Secrets to Happiness: Secret #12

(Image from 3datelier.com)

Well, the not-so-secret Secret #11 was all about taking a nonjudgmental evaluation of your feelings or mood. Good or bad, we are supposed to take time out from our day--minute or seconds--and honestly name our feelings.

Example: I am feeling restless, bored, yet oddly energetic and optimistic.

So, now that we've given words to our emotions, we're ready for the next secret:

Analyze your mood

That is, ask yourself why you are feeling the way you are feeling. Once again, you'll need to put on your observer hat. You'll need to be tough and open and honest and non-judgmental with yourself.

Now, if you're feeling good, this probably isn't a big deal. Say you had a great lunch conversation where everyone was laughing and having a fun time...you're sitting there feeling happy and relaxed. Could it be because you enjoyed your lunch time? You have super friends. You felt at ease with them and all that laughing seem to dissipate your stress. Easy analysis there.

(If you said you were happy because some self-serving jerk got his comeuppance, then, while you might feel pretty good, you probably should do some serious thinking on why you do.)

When we feel sad, angry, lonely, or stressed, that's a different story. Here is an opportunity to learn a little about ourselves. The tough part here is determining the actual cause of your feelings from the possible perceived causes.

For example, if our pet rat had died this week, Monica would be justifiably sad. We all would be. That's natural and it wouldn't take much to figure it out. But what if Monica were sad because a friend hung up on her while they were talking on the phone? What if she felt anger at her friend for such rude behavior?

But what if it was a case of just being disconnected? Maybe the battery died on her friend's phone. Maybe the friend's parent hung up the phone because they had told her to hang up earlier. Why would we jump to the conclusion that rude behavior occurred if there didn't seem to be a reason for it?

Another example: What if you're stressed because you promised to have some work done by a certain time and it looks like that won't happen? You don't want to be a failure. You don't want people to think poorly of you. You're so stupid. You could've stayed late the last two nights to make sure this was completed. You could have foreseen the delays. You know you're boss will be upset. You might not get a good review and a decent raise. This failure is going to haunt you for a long time. Why did you promise it would be done by that time?

Ahem...your stress, in this case, is probably all generated in your head. Unless people are losing there jobs regularly over this sort of event, you're blowing this way out of proportion and you're unduly beating yourself up over it. If people are losing their jobs because of this sort of thing, then you might think about a new place to work anyway. Doesn't sound healthy.

If you analyze your mood, you'll discover that you are probably dreading accepting the responsibility for the delay. You're fearing that you won't be understood when you explain the delay and your plan to complete the work. You're assuming that you will be judged solely on this one incident and that it will override all consideration for all of the great work you do. In other words, you really are being pretty foolish, only about how you are perceiving the situation and how you are letting it affect your mood.

It's tough to sort through our negative emotions and figure out why we are having them. I found a site that provides a list of the top ten "thought distortions" that will help you see if the problem is with how you're thinking versus what actually happened.

I have irrational moods every day when I see my subscriber list either dwindle or remain static. Thanks to those that are current subscribers. Please consider subscribing to the Happiness Notebook. It's free and it'll make irrationally happy.

Secrets to Happiness: Secret #11

This secret is part of a duo. We really need the other secret to make it most effective, but it will still work pretty well on its own.

Identify your emotions

This is tough for most people, myself included, especially if you haven't made a habit of doing it.

Don't run out and buy any "mood" jewelry. Those are just fancy thermometers. In the summer you are likely to be "happy" or "relaxed" while in winter (if you live in a cold climate) you'll be "tense" or in some nervous negative mood.

To do this right, you're going to have to step back from yourself and be the scientific, dispassionate observer, the clinician. When you are in the middle of an intense feeling, like anger, frustration, elation, and such, you probably aren't thinking about identifying your mood. That's fine for now.

Let's try this instead. For the next few days, identify your emotions at the following times: when you wake up, during lunch, at 5 p.m., and before you go to bed. Do NOT attempt to figure out the reason for your mood. Don't blame anything good or bad at this point. Just give your emotion or mood a name.

It's like developing a vocabulary for identifying flavors. Not too easy at first.

How does this help with happiness? Well, the purpose of happiness is to enjoy life, to live life. I believe that too truly deeply enjoy something you have to be able to put into words how you sense it. Emotions are the indicators of the harmonics of life and us.

I did say that at least one other secret is necessary for this one to be even more valuable. We'll get to that today or tomorrow. The important thing for now is to step back, take a different perspective--pretend you are observing yourself from a secret observation spot--and honestly name your feelings.

Here are a couple that are tough to name, because we don't want to feel bad about ourselves:

1) envy - which I think is the worst of the seven deadly sins, yet I struggle with this emotion a lot. I don't want to feel envy, but I do. Identifying it when I do, takes away much of its power and gives me a chance to honestly examine myself (but now I'm hinting at the next secret...)

2) humble - it would be easy to say "pride" here, but I think recognizing when we are feeling humble is tough for a couple of reasons. First, the act of calling one's mood "humble" feels like an act of pride. Remember, be dispassionate. You are merely stating an observational fact. Second, we usually are able to identify "humble" when we have suffered some injury to our pride. I would argue that we aren't feeling "humble" at that point. That is probably "embarrassed" more than anything. They are two separate feelings.

So, after you read this, try it on yourself immediately and post your observation in the comments.

For example, I am feeling apprehensive, mildly frustrated, and a small amount of dread right now. That will change immediately after I post this to a mood concerning preparing for work, that I can't identify yet (because I am not feeling it yet.)

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