Cliché it is due to its truthfulness – keeping busy makes you lighten up and stop feeling like you should be thinking about your desire all the time (especially when you notice it hasn’t manifested yet).
When I feel like thinking too much, I start writing, cleaning up or go outside and walk around the block. I think about my new photography goals and challenges. I start looking for a new series to watch (or go back to rewatching OITNB). I catch up on my incomplete errands, in a decisively motivated and not-at-all-lazy way.
This is what puts me in a different mindset simply by letting me engage fully in a concrete activity that requires the presence of both my body and mind which is the exact reason why it works.
There are a million things to do – all we have to do is choose among them.