6 Easy Ways to Shift Your Mood: Techniques to Help You Feel Better Today
Vanessa Million: Changing a Million of Lives One Relationship at a Time
“Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
6 Easy Ways to Shift Your Mood: Techniques to Help You Feel Better Today
Sad, anxious, or in emotional pain. Its healthy to feel our feelings and not run away from them, yet wallowing in them is unhealthy. Its important to feel our feelings and express them, it’s also healthy—and important—to not overwhelm ourselves, to not get so stuck in painful emotions that overwhelm us, and learn to give ourselves a break.
Sometimes, when we’re feeling awful, we need to be able to shift our mood. With practice this is something we can all do. It’s not something most of us are ever taught. Its similar to daily going to the gym to build our bodies instead we are going to choose to build our emtoions and our mind.
Action steps:
The following are some techniques we can utilize to shift our emotional state to a lighter or happier one:
1)Do something physical that requires concentration. Try balancing yourself on one leg, with your arms held high above your head. If this is easy to do, try a position that is harder for you to balance in, such as holding one leg straight out in front of you, or another pose altogether. Doing something physical that requires your concentration can help to shift your thoughts and mood.
2)Go for a walk, and temporarily change your environment. If you’re inside, go outside. If you’re outside, go inside or somewhere else outside. Consider going someplace you’ve never or rarely visited. Wherever you go, pay attention to your surroundings; notice the little details around you. Sometimes changing your environment can help. This is especially helpful if where you are is where you often feel badly.
3)Close your eyes and think of a person or of people who love you. Try to see their faces clearly in your mind, their eyes smiling at you with love. Try to feel that love, and remind yourself that that person/people care about you, and that you are loved. Try to do this for more than 30 seconds at a time.
4)Find a way to laugh—jokes, movies or tv, funny books, playing with your pets and watching their silly antics, being silly with a friend. Laughter is an effective way of changing your mood, and can help your body as well as your emotional state.
5)Reframe your thoughts. Our thoughts can have a powerful affect on your emotions—especially negative thoughts. Try to notice the thoughts you’ve been thinking lately. How many of them are negative? If it helps, write out what you’ve been thinking, so you can really see for yourself what’s been in your mind. Then try to change or reframe those thoughts to more positive phrases—even if you don’t believe them.
If you have thoughts like “I’ll never,” “I can’t,” “I don’t want,” “I should/shouldn’t,” try to change them into something more hopeful or positive, such as “I can,” “I want,” “It’s good that I,” etc. Negative thinking also includes self-criticism and self-hate. If you find yourself putting yourself down, gently stop yourself, then give yourself a true compliment or praise, even if you don’t believe it.
Just changing the way you think can help change how you feel.
6)Change your body posture and breathing. Your body store emotions, and your body also often show how you feel—you might slump when you feel depressed or tired; curl inward or protect your abdomen/stomach when you’re feeling vulnerable; tighten your hands, jaw, shoulders, or neck when you’re feeling angry; breathe shallowly when you’re afraid.
Try consciously changing your body posture and breathing to reflect how you want to feel. Close your eyes, remember a time when you felt happy or confident, and try to move your body into that position. Or watch how other people look when they are confident or happy, and try to mimic their body postures.
When we consciously work to change our mood we can choose to feel better. Even a small shift in our mood will bring relief, or make it easier to laugh or have fun. It feels good to know that we have choices- these techniques are powerful tools that we can use to help. They give us power to help us change how we feel when you want to.
I hope you found these this article helpful. I love hearing from you and look forward to working with you. Please feel free to contact me for consotation.
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Love your coach,
Vanessa Million
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