Fig 3 – Moody skies
Our Mood is our internal background. It influences everything we say and do – a good mood helps towards a wonderful and exciting day,, a bad mood contributes makes us gloomy and encourages negative emotions, such as frustration, anger and jealousy
By contrast, we use emotions to express how we feel. Unlike mood, emotions have both an internal and external side to them. Internally they affect our mood, how we think and how we behave. On the outside, they show the world how we feel. As with moods, emotions also influence other peoples’ feelings and behaviours, towards us and to those around. No one likes to work with someone who is constantly in a bad mood, spreading negative emotions.
If someone is in a happy calm mood, it is harder for them to become angry and impatient. This allows everyone around them to feel safer and calmer.
Children are very good at judging their parents’ mood, always waiting until everyone is comfortably settled before dropping their little bombshells or making those undeserving, little requests. On the other hand, if you are in a bad mood already, they might equally take the opportunity to wind you up further, increase your frustration, exasperation in order to press home their demands. If a parent thinks their little darlings are not born with the innate knowledge of how to play their parents for all they are worth, they have been given children straight from heaven!
Mood comes from deep inside ourselves. It is where the mind and body come together and where our inner world meets the material world.
- Surroundings,
- Physical and mental health,
- Friends and social networks,
- Self-expression, and
- Strategies we have to influence the world around us.These five areas are fundamental to mood management. I use them to organise my life. Everything I have and do, can fit into one of those five categories! I organise my filing system, my diary, my to-do lists around those five areas They form the basis of the Keystar, which is a framework for managing your moods