Mood: What to do about your mood?

Having a temper often means something negative, when the meaning of the word is actually neutral. In fact, your mood is about your emotional mood, and usually people who are in a bad, or cranky, mood are called moody. So what about your mood and what can you do to actually have a good mood most of the time?

Find out in this blog.

What does mood mean?

Humor, according to the Van Dale, means what your mood is. You can have several types of moods, namely a happy mood or a bad mood. The happy mood involves emotions such as happiness, enthusiasm and the like. While with a bad mood you can think of being grumpy, irritable or angry.

Someone who is moody is someone in a bad mood.

Changing mood

It's somewhere very normal to not always have the same mood, but it can be annoying if your mood alternates very quickly from good to bad. There are all kinds of reasons why your mood can change.

Take hormones, for example, when it comes to women. Everyone knows that around the time of their period, women can be a bit more moody than usual. Because women experience more hormonal fluctuations than men, they are twice as likely as men to suffer from mood swings throughout their lives. This can begin during puberty or, conversely, during menopause, when hormonal fluctuations actually stop[1].

In addition, events in your environment can affect your mood. For example, nobody really gets happy about being stuck in a traffic jam, unless you think your job is terrible. Then such a traffic jam can feel more like a stay of execution.

Also, your mood can change your view of your surroundings again. So suppose you got up with a very good mood, this can make you not mind being in a traffic jam at all[2].

Your thoughts and beliefs also have a significant impact on your mood (source 2). As you can see, how you think about a traffic jam or your job can greatly influence how good you feel. For example, if you have negative thoughts, this can contribute to a bad mood. On the other hand, you can have a positive mood if you have positive thoughts.

So it is helpful to have helpful beliefs about life and the world, so you can easily generate positive thoughts.

There may also be more physical or psychological reasons why your mood is the way it is. For example, people who are grouchy in the morning might be cranky because they wake up without having had enough sleep. You can often only have a pleasant conversation with them after they’ve had their first cup of coffee (or even an energy drink).

Anxiety and feelings of depression can also lead to a bad mood, and loneliness is another feeling that usually doesn’t make you any happier.

Prednisone mood

Also, some medications can affect your mood. Prednisone, for example, is a medication where you may experience mood swings at first, but over time this stabilizes.

However, depressive symptoms may worsen. So if you’re experiencing a depressed mood, keep an eye on whether it gets worse when you’re taking prednisone[3].

Morning mood

If you struggle with a bad mood in the morning, there could be several reasons for it. Research shows, for example, that the dreams you have can greatly influence your morning mood. Did you have a pleasant dream in which you were socializing? Then there’s a good chance you’ll wake up in a cheerful mood in the morning.

On the contrary, are you having a less than pleasant dream, or even dreaming about dying? Then you are more likely to suffer from a morning mood[4].

Good mood getting tips

There are a number of things you can do to improve your mood. One way to improve your mood is to procrastinate, but that’s not a solution that will make you happier in the long run. As a result, you may actually end up struggling with a bad mood more often in the long run[5]. That’s why we’re now sharing some tips to help you improve your mood in both the short and long term.

Tip 1: Look to nature

For example, research shows that spending more time in nature, or an environment with lots of greenery, is good for your mood[6].

So are you suffering from a morning mood? Just look out the window at a tree or something else natural near you. Then you'll already feel at least a little better.

Tip 2: Eat breakfast

Do you suffer from a morning mood? Then eating breakfast, and then lunch, can already do much to improve your mood.

Give your body and mind fuel to function on.

Tip 3: Drink something with caffeine

In the research showing that eating breakfast helps keep your mood good in the morning, it also showed that drinking coffee -- or anything else with caffeine -- helps improve your mood in the morning and even early afternoon[7].

Tip 4: Read a happy poem

Poems can have a great impact on people, and research shows that reading poems can cause you to adopt the mood, or temper, of the poem[8].

So start your day with a beautiful, positive and upbeat poem to lift your mood.

Tip 5: Get moving

It doesn’t matter whether you exercise in the morning or in the evening, but exercise can help you overcome feelings of depression and a bad mood. A study of athletes who experienced feelings of depression found that it doesn’t matter what time of day you exercise, but that exercise itself helps improve your mood and reduce feelings of depression[9].

Tip #6: Sleep on your back

This may be a really crazy tip, but research shows that the more your face makes contact with the pillow when you sleep the worse your mood may be in the morning. One way to make sure your face makes less contact with the pillow is to sleep on your back[10].

Tip 7: Vitamin D and your mood

Vitamin D can also have a lot of impact on your mood. You may have noticed that you are moodier at the end of winter than at the beginning. This is true, because in the Netherlands we live too northern to be able to make vitamin D from sunlight in the winter. It is a vitamin that your body stores and uses up in winter.

Research shows that taking vitamin D supplements at the end of winter can cause your mood to improve again.

But does it bother you in the summer, too? Then take a moment to check for yourself if you are getting outside enough and letting sunlight shine on your skin.

Tip 8: Visualize your best possible self

In a study examining what works best to improve your mood, two techniques were investigated: visualizing the best possible version of yourself, or performing a gratitude exercise in which you express gratitude for everything you have. The study found that, for an immediate boost to your mood, visualizing the best possible version of yourself is the most effective method for quickly improving your mood[11].

Visualizing these types of scenarios is also important in hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis. So great fun to start your day with or to cheer yourself up when you're in a less than perfect mood for a while.

If you find this difficult to do, a hypnotherapist can help you with this. With advanced hypnotherapists, this may even be a goal to work toward and the hypnotherapist can help you formulate a plan on how to then achieve this goal, your best possible self.

Tip 9: Find out your triggers for a bad mood

Do you notice a certain pattern in moments or specific triggers that put you in a bad mood? If so, a hypnotherapist can help you identify the beliefs that cause certain events to immediately put you in a bad mood.

Then you can use hypnosis to change those beliefs, so that those stimuli no longer put you in a bad mood, but allow you to look at those events in a neutral way. You may even have to laugh a little at the person you were before you used hypnosis to change your beliefs, so that they actually help you have a good mood.

For example, research shows that cognitive behavioral therapy combined with hypnosis works better against depressive symptoms than cognitive behavioral therapy alone[12].

Learn hypnosis

As mentioned, many techniques can also be applied with hypnosis. By improving your knowledge of hypnosis, you can do much to improve your own mood and the mood of others.

Want to learn more? Join the free online masterclass to get an introduction to hypnosis.

Or enroll directly in one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses.

Do you need help with your mood? Then visit bestetherapeut.nl

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