A while ago, I wrote something about the power of realising what mood you are currently in, especially when you’re interacting with someone else.
Because there’s this annoying, somewhat destructive paradox that when we’re in a low mood—cross, fed up, taking things personally—it really, really looks like that’s the time to be making some changes.
After all, we can see what the problem is—it’s this situation, or this person!—so it would be negligent of us to just ignore that, wouldn’t it? We’re obliged to try and change it/them, surely? In order to make things better?
And of course, as you know from experience, lashing out, or ‘making rash decisions’ in the heat of the moment has a tendency to just make matters worse.
Why does this happen?
It’s another somewhat frustrating aspect of this being-human thing, that when we get hoodwinked by the outside-in illusion (i.e. the false belief that anything other than thought-in-the-moment could make us feel a particular way), we’re quite likely to get sucked even deeper into it.
It has a gravitational pull of its own.
We will never be able to think or reason our way out of a low mood… because we’re in a low mood!
A low mood—being cross, fed up, taking things personally—is simply a signal that we’ve become innocently attached to thought. The content of that thought doesn’t matter (I can recommend not digging around, to try and figure it out, because that’s another sure fire way to make it much worse!) – the mood is just telling us that this is what’s going on.
- Thought has solidified into something more true than it is…and we’ve not noticed
- Ego identity has become ‘real and true’… and it’s going unquestioned
- It looks like we’re under attack and we need to defend ourselves… when it’s just a mirage.
Which is why the key is to be aware of our feeling state—you can depend on feelings!—and step away when we need to. Give all that apparent solidity a chance to dissolve again.
We’ll see the situation with much more clarity, once it has.
As Linda & George Pransky put it in their excellent relationships book:
“Arguments can be tricky because they can feel constructive, like you’re working through a difficult situation or solving an issue. But, when you feel your intensity rising and feel compelled to make your point, or get the last word in, this is a built-in warning system, that you need to do the opposite, stop, and take a break from the conversation.”
The good news is that as soon as you spot this happening, you’re already on your way out of it.
🚀
Giles
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Giles P Croft