Creating unnecessary psychological fuel

👿 MOOD TRUMPING: Enhancing wellbeing by choosing activities that provide the psychological experience of meaning

My mentor once told me that all people have mental disturbances, because the human condition is a mentally disturbing experience.

He’s not wrong. That’s the harsh reality of the existential nightmare we call life.

But his insight still doesn’t solve the emotional problem. When those disturbing or even destructive thoughts come crashing in on our minds, we can feel scared and shameful for having them, and powerless stop or control them.

And so, we have to figure out how to talk ourselves down from that ledge and get things moving in the right direction.

One of the psychologists whose work has had a profound impact of my growth suggests that people rethink their relationship to moods. Maisel writes in a psychology publication that we accomplish this by learning how to lead with our life purposes and by making the decision that our life purposes are going to trump our moods.

How we intend to live our life is more important to us than some transitory mood, he says, even a deeply entrenched one like chronic sadness.

Taking a page from the doctor’s playbook, my strategic question when a particular mood arises is asking myself:

What meaning would trump this mood? What existentially nourishing activity or task, that is guaranteed to provide me with the psychological experience of meaning, would enhance my wellbeing right now?

This pivoting strategy doesn’t give me permission to deny, avoid, repress or my feelings. That’s important too.

But the key is not what we feel, but how long we feel what we feel. Our goal is learning to not get swayed by the emotion of the moment. Not letting mood dictate our experience.

Adams, in his bestselling book about training your brain, comments that his childhood was horrific. And although the past doesn’t exist anywhere except in hid memories, that was still enough to ruin his present happiness.

And so, he learned, that he could control those destructive thoughts by crowding them out with work, intellectual pursuits, and other distractions. Over time, the memories faded from lack of attention, and now he doesn’t consider them to have any impact on his current happiness.

How do you crowd out unhelpful thoughts? What positive action could you take rather than creating unnecessary psychological fuel around your bad mood?

My answer is almost always meaning. Instead of waiting to feel good to do what brings me joy and satisfaction, I just start doing those things. And good feelings almost always follow.

There’s no guarantee it will work, but it’s certainly better than wallowing in my own shit, and then beating myself up about the smell.

Look, mood is a construct. It’s a story we elected to tell ourselves. When we’re in a mood, say, grumpy, morbid, upset or stressed, our default instinct is to assume that this mood has been determined outside of our conscious awareness.

It came from some cosmic force beyond our control organized the world in a this fashion and colored our emotions in a certain way.

But there is no one or no thing to blame. It's us. It's where we place our attention and intention.

It's creation, in the sense that we’re bringing this mood into existence.

Let us not impoverish ourselves further.

Meaning trumps mood, every time.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Have you gotten into the habit of taking the temperature of your mood too often?