In our quest to find happiness we often feel that we can achieve it by fulfilling our most immediate desires. The reason for this is that in fulfilling our desires we gain immediate pleasure, and we associate pleasure with happiness.
In reality all we are doing is temporarily altering our moods because we associate good moods with pleasure. The problem is that can be an expensive habit in terms of time or money depending on how we each seek our own pleasures in life.
Breaking a bad mood in this way is not a bad thing in itself, but as many a self help book will confirm, it probably won’t lead to lasting happiness. If you want to learn how to be happy you need to get to the root cause — the moods themselves.
Moods are triggered by our environment, the events in our life, and very importantly, the way we choose to think.
The way we think develops over years and becomes ingrained, so our reactions to events can become automatic. Quite often we don’t even have to think about an event for it to trigger a mood, our internal programming triggers the mood unconsciously.
The point is, we want to consciously intervene in the process so that we are better able to control our moods.
The best way to start is to try and get a sense of how and why our moods occur and what triggers them and to do this it useful to keep a mood diary.
Over the course of the day note down the situations that triggered your moods. Record the thoughts that you were having around the time of the mood change, and immediately afterwards.
Where you identify negative thoughts it’s important to address them as soon as you can. Try to identify the source of the negativity. It’s possible that the source is something out of your control, and if this is the case you need to work to change the way you think about that situation. It stands to reason, that we shouldn’t worry about things we can’t do anything about.
If there is something that you can influence or change then try to do so in a positive way. See yourself as being in control of the way you react rather than being a victim of your circumstances.
The use of a mood diary can have a very immediate and dramatic effect, but it’s likely that it will take some time to work through some of the issues. It’s not a solution but it is a good positive starting point if you want to change the way you think and the way you feel, and ultimately learn how to be happy. It will cost you nothing to try it and the benefits you stand to gain will far outweigh the effort.
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