In a Bad Mood? Get Over It!
I’ve had a bad week, and there’s a bad mood brooding within me that is just waiting to permeate my every move, my every encounter. Although the source of my mood is not something short-term or trivial that I can just move on from, like a speeding ticket or a run-in with some barista at my local coffeehouse, it doesn’t really matter what’s happened to put me in this place. When it comes to managing anger, there’s no reason or excuse that justifies any level of unleashing that emotion on to others.
I can’t exactly get rid of it, though, so I am using a few strategies to get me through while this mood works its way through my system. What’s important to remember is that these strategies help manage the mood, not remove it entirely.
Mood-Managing Strategy 1: Write It Out.
I’ve been doing a lot of story-writing these days, and so my daybook pages are filled more with character sketches, plot threads, and climaxes than with personal reflections and sort-it-outs. Yesterday, I put the plots on hold and returned to the old stand-by: The Brain Drain. I first learned about this strategy from Donald Murray in his classic book, Write To Learn. The strategy is both easy and immediately effective. In fact, when I conduct workshops with education and business leaders, they name this strategy as one of the most beneficial for their team members as well as for themselves.
The concept is simple. You spend anywhere from 3 to 5 minutes writing without thinking. Imagine a direct line from your brain to your pen, and you do everything in your power to capture your thoughts as you are thinking them. It’s impossible to do, of course, because we think faster than we write. What happens, though, is your thoughts (problems, stresses, emotions) pour onto the page in a jumbled mess. That’s where they remain, though, instead of in your mind. It’s the fastest way to clear your thoughts to allow you to regain focus on the present moment.
You don’t worry about writing in complete sentences or even coherent thoughts. There’s no time to worry about correct spelling, punctuation, or grammar. You just write.
I was teaching this concept long before Dumbledore started dumping his thoughts in his Pensieve in the Harry Potter series, but the idea is very similar. Take the 3 minutes to drain your brain of those cluttering stresses and emotions.
Mood-Managing Strategy 2: Avoid Projecting Your Anger On Others.
I have three children, with the youngest separated from the oldest by 8 years. Their demands and needs are unique, wonderful, challenging, not to mention exhausting. Even on a day when I’ve got a good balance running between the mind and the body, they can be a handful. This week, my bad mood has created some rather potential storms between us. Fortunately, I’ve been able to avoid the fights and the direct projection of my anger toward them.
How? By recognizing that they did nothing to me, and they should not be the recipient of my anger. By projecting my anger toward them, it teaches them that disrespecting others when we are not having a great day is perfectly justified. In other words, you are giving them license to justify the negative projection of their moods on to others. If this were an acceptable practice in our society, we’d all spend a lot more time arguing and feeling pretty bad about ourselves, thanks to the negativity that we would receive directly.
Mood-Managing Strategy 3: Let It Come; Let It Go
One of the reasons why we find ourselves riding emotional roller coasters is because we keep trying to “cheer ourselves up” with temporary fixes that don’t really address the emotion. Our bad moods cannot be healed with a shopping trip or a funny movie any more than a Band-Aid might make all the hurt and pain go away. If an emotion dwells within you, you need to recognize it, let it run its course, manage it along the way, and then let it go. You probably have something pretty important you need to work out in the process, so spend the necessary time to figure it out.
Mood-Managing Strategy 4: When It’s Time, Get Over It!
There’s a song by The Eagles that’s been running through my head these last few days. On the Hell Freezes Over CD, the first track is “Get Over It,” the first single released by the Eagles in 1994 when they ended a 14-year “vacation.”
The song is one of my favorites, simply because, like so many other Eagles classics from the 1970s, it asks you to take ownership of your own moods, abandon the excuses of the past, and embrace the present as the only thing that really matters. It does it in a way, though, that is much stronger than the message in “Peaceful, Easy Feeling” or even “Desperado.” It’s rough, it’s raw, it’s in your face.
This is what I needed this week. For this experience, I didn’t need to disappear in deep meditation or solitude; I needed that in-my-face coach telling me to not make a big deal about being in a bad mood, don’t blame anybody for it, recognize the emotion for what it is, and then get over it when ready.
Knowing that makes all the difference in the world. Anger, sadness, even sorrow are all emotions, just like happiness, excitement, and graciousness. We experience these emotions and many more every day of our lives; what’s most important is that we recognize them for what they are: temporary influences, both biochemical and environmental, that are in our control. We don’t need to project the harmful, hurting emotions, but we don’t need to admonish them either. Let them come, let them go. Be encouraged that you are in control, now and always
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