Eva Bradley: Positive spin on life helps

Last night when I couldn't sleep and found myself reading online medical research about the placebo effect in treating calcific tendinitis (as you do), I had a thought: life isn't so much a series of events, but a series of reactions to events. And how we choose to react will in many cases define the event.

Basically, life is one big, fat placebo. If we tell ourselves the grass is greener on the other side it will be, and if we eat a jaffa every morning believing it to be a cure-all happy pill that will make us smile right through till bedtime, then that's probably exactly what will happen.

Clouded as my thoughts were by sleep deprivation and the reflection that overwhelms most of us during bouts of insomnia, I still felt the thought had some merit.

It wasn't far off my own personal mantra that I try to be conscious of whenever I can: life follows your thoughts.

And as we have all no doubt experienced, thoughts have a way of sliding off into the darklands when not being closely managed (unless of course you're one of those annoying "bubbly" people that exist in our lives like a small, sharp stone at the bottom of a gumboot - highly irritating and impossible to ignore).

In the same cruel way that most food that is bad for you usually tastes good while food that is good for you tastes bad, being positive and upbeat in the face of adversity is always challenging, and sometimes it definitely feels a whole lot easier to have a moan about life instead of seeing the bright side.

But what I have found during the times I am on a roll and walking with a spring in my step is that good things keep getting better.

And on the dark side of the moon when I'm feeling flat and grumbling about the injustices of life, I simply attract more of the same.

So I've decided to deploy the placebo effect not just to my calcific shoulder, but to my life, generally.

Starting from today, it's all coming up roses. Or at the very least daffodils, since I hear the first of them are popping up already - a sunny little reminder from mother nature that the worst is over and things can only going to get warmer and brighter from here on in.

I'm also going to start drip-feeding myself a whole bunch of little white lies - the sort of lies that get forgiven at the pearly gates and make the process of slowly getting there so much better.

I'm going to tell myself I love getting up early every morning. That I would absolutely much rather have Special K over white bread with peanut butter for breakfast, and I'm going to continue in this vein until the end of the day when I'm going to climb into bed and lie about the pure joy of reading a business development book instead of Woman's Weekly.

According to the placebo premise, if I do this often enough, it shall be so.

Now all I need is a small white pill to take every morning that keeps convincing me that my efforts to convince myself are going to work.

Eva Bradley is an award-winning columnist.