Hong Kong bookshops are crammed with self-help guides to every conceivable aspect of success and happiness. Yet, they do not seem to have made much of a dent in the downward spiralling of our collective psyche. Off-putting excesses of bounciness and oversimplification aside, many of these guides do contain sound advice aimed at just the sort of mood change Hong Kong appears to be frantically aiming for with elaborate publicity campaigns. So what is the theoretical gist of these hugely popular guides to happiness, as can be applied to Hong Kong's current gloominess? First, it is part of human nature - anything but abnormal - to be merchants of doom and gloom. We enjoy blowing problems out of proportion so much that when everything seems to be going well, which is universally seldom, we feel at a loss for something to agonise over. If a person is happy at home, in good health and has just been promoted, for example, they will often find themselves lying in bed at night looking for something - anything - to fret over. One explanation for why we are like this is that worriers, because they anticipate the worst, once had an evolutionary edge. Be that as it may, people are predisposed to ruminate. This, looked at in the right way, is good news. It means that it is not only, or even principally, circumstances themselves that lead to gloom and dampened vitality, but our habitual temptation to see the worst. Consequently, self-improvement guides advise readers to focus their efforts not on what is right or wrong about their lives but on how to form constructive ways to interpret or perceive whatever comes along. The formula, loosely based on cognitive therapy, is a classic one for short-circuiting mild depression. It depends not on the Freudian-style psychology of childhood experiences but on the assumption that people can think themselves out of their despondency given the right intellectual tools. Preparing for the worst is commendable but approximate and, by definition, rarely justified. So, it is best to simultaneously harness the right sort of self-fulfilling prophesies by training oneself to emotionally expect the best. Can optimism be self-induced? Much of the self-help industry depends on the answer being yes. Here is how many books recommend it can be done. The pessimist characteristically sees the cause of problems, rejections or failures in terms of three Ps: permanent (it will last forever), pervasive (it will spoil everything) and personal (it is all my or one party's fault). Reality is seldom that clear cut. Problems, as we spontaneously assume when we are in an optimistic frame of mind, are rarely everlasting, all-encompassing or entirely one person's fault. To switch from pessimistic to optimistic patterns of thinking, you have to master the art of disputing the three Ps. It helps for the novice to look from another perspective. Imagine, for example, it was a loved one who had just been turned down for a job. If they went into permanent-pervasive-personal mode, you would dispute their interpretations. The failure, you would probably argue, does not mean they will never find a job, that their whole life is now ruined or that the failure was all their fault. But pessimists - if they are sufficiently self-reflective - will note that this is exactly how they think. In the case of a friend, they can come up with a thousand plausible mitigating factors and even benefits to the situation - like learning from the experience or being available for a future opportunity which may end up being better. When it comes to their own worries, however, negative interpretations kick in so smoothly that the process itself is barely noticeable. It takes conscious effort to recognise these negative automatic thoughts, then to backtrack and systematically dispute them and what they imply about the future. Noticing and questioning assumptions such as criteria for success is another important technique. Pessimists burden themselves with depression-propagating suppositions. Again, the trick is to recognise and replace them. Instead of operating from the premise of: 'We must urgently find the correct way out of our dilemma', we can choose: 'Success is doing my best and helping others to do the same', to paraphrase Martin Seligman, the author of Learned Optimism. So, there is a quick tour of the self-help basics for Hong Kong's burgeoning quota of doom merchants. Sucking oneself back out of a spiral of gloominess and pessimism is easier said than done, of course. But simply being aware of a potential blueprint for re-establishing vitality and optimism is surely a useful complement to smiley faces and fireworks. Jean Nicol is a Hong Kong-based psychologist and writer everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com