Driving home from celebrating our Pasadena grandson’s first birthday, my husband told me he was feeling anxious. “Why?” I asked. “For so many reasons,” he replied, then rattled off a list of concerns, which included events and situations months in the future. “You’re worried about …

Researches have proved that messes make people anxious. I couldn’t agree more. Put me in a messy room, with dirty dishes littering table tops, discarded apple cores sitting next to chairs, outwear piled on those chairs, and papers scattered here and there, I begin to feel panicky. Now, I’ve learned how to a void the unease: I find one moment of beauty in the room: an interesting design in the rug, a beautiful ceramic pot, a painting, even a dustball just under the couch, and I focus on that. Within moments, I begin to feel calmer. Try it.

I’m ashamed to say that after my fabulous book launch last Thursday, I started thinking about all the people who didn’t show up. I did this for several days, and began compiling quite a list, before I caught myself. This is old behavior, I told myself. You know how to stop it. And I did. The next time my mind returned to the list, I shifted my focus from all those who hadn’t been there–for whatever reason—to the first face I could remember, sitting in the audience, smiling, sending me silent good wishes. It worked. I’m no longer thinking about who wasn’t there. And now when people ask how the launch went, I’m able to reply, “It was wonderful!”

I had a lot to do today and was feeling overwhelmed. I wanted to spend time with my granddaughters, who live 20 minutes from me, do my workout and my meditation, write a blog post, deposit the bags of clothing that had been sitting in the front hall for a week, at Goodwill—all before going out to dinner with a friend. The more I rushed, the more overwhelmed I felt. I’ll never get all of this done became my mantra. I finally realized what I needed to do: Think Small. I need to stop whatever I was doing, go outside for a short walk, and find a tiny, beautiful thing. I did that, and about half a block from my house, I picked up the most beautiful dried berry, mottled in various shades or red, with a graceful arcing stem. The minute I notice the berry, I felt my body relax and my chest expand. The world is such a beautiful place, I whispered to myself. Then I went back to my house and completed by chores, the image of the dried red berry with the arcing stem in my mind.