Don’t Trust Your Mood

Your Mood is Misleading

Have you ever noticed that when you are in a bad mood, everything else seems to become bleeker.  Having a bad day at work, for example, might start you thinking that you are unsatisfied in your relationship at home. And the paradoxic thing is that we tend to believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that these negative feeling, thoughts and ideas, are absolutely true.

Feelings are sneeky and deceptive, and can’t be trusted. They can trick you into thinking, feeling and behaving like your life is worse that it actually is in reality. When you are in a good mood, life is good. Things don’t seem too tough, problems are manageable and less formidable, communication is smooth, buffering you from any sense of criticism. But when you are feeling lousy, life and the entirety of your foreseeable future, sucks. Life seems unbearable and tough. In these times, we easily lose perspective, innocuous matters are super important and stressful, you might take things more personallity, misinterpretting other people words and intentions.

The catch is that folks don’t know that their feelings are on a run… like a run-away-train. Instead, we tend to believe with earnest, that these thoughts and feeling are the absolute truth. So you could start your day feeling great, loving your life, family, friends, work, and feeling optimistic about the future. Although, if there is a mood change throughout the day, for whatever reason, you begin feeling lousy about life, work, family, relationship etc.

And this can happen swiftly, sometimes in a very abrupt kind of way. When in a sour state of mind, perspective is lost and everything seems urgent, making you completely forget how great everything was feeling like when you were feeling better.  When we feel lousy, instead of attributing our negative outlook on the bad moods we really believe that life is falling apart.

The reality is that life is almost never as bad as it seems when you’re in a low or negative space. Trying to shake yourself out of this is difficult, but probably in your best interest to figure out how to do. Instead of staying stuck, convinced that life really does suck, slow down and remind yourself, “yeah, I’m in a bad mood, and I usually feel negative about things in general. This is not the best time to analyze my life”. To analyze your life when you are in a nasty and foul mood is emotional suicide.

How to Deal With a Bad Mood?

The skill is to learn how to remind yourself that this will pass. Being aware that your thoughts, feelings, ideas and perspectives are not trustworthy when you are in a bad mood state. So the next time you get thrown for a loop and into one if your negative moods, slowing down and reminding yourself that “this too shall pass”, not taking yourself too seriously during these times, and maybe even going a little easy on yourself is a good thing. It is a great thing if you are able to look at yourself in humourous sort of way, particularly when you are having a bad mood spell. Laughter is a remedy, but never forget, that when in a bad mood, it shall pass.