What's Your Mood Today?

My neighbor and I locked eyes yesterday morning as we both grappled with the mood our teens were experiencing as they left for school.

We noticed their moods, but did they?

Perhaps.  

I observed that my kid had no resource to help himself in the moment he felt most reactive, no practice to become aware of his experience.  He was just reacting.

Mood matters.

The teenage brain grapples with a lot chaos inside of its developing circuitry, so cultivating the skill of self-awareness and especially the awareness of their body's response to stress in the moment they are full on freaking out - is a tall order.  

But it's an important observation for all of us to make.

Our moods predispose us to certain behaviors, and the sensations in our bodies are tightly interwoven with our mood.

Dr. Amanda Blake, author of Your Body is Your Brain says try this:

Slump in a chair, recall the last time you felt really low about something, let that sink in for a second.

Then say with as much enthusiasm as you can, "I'm having a great day!"

Then shift your posture shake out the first one, and sit up straight breath deeply, relax your shoulders, jaw, your eyes and chin.  Now roll your shoulders back and open your chest and look out to the horizon and say, "Wow, things are looking grim!"

Notice the incongruence?

This is because your body is not separate from your mood and your actions.  They are tightly interwoven and embedded in the body/mind in ways that reveal an intelligence that we can choose to develop to help us expand our range of response to pressure.

The bottom line is: We can't think our way out of our moods.  

I would have had zero luck helping my son find is wallet this morning if my mood was grim.  But my mood was light and grounded, and so I could make choices to support him.

He hadn't find found wallet at the time of writing this to you, but the actions I took in the moment impacted both my relational experience with my son and the results I got.  If I got angry with him, or mirrored his behavior . . . yikes - disconnection.

When I was writing Braving Creativity, I read Dr. Amy Cuddy's book Presence.  In the book, and in her popular TED talk on the subject, she shares her findings that "power postures" taken for as little as 2 minutes produced hormonal, psychological, and behavioral changes in participants.

In other words, shifting your body will shift your mood and your actions.

Why is this important to me?

I want to develop my resilience skills so I can have more choice when I feel under pressure and when I am triggered.

Also because I want to support my clients to develop the intelligence in their bodies so that they have more options when faced with the challenges and obstacles they will necessarily face on their courageous path to creating something new in their lives.

What's your mood today?