If you want to get the most out of yourself and your life, then it is crucial that you learn to control your mood. Your mood will affect your ability to focus, your enjoyment of any and all activities and so much more.
But of course, controlling your emotions is easier said than done. This is something we would all like to do no doubt, but if it were that easy then we would all be happy all the time!
There is a secret to doing this though that many people miss. And while it may be impossible to guarantee that you’ll ever have complete control over the way you feel, it can sure make a big difference and help to give you a lot more control.
How Your Body Affects Your Mood
The missing key that so many people overlook is physiology. In other words, your body and your physical state.
What are our emotions for? They’re to drive us toward desirable things and to keep us away from things that could potentially harm us. When we feel scared, this motivates us to seek a safer shelter. When we feel disgusted, this prevents us from wanting to eat gone off food.
At a deeper level though, being hungry also impacts on your emotions and motivates behavior. When you are hungry, you will usually have low blood sugar. This in turn releases cortisol the stress hormone, along with ghrelin. This is why we get hangry! Conversely, when you eat, you produce serotonin which puts you in a good mood. This then converts to melatonin and makes us sleepy.
Being ill causes inflammation through pro-inflammatory cytokines and these suppress activity in the brain, creating brain fog and depression.
Feelings and emotions are different. You feel hungry, you feel tired and you feel ill. But these create emotions such as stress, anger and sadness.
The Takeaway
So, what are we getting at here? What is the practical takeaway from all this advice?
The moral is that it isn’t all about your thoughts and your lifestyle. If you’re angry or if you’re sad then it may not be due to you having a bad day – you may just be hungry or ill!
Then there’s the fact that our hormones tend to change on a cycle. Keep all this in mind when you are trying to manage your mood and make sure that you set yourself up with the best possible chance of a happy, positive day!
Two Transformative Tips to Change Your Mood
People have a range of different dreams and goals. This is one of the best things about people in fact. We’re all different and we all have different aspirations – different goals to share with one another and different things to talk about.
The unhappiest people? They’re the ones with no goals. No direction. No motivation. A goal gives you a vision, it gives you drive and it makes every day seem like a positive step to an end destination that is truly important to you.
But while goals are intrinsically rewarding, problems do arise when we don’t know how to pursue them. Having a goal that seems completely out of grasp and making no progress whatsoever is disheartening.
In this post, we’ll look at some of the things you can do to help yourself reach your goals faster. Whether you want to write an amazing book, set up a business or do anything else; these are two tips that will apply in every situation and that you might not have heard before.
Tip 1: You Have to Believe
This might sound like cheesy bumper-plate-sticker-advice, but it is very true. At the end of the day, you need to have absolute faith that the plan you have to get your book published or to become famous is actually going to work. Why? Because otherwise you risk putting in all the time and effort for nothing!
Think about it: have you ever struggled to stay motivated to get into work? No! The reason for that is because you know that going to work means getting paid. This is 100% guaranteed.
But you may have struggled to stick to a training program and part of the reason for that is that you know it might not yield results. So whatever plan you come up with, make sure you believe it!
Tip 2: You Have to Take it Slowly
The other problem is wanting results right now and ending up burning yourself out too quickly. Want to write the next best-selling novel? The way to do that is not in one or two sittings! You need to take your time, to work steadily and to be considered in the way you approach this goal. The best option is to plan to write one or two chapters every day. Look up the word ‘Kaizen’ for more on why this works so well!