Mood Maintenance: An Exercise in Mind Control

You are having an argument with your spouse, or your son or daughter, and things are getting heated. You can feel the anger taking hold. Then your phone rings—it's an important call you have been looking forward to from a friend. You take the call and you instantly find that your anger drops away and you adopt a new mindset. A few minutes into the phone conversation, your mood has changed completely, to the point where, when you get off the call, you have to actually work at getting angry again.

There are other examples of how external influences can change your mood in a moment. You can be feeling sad or anxious, for example, and then you see or read something that you just can't help laughing about and right away you feel better.

You Are in Control of Your Mood

This proves that we are able to change our emotional states quite quickly, and that is an amazing human quality. But what is important to note is that you don't have to wait for an outside distraction to do so—this ability is available to us any time, all the time. And that is useful knowledge to have.

For instance, how many times do we say (or have it pointed out to us) that we are just in a bad mood today? There may be valid reasons that trigger that mood—an issue at home, a road rage encounter on the way to work, a first patient of the day who is particularly difficult—but how long you hold on to that negative emotion is entirely up to you.

You can wait for an outside source to bring you out of it or you can recognize that you have control over your mental state and take a more direct route to emotional well being. You can choose to not nurture those negative impulses, to not let them grow into a mood that defines your day.

You will still feel moments of anger or frustration, of course—every human being does. But the important thing is that they are confined to just that: moments. I have made it a habit to stop when I find myself in that kind of emotional state and check myself. When I feel those negative emotions rising I tell myself that I am making this about me rather than the issue, and I make a concerted effort to get back to a rational, calm state of mind where I can address the matter with the all the wisdom and experience I have. I remind myself to put emotional impulses aside and to be intellectually pure with my response.

When you find yourself overcome with an unpleasant emotion, remind yourself that you are in control. Acknowledge the feeling, deal with the implications in a rational and reasonable way, and then move forward with a clear mind and a resolutely positive outlook.


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