RAISE YOUR MOOD

1. Respond to good news enthusiastically. It's called "capitalizing." If your spouse tells you some good news, how do you respond? Four possible ways to respond are: 1) enthusiastically, 2) negatively, 3) positively but subdued, or 4) uninterested. Studies show when you respond enthusiastically, it makes a big difference in how satisfied your spouse is in your marriage, how committed s/he is, and how in love s/he is with you.


2.Look at personal photos. Listening to music and eating chocolate didn't really change experimental subjects' moods very much. Alcohol and TV each gave people a 1% rise in their happiness score. But the clear winner was looking at personal photos. It gave people, on average, an 11% rise in their mood.


3.Experiment with your posture. Someone who feels down tends to slump. Someone who is happy tends to sit up straighter, walk more upright with the head held up, looking ahead instead of down. If you have been paying attention, you know this already. Posture tends to be a reflection of mood.


4. Compare your situation to something worse. Think of something you are unhappy about. Now notice that the reason it makes you unhappy is that you are comparing your situation to something better. You're comparing your situation to something more ideal. Whatever you are unhappy about, you can easily find a worse situation to compare it to. And from that perspective, you are lucky to have the problem you have, even though it is obviously not ideal.


5.Pretend the universe is in a conspiracy to make you happy. When something bad happens, pretend the universe is in a conspiracy to make you happy and it gave you this bad thing as the perfect way for you to learn something — a lesson that will ultimately make you happy. This way of reframing a setback will improve your mood in the moment, and will raise your mood in the long run.


6.Think of something you're grateful for. It is surprisingly easy to think of something you're grateful for. It only takes a few moments. And as soon as you think of something, you feel noticeably better.


7. Take some time and sit still quietly. Simply sitting and thinking can raise your mood consistently. All you have to do is sit still without doing anything. When you sit still, after about fifteen minutes, your mind seems to go into a defrag mode. Unresolved issues bubble up and get resolved.


8. Do some exercise. Exercise beats depression, but even if you're not depressed, a little exercise usually raises your mood. It's an all-purpose mood-raiser that just about anyone can use.


9.Get a little done on a purpose you care about. Think of one small goal you really want. And it's really important you think of something you want. For real enjoyment, you need: 1) something you want to accomplish, that 2) you enjoy accomplishing. Do a little of your joyful purpose today.


10. Reframe a circumstance that makes you feel bad. "Reframing" means interpreting the situation differently. When something happens, you interpret it a certain way, and your mind usually does it automatically. The situation just seems a certain way to you, and you have feelings appropriate to the way you look at it. – Adam Khan

NEGATIVE FEELINGS

There are the three faces of negative feelings: Worry, anger, depression. Most negative feelings you ever feel are a shade of anxiety, anger, or sadness. You know these feelings are unpleasant. You know they aren’t good for your health. But what can you do to minimize the amount of time you feel them?

First, of course, is to look at the situation causing the negative feelings. If there is a concrete circumstance, a real problem causing the feeling, give it some good hard thought and then do something about it, if you can. But if there’s nothing you can do about it, get involved in something that engages your mind and forget about it. Don’t try to stop thinking negatively. Simply try to get absorbed in doing something constructive.

Purposeful activities occupy mind-space, and the more the task engages or takes up your attention, the more mind-space it occupies. Get involved enough in something or do something absorbing enough, and there’s no more mind-space left to think about anything else. What continues a negative emotion is thinking about it.

Just as you can distract a crying child and he will forget his skinned knee, you can distract yourself with something so interesting or challenging or important, your mind will stop thinking about the problem, and your negative feelings — now that you’re no longer producing them with your thoughts — will dissipate. - Adam Khan