thanks to 2020} can dramatically help during challenging times. 

As much as I believe in positive thinking, I know it doesn't fix every problem,...