BECOME AWARE OF YOUR MOODS …

… and don’t allow yourself to be fooled by the low ones

This is a heading of a chafter from the book I actually read.

Don’t sweat the small stuff by Richard Carlson. It’s all about simple ways to keep the little things from overtaking your life. Most of his tips are really obvious and easy to apply on a daily basis.

Yesterday I came over chapter 31 about how deceptive our moods can be. They can and they probably do trick us into believing our life is far worse than it obviously is. Who doesn’t know this?

The sun is shining, we are in a good mood, life looks great and seems to be easy and everything just flows. We have it all, perspective, common sense, and wisdom. In a good mood, things dont feel so hard, problems seem less formidable and easier to solve. When we are in a good mood, relationships seem to flow and communication is easy. If we are critizised we take it in stride.

On another day we are in a bad mood, life looks unbearably serious and difficult. We have a very little perspective. We take things personally and often misinterprit those around us, as we impute malignant motives into their actions. Life seems to be a challenge wherever we tend to look.

Here’s the catch: We don’t realize our moods are always on the run. Instead we think that our lifes have suddenly changed into bad during the past day or even the last hour.
When we are in a good mood in the morning we might love our partner, our job, and our car. We are optimistic about the future and feel happy and grateful about the past. But by late afternoon, if our mood might have changed in a bad way, we claim we hate our job, think of our partner as a nuisance, our car is a junker, and believe we are going nowhere in our careers. If we are asked about our childhood while we are in that mood, we probably talk about difficulties and challenges, might even blaime our parents for current plight.

These contrasts may seem absurd, even funny-but we’re all like that. In low moods we tend to loose our perspective and everything seems to be urgent. We completely forget that everythings seems to be so much better when we are in a good mood.

They are exactly the same circumstances we experience, where we work, the car we drive, the person we are married to, our potential, our childhood … .

The only thing which changed is our mood!

When we are low instead of blaming our mood as it would be appropriate we feel as if our whole life is wrong. It is almost like we believe that our lifes have fallen apart in the past hours.

The truth is, life is almost never as bad as we think it is while we are in a low mood. Rather than staying stuck in self-pity and a bad temper, convinced our way of looking at things is the only realistic one, we can learn to question our judgement. We can remind ourselves,“Of course I’m feeling bad, defensive, angry, frustrated, stressed, depressed or whatever; I’m in a bad mood. I always feel negative when I’m low.“

When we’re in such an ill mood, it is better to learn to pass it off as what it simply is, an unavoidable human condition that will pass with time, if we leave it alone.
A low mood is definitly not the right time for analysing our life. That’s emotional suicide. If we a problem it will still be there when our mood has brightened up and it looks easier to be solved.

The trick is to be grateful for our good moods and graceful for the low ones-not taking them too seriously. The next time you feel low, for whatever reason, remind yourself,

„This too will pass.“

It will, for sure.