Don’t Be Paranoid. I would advise instead to be “anti-paranoid” which is my favorite style. Simply choose to interpret most things in the opposite manner of a paranoid person. If someone’s not nice, tell yourself that they really like or that they are having a bad day. Exaggerate your ideas about how many people like you and how much they do. If you hear an ambiguous comment, interpret it in the harmless way instead of the pernicious way.
Let me give you an example. One time I was jogging in the park. A man suddenly leaped out from under a dip with a camera in hand and shot my picture. He had a strange look on his face too, rather devious. It might actually be rational to think he was some enemy, spy, private eye, or cop who was monitoring me because of his weird behavior and his expression. At the time I thought, “Well I can be paranoid about this or be anti-paranoid.” I decided to be anti-paranoid. I decided to say he was just some photo bug who liked to take photographs. He leaped out at me for kicks or to catch me unawares. He had a strange look because he’s some weird photo bug guy who jumps out at strangers and takes their photos.
I also made a note of it though and decided that if things like this kept happening to me in the near future, I would have to start looking into this a lot deeper to figure out who was spying on me.
