Clarence’s technique is called “mentally subtracting positive events.” [47] Think of something good in your life—a close friendship, a career achievement, one of your children. Consider all the decisions and indecisions, mistakes and triumphs, that led to that happy situation. Now take them away. To use an example from the last chapter, I could mentally subtract having met my wife. The result is misery and gloom. But, as happened with George Bailey, the subtraction deepens my gratitude and casts my regrets in a new light.
