Picture this scenario. You wake up in the morning, feel unrested and grumpy. As you stare into the mirror at your droopy eyes and the bags under them, your mind starts filling with messages to yourself.

“I’m sooo tired!”

“How can I function on so little sleep?”

“I’ll never be able to make it through the day!”

If the reason for your interrupted sleep hap­pens to be a family member, at this point you may start harboring resentful thoughts about them as well. You add some visuals about all the disasters that will likely accrue to your fa­tigue in the coming hours, along with the prob­able headache you’ll get and the difficulty you’ll have trying to behave, on so little sleep, like a pleasant and rational human being to those around you.

You fill your head with so many negative ob­servations that there’s no room for a single ray of optimism to intrude. And all that negativity feels perfectly natural. As if you’re confiding your woes to a good friend. Your self-pity feels like a cushion to lay your weary head on. You may not have had enough sleep, but kvetching to yourself about it feels like some sort of minor compensation or consolation prize.

It’s not. What all those gloomy messages ac­tually do is weaken whatever life force you pos­sess this morning. They make it much more likely that your dire predictions for the day will come true. As comforting as they may feel, they’re no friend of yours.

Suppose, instead, you try to tell yourself one positive thing as you slump tiredly in front of the mirror. Just one. It can be a simple message, such as: It’s all good.

Your immediate reaction may be to recoil from such a thought. Incredulously, you ask yourself how being utterly exhausted before the day even begins could possibly be a good thing? Maybe Pollyanna was able to thrive on such a sugary diet, but you’re more realistic than that!

But suppose… just suppose… you have the self-discipline to take the thought one step fur­ther. To try to figure out how there might possi­bly be some good amid the awfulness. It may not be easy. After all, you can’t erase the fact that you didn’t get enough sleep. You can’t change your fatigue into a barrelful of energy, right?

That’s correct. But it’s a law of na­ture that two things cannot fill the same space at the same time. While you can’t turn the clock back and produce a restful sleep, what you can do is dis­place those negative reflections and gloomy predictions with some positive thoughts. Such as: “I work from home, so I can catch a nap later if I need one.” Or, “I’ll try for an early night tonight.” Or “I’ll really appreciate a good night’s sleep the next time it happens!”

Or even the last-ditch fallback: “It could be worse…” Because it can al­ways be worse.

I’m not saying that any of these thoughts have the power to fill you with pep. What it does have the power to do is diminish your grumpiness and fill you with a better attitude. Maybe even something approximating good cheer. Or at least, better cheer.

And that’s worth a lot.

A Harsh Landscape

There’s a mitzvah in the Torah to re­frain from hating another Jew in one’s heart. This might run counter to some modern-day psychological thinking. Isn’t it better to harbor feelings of ha­tred inside one’s heart, some might ask, than speaking that emotion out loud? If you’re feeling outraged, out­maneuvered or misunderstood, why not clench your mental fists and think, “I hate you, I hate you!” to ease some of your frustration? A person’s private thoughts can’t do any damage, right?

Wrong. As we’ve started to explore above, thoughts can do plenty of dam­age. Starting with turning you into a hate-filled person.

The Torah demands that we expunge hateful feelings toward our broth­ers and sisters by whatever means are necessary. Ideally, we can try to be melamed zechus on the perpetrator of our pain. That means seeking out their good traits, or remembering past kind­nesses, which may help to overcome our anger and diminish the hatred in our hearts.

Alternatively, you can find the cour­age to speak up. To courteously air your grievance and give the other person a chance to explain himself. A great deal of fury and dislike are the result of ei­ther miscommunication or lack of communication. Talking it out, hon­estly and respectfully, is a route that can take a person from hating his fel­low man… to actually loving him!

Pirkei Avos teaches that jealousy, lust, and a desire for honor are things that remove a person from the world. How does this work? Simple. When a person fills his head with such thoughts, he creates a private little bubble in which nothing exists but himself and his de­sires.

When we allow our thoughts to focus on “I don’t have” and “I want” to the exclusion of all else, we are basically stepping out of the world of goodness and gratitude, into a bleak, harsh place that can never make us happy.

That’s why our Torah urges us not to go there. When it comes to unwhole­some desires… don’t even think about it!

A Sacred Place

The mind is not meant to be a gar­bage dump of negative thoughts and emotions. It should be a sacred place, a light-filled place of positivity and goodness. Trying to live up to that ideal is not being unrealistic or Pollyanna-ish. On the contrary: it’s facing reality and deciding how we choose to relate to it. It’s opting for happiness over per­petual disgruntlement. It’s being our own best friend.

There’s nothing wrong with ac­knowledging grumpiness when it comes up, or even with kvetching a lit­tle to elicit the sympathy and support of someone close to us. But overall, let’s try to keep our thoughts buoyant. Let’s move away from the myth that what we keep inside our heads has no effect on anything. Because, in fact, the opposite is true.

Every great thing in this world be­gins with a thought. So does every horror. If we focus on cultivating the beautiful and exalted, even inside the privacy of our own minds, it follows that the world will be a less horrible place. More: it will become more beau­tiful and exalted place. It’s up to us.

So, the next time you wake up grumpy and unrested, or come away from a conversation angry and dis­satisfied, and feel the inclination to fill your mind with thoughts of gloom, doom and self-pity… Stop right there. Don’t even think about it!