The danger lies in focusing on that pain, giving it a particular person`s name and keeping it always present in your thoughts.

To avoid beautiful thoughts turning into suffering, she developed a method: when something positive to do with „him“ came across her mind, she would stop what she was doing, smile up at the sky and give thanks for being alive and to be expecting nothing from the man she loved.

If though, her hearts began to complain about his abscence she would say to herself:
Oh, so you want to think about that, do you? All right, then, you do what you like, while I get on with more important things.

She would then continue to read , or focus her attention on what she was doing at the very moment and the unfortunate thought would eventually go away. If it came back five minutes later, she would repeat the process, until those thoughts, finding themselves accepted but als genty rejected, would stay away for quite considerable periods of time.

One of these „negative thoughts“ was the possibility to never seeing him again.
With a little pratice and a great deal of patience, she managed to transform this into a „positive thought“:
when she left, the city would have the face of a man with old-fashioned long har, a child-like smile and a grave voice. If someone asked her, many years later, what the place she had known in her youth was like, she could reply:
„Very beautiful, and capable of loving and being loved“.

aus: Eleven Minutes (Paolo Coelho)