CONTROL YOUR MOOD

How to Change Your Mood 

You can use mindfulness and meditation practice to change how you feel -- mood change. Your mood itself will change your mood. Nothing added. 

A good way to start with this, is to wait until you feel you need a change. "I must...", "I ought to...", "It's time I...". Of course there are scheduled events everybody has to attend to during the day. But maybe what's really happening is not that you must do the new thing, it's that you are fed up, bored or depressed in your present situation. 

This may be one of the reasons you started with drugs or alcohol in the first place. You felt better on drugs. It's nice. You don't have to feel stressed out, upset or angry. After a while it felt normal. 

To do this exercise, notice when you are in need of a change. Give yourself five more minutes with what needs changing, and during that time notice EXACTLY how things are. Start with the basic reason you think you should have a change. Let's say you're sitting next to someone who's talking complete rubbish. It's totally opposed to everything you know to be true. You'd like to either straighten them out, or leave. They're unbearable! 

So give yourself five minutes to bear the unbearable. (Or as long as you can! You'll get better at this.) Start with your body and see how it feels. Check where the discomfort is. Some particular part will be carrying the strain, where is it? Breathe into that part. Next check and name your emotion. Are you just bored? Or would it be better to call it anger? Depression? Use the right word to yourself. Say "I'm depressed", or whatever. Gather up every scrap of depression you can bear. Thoroughly immerse yourself in how you are -- after all it's only for a couple of minutes. 

When your five minutes are up you'll find your mood has shifted slightly, maybe quite a bit. But don't try to hold on longer than you feel comfortable. Do your five minutes with the unbearable and then make the change you want to make. But as you persist with this exercise you'll find you have a little more ease. You are no longer as angry as you were, or at least you can calm down more quickly. Or your tolerance for the idiots on the road is better. Around the unbearable things in your life you develop a sense of humour, an ability to cope and make the best of difficult situations. 

Moving on through the years of meditation practice you'll be able to come back to your moods more often, your constantly changing moods: now depressed, now amused, now excited, now angry. Always changing. It's a dance. It's like having spent all your life hopping on your right foot only, never knowing that your left foot existed or you could move the weight. Suddenly you've got another way to move -- you are no longer stuck with a one-legged hop!