That title got your attention, didn't it?
If I asked for a show of hands from anyone who experiences (and doesn't really like) low moods, then I think I'd probably get a 100% hit rate.
It's a universal thing.
(In fact, I can still remember the bit of local footpath where I had the realisation that ‘moods’—or ‘level of consciousness’—is pretty much all we ever experience, moment to moment, as humans! 😮)
And the trick to getting the low ones to move on is attached to almost every Daily Reminder, albeit in a somewhat hidden fashion.
You see, after I’ve written a Daily Reminder I then have to tag each one, for search purposes, and to keep the Topics Page up to date.
(Incidentally, Search 🔍 at the top of the site is really good – have you tried it yet? It’s super-powered, quite clever and picks up everything.)
Tagging topics
Anyway, when adding tags, I scan down a long list of potentials (at the time of writing, there are 77, and that’s why it takes so damn long! 🥴) and choose whichever seem appropriate to this particular story.
There’s a main, or Primary tag that appears in the descriptive cards you see on the website—these are obvious—but then there are many others attached to each post that will help them to surface when you search for that word, or something similar.
And for the last few months there are two tags that it’s felt appropriate to add to pretty much every Daily Reminder I’ve published; something that I see more deeply as time goes by, as being fundamental to living a life of ease and grace.
(And getting low moods to move on.)
Can you guess what they are?
(I’ll give you a moment to quiz yourself – what do you think are the two keys to this being-human malarkey?)
🤔💭
Two tags for the ages
Ok, I’ll put you out of your misery. The first of the two tags that are currently shooting up the Daily Reminders charts, is:
Because this is the gift that you’ve been given, in navigating your way through this thing we’ve labelled as ‘life’: attention. Awareness.
(In fact, it’s pretty much the only tool we’ve been given!)
You can either sleep-walk your way through life, just reacting to stuff that comes along, with your conditioned mind—the Reader Ego Construct 📦—calling all the shots.
Or you can be awake to your felt state in any given moment and recognise what’s actually going on.
Which brings me to the second tag that currently tops the charts of specific, descriptive titles (with 203 posts!):
That’s it. You wake up to the dream; to the fact that whatever you’re experiencing is real, and not true.
You come to recognise that what you're experiencing is not actually ‘the way it is’, it’s a temporary thought-construct; a reflection of your current state of consciousness, and nothing more. It can—and it will!—change.
(Which is how low moods move on.)
Client wins
And so it was with a client of mine, who's in tune with these two staples. They turned up to a session in a buoyant enough mood, to report:
“I was in a bit of a bad mood last week. But I recognised it. Figured it would probably pass. And it did.”
- Attention to the felt state.
- Recognition of its nature – a temporary thought construct.
And get on with life.
In a way, what's of note is the things they didn't do, for example:
- Take it seriously
- Read all sorts of meaning into it
- Believe the mind's myriad ‘reasons’ for why-I'm-in-a-bad-mood
- Take any of those ‘reasons’ and try and fix them from within the bad mood
- Get really hacked off about being in a bad mood and try to will it away.
Nope, they “figured it would probably pass” …
And it did.
Resilience in action
It's not very exciting, is it?
But that's the beauty of the human operating system: you've got a built in, self-calibrating, mental immune system that doesn't require your input.
In fact, the less you tinker—the less you care—the quicker those low moods will move on.
See for yourself.
💝
Giles
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Related
Given their omnipresence, there are also a lot of posts tagged with “Moods”