Ruining your bad mood

Notice: I did not invent this technique. As far as I can tell, Dr. Robert Anthony did. I'm just publicizing his very useful trick.


The idea here is throttling a bad mood before it has the chance to affect you. It's filling your mind with positive thoughts at the very moment it is dying to wallow in negative thoughts. This doesn't kill your bad mood with kindness - but it does knock it over the head and ensure that it comes back a little less powerful.

If you're a member of the human race, you are likely confronted with endless opportunities for lapsing into horrible moods. Traffic sucks. Your boss said something mean. You got a bad grade.

Maybe somebody looked at you cock-eyed, and you're dying to serve them up a knuckle sandwich. Actually, if that last one is bothering you, you can also add to the list: the disastrous effects of Hoover-nomics; the Great Depression; the rise of Hitler.

Luckily, this technique works for people stuck in the 1930's and living today. It's simple: the second you start to get mad, sad, depressed, indignant, whatever - STOP. Your mind will try to tell you that you can't stop, shouldn't stop, that it's natural - that somehow, wallowing in these negative feelings will make your life better. Don't believe it. STOP.

Recognize your bad mood, STOP it cold, and then spent the next 15-20 seconds immersing yourself in happy thoughts. Take yourself a million miles away from the bad situation. Ignore it, even if you could swear it's REALITY and to walk away would mean ignoring REALITY. The only true reality is what you are thinking, and for 15-20 seconds, you need to change what you are thinking.

Think about someone you love. Think about eating a big slice of pizza. SMILE against your will. Have a mental script ready, and even if you mentally recite it in your dullest voice, it will take you away from your involuntary negative emotions.

Force these thoughts for less than half a minute. Ignore the temptation to focus on your negative circumstances. It will seem unnatural, it will be tough, but do it. It does get easier each time.

When you come back, the traffic will still suck, your bad grade will still be there, and Franklin Roosevelt still won't be President for another year or so. This I admit.

The difference, the huge difference, is that things won't seem nearly as bad. At best, they will no longer have the power to cause a Pavlovian negative response in you.

Getting mad or feeling self-pity or focusing on the worst things in your life - these are easy patterns to fall into. It's likely that we've been falling into them since birth.

However, if you learn to break the pattern, you will convince your mind that you are in charge of your reactions. Eventually, it will stop trying to lead you down these momentarily comforting, but ultimately destructive emotional paths.

At first, it might take a while to recognize that you're slipping into a bad mood. The more you do this, the more conscious you will become. The goal of all this is to recognize the mood as soon as it comes and absolutely refuse to sink into it.

It's important to me to stay in a good mood for most of my waking hours. Running from depression will do that for you. Therefore, I do this EVERY time I start to feel something negative.

You honestly might not want to do this as often as I do. A lot of great thoughts and art have come from negative emotions. I'm still not convinced that they should be banished from the face of the earth, although I'll settle for banishing them from my own mind.

The important thing is that you don't allow these negative emotions to CONTROL you. Allow them once in a while if you must, but do it on your own terms.

So many people I know swim in their bad moods - they revel in their negative circumstances - they wear their hurt and anger and sadness on their sleeves. You can be better than that.

Just change your focus for a few seconds in the heat of the moment. Smile and think positive thoughts. It won't change your circumstances, but you'll probably realize the heat wasn't worth ruining your mood over.

Let me know if this helps.