There are some basic actions we can take on any given moment to help us shift our day when we are in a bad mood. Things like:
1) Playing music you love
Depending on the mood you’re trying to shift, you can either play some energizing music that gets your body moving and helps to lift your energy, or some relaxing music that can begin to soothe and calm you.
2) Taking a walk or adding exercise to your day
Whether you’re taking a brisk walk around the block, or at the very least, to the elevator and back, moving your body, changing the scenery, and maybe even getting a little sunlight and fresh air can renew you and help to tame a bad mood. Exercise also releases endorphins, which help lift your mood.
3) Meditating
Meditation can help us shift our consciousness, thereby increasing our awareness which can help us shift our mood. Taking a few minutes out of your day to clear your mind can sometimes give you access to a new perspective or insight that helps you see things in a different light. Whenever you meditate, it helps to have paper and pen sitting beside you.
4) Calling a friend
If you’re upset, pick up the phone and call someone you trust. A quick conversation can relieve a lot of tension by expressing your feelings as well as helping you feel understood.
5) Having a cup of green tea
Get away from whatever you’re doing for a few minutes and make a pot (or a cup) of tea. Besides the warm tea being soothing, green tea contains L-theanine, which is purported to have a calming effect on the mind and body.
These things can help you lift your mood. However, if you want to truly shift out of a bad mood, it helps to know how you got there to begin with. In my book Your Ultimate Life Plan, I say that unresolved memories and unexamined difficult thoughts lead to difficult moods.
If we can become conscious of and familiar with our inner thoughts and feelings, we can begin to build our inner resources that help us navigate life more easily. Then we can head off these difficult feelings and thoughts at the pass, getting to the origins of these "moods."
Learning how to observe, understand, process, and move through these inner thoughts and feelings allows us to relax. This starts to create an inner spaciousness that lets us begin to see how we arrive at bad moods. As we learn these skill sets, we usually don't find ourselves in bad moods, and if we do, we don’t stay there for long.
I go into this more deeply in Your Ultimate Life Plan:
“As you explore the feelings, thoughts, and sensations arising with a memory, the intensity softens; you’ll unravel the story and relax your reactions. If a current, painful situation combines with old, stored pain from the past and becomes over¬whelming emotion, you succumb to what could be called mood, state of mind, or emotional atmosphere. Similar to your happiness set point, your mood or emo¬tional set point is where you gravitate when something gets triggered. Think of people who always go to anger, no matter what difficult feelings might be sitting underneath the anger. If you continue ignoring buried pain, you’re vulnerable to troubled moods lasting minutes, hours, days, or months. Once a troubled mood becomes ingrained, it takes time and work to release.”
Let me know how this works for you!!
Your comments make a difference for us all.
For further information on accessing your wisdom, happiness, fulfillment, and peace you desire, click here to learn about Dr. Howard's Multiple Award Winning Book "Your Ultimate Life Plan: How to Deeply Transform Your Everyday Experience and Create Changes That Last."
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