Welcome to episode 183 of Live Happy Now. This is your host, Paula Phelps, thanking you for joining us here today.

Now, if you ever feel like thinking positive is just too difficult sometimes, then this episode is for you.

This week, we're talking with Dr. Sasha Hines, a developmental psychologist and life coach who focuses

on the science of getting unstuck.

And one way she does that is to look at how to think neutrally when it's just too tough

to think positively.

So let's listen to how she does that and why it can be so effective.

Well, Sasha, welcome to live happy now.

I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Hi, it's so good to be here. Well, you know, what's really exciting about what we're going to talk about today is that your approach to positive psychology is something I think a lot of people are going to be excited about. They're going to be happy to hear because we hear all the time about positive thinking is good for us or that it's necessary for us.

But you kind of talk about how neutral thinking is an option and it's a good step for some people.

So can you kind of explain that philosophy and what you mean?

Yeah, absolutely.

I think that there's some research coming out of NYU with Gabrielle Ointz-Gin about sort of rethinking

positive thinking. But I mean, I really think that in the self-help world right now,

there's just the sort of resounding message of like the power of positive thinking. And you just

need to, you know, to sort of lobotomize yourself and like take that negative thought and

put in a positive one and that's really what we need to do. But human brains just don't operate like

that. You know, people talk about neural pathways like, well, it's just, you know, there's a field and

the cows have tread the path this way and you just have to redirect them in another,

you know, another way.

And then that pathway is going to just grow over.

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