Knowing what alters our moods

(This logo is from a jazz ensemble in Seattle. Love it. Love the logo. Love the fact that they're all female. Swing, girls.)

There is actually almost too much to say about this topic, but like Alice when talking to the King and Queen of Hearts, we should "begin at the beginning..."

We tend to think of mood as that general feeling caused by our emotions. Our emotions, in turn, are the coloring of our internal responses to both external stimulation and other internal thoughts. (By the way, this is all my conjecture. I'm not a psychology expert in any way.)

Moods, when we notice them, are usually graded as either good, bad, indifferent, or restless. As a matter of fact, that seems like a good structure for mood evaluation. We'll use good/bad as the x-axis and calm/agitated on the y-axis.

All of the feelings in the top two quandrants we would say are positive and good. This is the way we'd prefer to feel if we had a choice.

The stuff below the horizontal axis is stuff that we don't particularly want to feel.

There is an entire self-help industry and medical profession built around avoiding the bad feelings and having the good feelings.

In the self-improvement world, there is a tendency to put our power to choose how we feel to the forefront. How we choose to respond to external stimuli determines whether we are above or below the line. The medical profession would likely say that while you do have the power to choose, those responsorial choices can be limited by your physiology. Diet, exercise, and perhaps a prescription can help in that regard. Those that object to drug therapy usually point to the "artificiality" of the mood created and the tendency for it to inhibit creative, energetic action.

Again, I'm clearly not an MD or PhD in psychology or even a student of self-improvement books (I've not read Seligman or Buscaglia or Robbins, though I did read Covey years ago.) I'm just trying to make sense of my moods and why they change and why it seems like that even though I am completely aware of them, I sometimes still lose control over them.

Why do certain images make me sad? (I remember watching Gabriele Andersen-Schiess finishing the marathon at the LA Games in 1984 and bursting into tears at her suffering as millions of people watched. I thought she was going to die while we all cheered her on.) Why do so-called "pet peeves" really cause a genuine flare of anger? (I hate dropping food.) Where does intense envy that I feel come from?

We all have these types of questions we can ask about ourselves. Sometimes the answers seem to come from our choices, yet other times they do seem to be related to something physical.

Illness can make us irritable or depressed. Lack of sleep is a big cause of easy anger for me. Hunger causes me to become listless and can look like depression. Overeating can do the same thing.

I think the first step in controlling the moods and moving them to the positive side of the diagram is to understand the triggers for bad moods and take steps to avoid them. Those steps are roughly the same as the Secrets to Happiness that I so tongue-in-cheekily list over on the right. I do take them seriously, though.

However, even if we follow all of them perfectly, we're still not going to avoid moods that are below the line. No one is saying that we should smile through a funeral or laugh about being a victim of a crime. Rather, we need to accept that "bad" feelings serve a purpose. They're telling us that something is wrong in our lives. Our responses should be about righting the wrong or accepting the loss, not artificially changing our mood.

I realize that this post seems to be rambling and directionless, at least it feels that way to me, but I've been trying to deal with the fact that there are times when it seems that I am not quite the emotional pilot I could be. I think that's why I'm writing this blog. I want to better understand how to steer (and where to navigate) while I'm on this journey.

If answers were easy, we'd all be super happy. I say if answers are easy, we're probably not asking the right questions. There are no cookie-cutter solutions. Unlike what Tolstoy says about families at the beginning of Anna Karenina, individuals are happy in their own way. I'm trying to figure out my way. I'd like you to contemplate yours and feel free to share it. There are no right and wrong answers, just different levels of effectiveness.