I will teach you how to improve your mood instantly with no adverse side effects. It doesn’t matter what’s wrong, it will lighten your mood instantly, and with barely any effort. For whatever it’s worth, it’s also scientifically proven.
And I’m also going to give you permission not to do it. Because I run into people who erroneously thing that you must be happy all the time, or you are not showing proper gratefulness, or you’re attracting negativity or something. This is bullshit. Emotions are information. They grant insight into your state of mind underneath the conscious level.
You ever have one of those days where you have a bit of a head ache, the minor irritations seem to be piling up, and you have to be around people, none of whom are doing anything for which you have the right to bite their heads off, but you still want them to shut the hell up and go away anyway?
Those are the times this technique is made for.
Ok, grab a writing utensil. Brace the end of the pencil between your teeth so it sticks straight out of your face like Pinocchio’s nose. Your teeth are probably bared at this point. If not, raised your cheek-bones and bare your teeth so that the ends of your lips are as close to your ears as possible. Maintain for at least 20 seconds. You’ll likely notice a warm flush of endorphins in your brain. Repeat as needed.
You may have caught on to the fact that you are, in fact, reproducing a smile. (This is how psychologists get around telling you to smile, which is like cheating in a psychological study.) And smiling, even faking a smile, makes us feel better.
Congratulations. You now have the ability to miraculously improve your mood anytime you want.
Which means you will have to come to terms with not wanting to be in a good mood all the time. Sometimes you want to be angry, irritated, or resentful. This is normal, and is just a way of making space to validate those feelings.
Like I said, emotions are just information, and noticing that you just don’t want to let go of being pissed off will force you to ask why you don’t want to give that up. For instance, I know a woman whose partner believes than as soon as her mood improves after a fight, it means the fight is over and he’s forgiven. So although she doesn’t want to remain angry for several days, she feels she has to in order for him “to learn the lesson” and because he the minimizes whatever contributed to the fight, reasoning that if she got over it easily, it couldn’t have been that egregious.
So there are any number of reasons why you might need to “feel your feelings” (apologies for the unbearably trite phrase) and knowing that you could hypothetically “cure” them at any time begs the question of whether they can in fact be cured, or if they need to dealt with and addressed as full-blown issues, worthy of full discussion and examination.
[ssbp]
