What is mood management?

Imagine you were able to detect bad emotions before they happen, won't you be able to avoid them?

Mood management is a term we developed  which refers to the ability to predict future changes in your mood then work on avoiding them.

By getting a perfect understanding of the things that make your mood swing you will be able to predict the future factors that might affect your mood before they happen and as a result you will be able to avoid negative moods.

Of course its not possible to avoid all bad emotions using this method or else i would be lying to you but the sure thing is that you can reduce the bad emotions you get exposed to by a great deal.

How to manage your mood

Here is a very simple example:

Lets suppose deadlines make you stressed and that you had some work to deliver in 3 days. In such a case you must do your best to finish most of your tasks in the first day and not the second or the third simply because realizing that you have a small amount of time left will certainly make you stressed.

This was a simple example to explain the concept now lets move to a more complicated one.
If you are 22 years old the most probably you know that you are young. Now when you hit 25 there is a very big possibility that you will get shocked and even depressed if you weren't satisfied with your progress in life. (see also How time affects your mood and emotions)

For most people the age of 25 is an important check point where they evaluate their progress in life. Now by understanding that this evaluation will happen after 3 years you can avoid that pain by working so hard to make significant achievements before your 25th birthday.

Here is a third example. If you are waiting for an important Email and in the same time had a lot of work to do then you might want to check your mail after you are done working and not while you still have work.

The trick is that this email might contain bad news that make you feel unhappy and because its too unpleasant to work while feeling bad it makes a lot of sense to finish your work first if the email didn't require an urgent reply.

What skills do you need to do this

As you might have noticed in order to manage your mood properly you need to understand yourself perfectly. After all without enough self understanding you might fail to predict the events that can change your mood and so feel bad.

You also need some planning time every now and then. When you start thinking about the future and planning for it then finding the factors that can affect your mood will be much easier.

After all you don't want to overlook a factor that might change your mood for few days or even weeks. Stick to those two steps and you will be able to manage your mood properly.