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Personal growth: The mood factor in our problem-solving November 13, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Personal Development Potential.
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Current thinking among many self-improvement writers is that our anxiety over a particularly troublesome problem may be directly related to our mood.

The reasoning is that if we are in a buoyant and elevated mood, a difficult financial problem, for example, will seem more solvable in our minds.

And we will therefore be better able to come up with potential solutions.

And it’s true – the better our mood, the greater our optimism, and the more open we are to new approaches.

But if we are in a darker mood, solutions will not seem so apparent.

Within this scenario, the advice is to wait until our mood changes from a “down” mood to an upbeat mood before we try to tackle difficult problems, some of which may not appear to have any solutions.

A problem arises however, when the very seriousness of the problem and its apparent insolvability is the actual cause of our being down, anxious, and possibly feeling depressed.

In this case, we can’t necessarily wait for our mood to change to a more positive one, because the problem in itself is contributing to our “down” mood.

Two approaches might help us:

(1) Because physical factors can influence mood, we can do the obvious things that will make us feel better physically and emotionally: we know the list already –  reduce or cut-out smoking, consume less alcohol (it’s a depressant), less caffeine, moderate exercise, don’t get over-tired, reduce sugar/carbohydrates (unless there is a medical reasons not to do so), get sufficient sleep..

And equally if not more important,

(2) Start taking actions, no matter how small, towards a solution of the problem…even if we don’t seem to be making much progress, taking actions can add to our self-confidence and help us to at least imagine that solutions are possible.

Finally, we need to continue working on developing our emotional and problem-solving potential through our chosen personal development program.

When we hit difficult times, we can get so absorbed in spinning our worry-wheels that we forget to continue taking the self-actualization program steps that have worked for us in the past in helping us to feel better.

—Dennis Mellersh

Personal growth: Moods, perceptions, and problem-solving May 24, 2017

Posted by Dennis Mellersh in Overcoming Fear.
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By Dennis Mellersh

Most of us have been in the paradoxical situation in which a nagging problem that has been causing us misery and anxiety yesterday, or for a number of yesterdays, does not seem so worrisome today.

This, despite the fact that our circumstances today are identical to our circumstances yesterday.

Our problem or worrisome situation, has not gone away, but somehow our mood or our attitude to the problem seems more optimistic, so our misery and anxiety about the problem has largely gone away.

In a lighter mood

We don’t have an immediate solution to the problem, but we are now in a lighter mood, even perhaps a happy mood in which we can see that there are possibilities of solving the problem.

So clearly then, our happiness, or mood, does not depend on our circumstances.

So, wouldn’t it be great if we could, no matter what our circumstances might be, to be able to simply command our brain and our “anxiety centre” to switch to a happy, positive, “I can handle this” mode.

But alas, no such instant-acting brain-switch exists. Or, at least I haven’t found one yet.

Moods change perception

However, as Dr. Richard Carlson notes, “Circumstances are always neutral. If they were the cause of our problems, they would always affect us in the same way, which, of course, they don’t. It’s our thinking and perceptions about our circumstances that brings life to them.”

The perception of our problems is therefore mood-related.

So, although we need to work toward solutions to reality-based problems, in order to be better able to solve them, we need to realize that “feeling good comes first. Solving the problem comes later.”

Yes, but aside from studying Buddhism for ten years, how do we do that?

A possible solution

Richard Carlson takes an entire book (1) to fully explain all the details of how to accomplish this, but here’s one of the solutions he offers that we can start working on right now.

We can make an effort to move our focus away from the problem, because, as Carlson notes, “If circumstances seem hopeless, dwelling on them won’t help.”

Not focusing on the problem takes away the energy the problem needs to grow in our minds; with the problem growing in our minds it makes the problem seem worse.

“We do this not to avoid facing the problems but to make room for solutions to grow,” Carlson says.

(1) Dr. Richard Carlson, You Can Be Happy No Matter What: Five Principles Your Therapist Never Told You, New World Library, Novato, California, 1997