It’s amazing the way that moods change, isn’t it?
In fact it’s a bit of a miracle that we don’t hurl ourselves off a cliff every time we’re hungry.
Moods are like the guide rails of life. They get us moving in the right direction, and then once we’re on the right path, they change, and take us somewhere else.
Sometimes they take us on a good path and sometimes they take us on a bad path. They are fragile things, never quite letting us know when they are affecting us, and yet, they are concrete, the basis of our many emotions and actions. They’re one of life’s more interesting paradoxes.
Yet the thing that interests me most, is that I still, after all these years of living, can’t seem to anticipate them or even change them.
One minute it will seem as if the world is ending, a catastrophe, a calamity, a drama of the highest order, and then someone will send you a silly cat video, your mind gets distracted for a few moments, and you move on as if nothing happened.
I mean seriously—what the hell?
This exact sort of mood pattern happens to us all the time. Even when I know I’m in a bad mood, I can’t just snap my fingers and get out of it. Same goes if I’m in a good mood too (although why would you want to snap out of a good mood?).
People say that there are ways to cope with fluctuations in mood, like meditation, breathing exercises, so on and so forth. To that I say, try skipping breakfast and lunch and seeing how well counting to ten works after someone cuts you off in traffic. You won’t even get to two before you’re flipping the bird.
A long time ago, I remember watching a School of Life video where they mention that we are not our moods. I can’t remember exactly how they phrase it, and for the life of me I cannot find the video, but it had a lasting effect on me.
When I am having a string of exceptionally bad thoughts, I have to ask myself: am I in a bad mood? The mind can be deceptive. It will try to trick you into thinking that you’re not in a bad mood, that this is really how terrible the situation is.
But if you are able to get to a point where you can accept that you are in a bad mood, then all you need to do is wait, to let the bad mood pass. Because it will, eventually. The point of the School of Life video was that the thoughts your mind is able to conjure up during your bad mood are not a reliable analysis of reality.
The irony is that as I write about avoiding bad moods, I’m watching the Dallas Cowboys (who I hate) play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Dallas just scored a touchdown. Inevitably, that’s going to piss me off.
The moral of the story: there’s no way to avoid your moods. Just embrace them, and let them pass when they’re ready.
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It’s amazing the way that moods change, isn’t it?
In fact it’s a bit of a miracle that we don’t hurl ourselves off a cliff every time we’re hungry.
Moods are like the guide rails of life. They get us moving in the right direction, and then once we’re on the right path, they change, and take us somewhere else.
Sometimes they take us on a good path and sometimes they take us on a bad path. They are fragile things, never quite letting us know when they are affecting us, and yet, they are concrete, the basis of our many emotions and actions. They’re one of life’s more interesting paradoxes.
Yet the thing that interests me most, is that I still, after all these years of living, can’t seem to anticipate them or even change them.
One minute it will seem as if the world is ending, a catastrophe, a calamity, a drama of the highest order, and then someone will send you a silly cat video, your mind gets distracted for a few moments, and you move on as if nothing happened.
I mean seriously—what the hell?
This exact sort of mood pattern happens to us all the time. Even when I know I’m in a bad mood, I can’t just snap my fingers and get out of it. Same goes if I’m in a good mood too (although why would you want to snap out of a good mood?).
People say that there are ways to cope with fluctuations in mood, like meditation, breathing exercises, so on and so forth. To that I say, try skipping breakfast and lunch and seeing how well counting to ten works after someone cuts you off in traffic. You won’t even get to two before you’re flipping the bird.
A long time ago, I remember watching a School of Life video where they mention that we are not our moods. I can’t remember exactly how they phrase it, and for the life of me I cannot find the video, but it had a lasting effect on me.
When I am having a string of exceptionally bad thoughts, I have to ask myself: am I in a bad mood? The mind can be deceptive. It will try to trick you into thinking that you’re not in a bad mood, that this is really how terrible the situation is.
But if you are able to get to a point where you can accept that you are in a bad mood, then all you need to do is wait, to let the bad mood pass. Because it will, eventually. The point of the School of Life video was that the thoughts your mind is able to conjure up during your bad mood are not a reliable analysis of reality.
The irony is that as I write about avoiding bad moods, I’m watching the Dallas Cowboys (who I hate) play against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Dallas just scored a touchdown. Inevitably, that’s going to piss me off.
The moral of the story: there’s no way to avoid your moods. Just embrace them, and let them pass when they’re ready.
