Expand to the near past or future.

If you cannot find anything positive at all in yourself, or in the events of the previous day, or in your interactions with others, then write about positive moments from the recent past—for example, the past week—or write about the future in a very positive way. The future is neutral because we do not know what it holds, so we can frame it negatively or positively however we choose.

This particular theme might not perfectly align with the method's foundations, which are built on truth and on remembering recent events and elaborating on them in detail. But it doesn't conflict with them either. In short, we often face a constant invasion of bad thoughts about the past or the future. Since some people, especially early in practicing the method, find it hard to notice anything from the day itself, there's no harm in writing about the recent past — last week, for example. And sometimes, even when something did happen that week, you may want to elaborate on something bigger that happened two or three days ago, and find it useful to write about it. As for the future, writing about it optimistically might seem to go against the truth, but the future is entirely neutral. Many voices in your head may tell you the future will be bad; there's no harm in placing another, optimistic voice there too, at least during your writing time. The future is neutral, and just as many people decide it's bad and worrying, it's just as possible to write in the opposite direction. You aren't imposing an image on the future — you're immersing yourself in an optimistic choice, the same way your mind hands you pessimistic ones. I'll admit, as the method's founder, that on the very first day I couldn't find anything to write about that day. I was weighed down by many bad thoughts about the future, and I found all that pressure unfair, so I wrote three different sentences in the opposite direction. That's where it began. The important note here is that writing about the future or the recent past isn't at the core of the method, but it's a legitimate option to write toward.