I Built a Public Persona Around Positive Thinking, Until the Most Devastating Year of My Life Made Me Rethink Everything. Here's What I Realized. When we're grieving, it's not always possible to find silver linings, or be "positive" in the traditional sense. But if we are willing to be present, "microjoys" can bring us back to ourselves.

How can you be positive, when there's nothing to be positive about?

That was the unexpected question facing Cyndie Spiegel, who had built a public persona around "positive psychology" — the scientific study of well-being, which emphasizes strengths that enable people to thrive. Positive psychology thoroughly aligned with Spiegel's worldview — until she experienced a devastating amount of loss in a very short time. In 2020, her business faced challenges. Then her nephew was murdered. Her mother died.

Her brother had a stroke and was in the ICU for two months. A lifelong friend abruptly cut ties.

And Spiegel was diagnosed with breast cancer.

In the midst of all that, positivity felt impossible. But slowly, Spiegel began to see glimmers — they were just tinier, and more modestly packaged than before. Instead of searching for silver linings in tragedy, she found brief respites from grief in everyday pleasures: the color of coffee with just the right amount of creamer, soft pants, bright leaves in the fog, floral wallpaper. Recognizing her ability to be present for these fleeting moments of beauty or curiosity helped her inch toward a new understanding of herself, and formed the basis of her new book, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay. Here, she explains the outsize importance of small joys.

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What originally drew you to positive psychology?

In my early 20s, I met somebody who was so positive. Like, startlingly so. And initially I was like, Oh, for fuck's sake, this cannot be real. But the longer I knew her, the more I thought, This is real. She was genuine, people loved her, and she got her job done really well. So I started emulating some of her behaviors. She would smile all the time, and I remember actually practicing to smile.

I did not grow up in an environment of vulnerability and honesty, but the more I smiled, the lighter I felt, and the more connected and honest my conversations were with other people. This is not me telling women to smile more — but it did make me happier, and it shifted my relationships. So when I read about positive psychology, I realized there was science and data behind everything I intuited.

How did your thinking evolve after you experienced so much loss?

I realized that, while it's not the intent, positive psychology can feel like all or nothing. We beat ourselves up if we can't think positively. But sometimes, there's no fucking silver lining!

After my mom died, positive thinking could not exist for me. What I did have was the capacity to notice things that were directly in front of me. I had these moments of presence. You know, I would get a manicure and look at my nails and go, Oh my gosh, look at those fun colors. It seemed so silly, but it broke me out of my grief. It gave me traces of myself again, even if it was just for a minute. Microjoys are about holding joy in one hand, and grief in the other.

It sounds like positive thinking is useful when you have energy to give. But microjoys are a kind of survival kit for terrible times, because they ask for nothing in return.

With positive thinking, there's an exchange. You put out what you get back, mostly. But with microjoys, it's just receiving, when you have nothing left to give. All that microjoys demand of us is presence. But we have to train ourselves to receive these moments.

And these moments of being present brought you back to life.

I realized the only way that I was going to recognize a part of myself again was to reach for the small moments of joy and hope that were right in front of me.

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