Has your bad Mood become your Habit?

Last week I told you in one of my diary entries that people asked whether Apra never had bad mood. In that time I also said how funny I found the idea that this was something that was necessary. A time period of each day should be dedicated to bad mood – a concept that I absolutely don’t share. I have however seen this kind of attitude in many people and mostly in the west. This makes me write today about the western idea that you need to have a bad mood at least from time to time.

First of all, let me introduce this concept to all those of you who are not familiar with it: You are fine in general and there are no major problems in your life. Your family is doing good, you are not ill and you have a job or enough money to nicely live your life the way you have been doing it for a while. So actually everything is fine and you should be happy. But wait, there it is, this thought, should you not have a bad mood sometimes, too? This is the point where people search for anything that they can be upset about. And then they are upset. You cannot do anything about it. They believe it is their right and duty to be grumpy now, to pull a face and to give a general impression of unhappiness.

They can take any reason for being in this mood, no matter how small and insignificant it is: the weather, a mosquito bite, a torn nail, a lost pen or a TV series that won’t be aired anymore. The ‘overall situation’ is also often named as the culprit. In reality however there is absolutely no reason. It is just the feeling that you need to be in a bad mood from time to time.

Unfortunately this behaviour easily becomes a habit and you see people taking time for this every single day and for longer and longer periods of time. It is like an addiction, something they ‘have to do’, which at some point they don’t even know anymore how to prevent or come out of! Suddenly, everything around them is bad. They are so decidedly negative that even things which they would usually appreciate as beautiful are ugly all of a sudden. With their mood they pollute the atmosphere and the mood of those around them.

There have been many attempts to explain this phenomenon. One guess is that they need this bad feeling to have a contrast to all the good that is happening around them – so that they can feel good about it later again.

This theory would mean that it is a problem that happens only to people who are too well to appreciate it. The solution would be just to think of people who don’t have it as good as you do and you would be fine. I am not so sure about this though. I believe it is rather a matter of general negativity that people get used to and then cannot get rid of anymore. They are just too used to this feeling.

Let me help you finding back to your good feeling. Meditation and being calm and balanced help of course. Exercise or yoga also helps. But what helps most is to realize what you are doing when this happens. You are spoiling your own mood! Not anybody else’s, your own! Maybe others get influenced by it but when it becomes a regular occurrence that you have a bad mood, they just get used to it! Think of how much nicer the time would be not only for others but for yourself if you were in a good mood instead!

Some people say that mood is not like a switch – but if you cannot change your own mood, who can? You are the one who can do it, so get out of that pitiful state that you are in and be happy!