Finding the right mood

Fig 7 The illustrated MoodMap

MoodMapping is a navigation system for your mind. It helps you go from one mental state to another. This system works, it has been tried and tested over many years. The worst criticism it has faced is being called ‘Mental Pilates’ and that when you are tired and depressed, it is hard to do those very things that will help change your mood. I still use it. It comes from my personal experience of wanting to change the way I felt. Over the years, I have done numerous courses, including Tony Robbins, Chet Holmes, Transcendental Meditation, Yes group – which I chaired for a while. I have a BA and MSc in Psychology as well as enough soft skill medical courses to stop my patients complaining, ran training for the Doctors’ Support Line. All of which and more come together in MoodMapping.

Moods vary and they need to be variable. Someone with a rock solid unchanging mood may have great focus and unyielding concentration, but not be much fun at a party.  We need different moods for different times, it is OK to feel sad when someone dies. I was sad for more ten years when Adrian, my best friend for twenty-five years died suddenly. Not constantly sad, but I sufficiently sad to miss him almost every day. This does not mean I can’t be happy but that I loved him.

Different activities require different moods, quiet concentration, action sports, while there is nothing like the stress of an important deadline to get us going in the morning and keeping us going into the wee small hours! And from time to time, staring into the abyss of failure helps re_focus quieten the mind and move forward in a different and hopefully more successful direction. The danger is being stuck in a mood too long and letting or seeing it spiral out of control in whatever direction.

Successful people have more positive moods than negative moods. It does take energy to stay positive and MoodMapping is also about generating the energy you need to stay positive.

Since writing MoodMapping I have become more aware of the links between mind and body and how important it is to have a healthy body in order to have a healthy mind, as well as how much a healthy body depends on a healthy mind.

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