It seems that everyone knows the things they should be doing to help them feel good, or at least better than they are currently feeling. Things like getting adequate sleep, fresh air, exercise, lots of clean water, and plenty of organic vegetables.
Unfortunately there are times we don’t feel good enough to do these things, and sadly, the vast majority of the adult population do not get all these healthy tasks or experiences accomplished on a daily basis.
Yet, there is always work to do in our current hustle and bustle technology driven society. When the body has not had proper nourishment and mood is less than favorable, it gets hard to do that work. Though it may eventually get done, it will typically take much longer to accomplish and becomes more of an arduous process than it should be.
You may have experienced this during a bout of depression or periods of high stress. There are tons of things on the to do list, but the tasks at hand seem overwhelming and take much longer to perform, if we can even get to them at all. The final product during these times rarely reaches its full potential.
One thing to recognize here is that attitude and mood in stressful situations, are not the same thing. Attitude can be defined as our general outlook about a situation, being relatively under our own control and resistant to negative factors outside of one’s control. In essence our attitude is a conscious choice that we make about a situation or individual.
Mood, on the other hand, is much more malleable and can fluctuate vastly from day to day or hour to hour depending on the current state of our lives. Though our mood can range from happy and content to depressed and anxious in the span of a day, our attitude towards a situation can hold strong throughout these fluctuations.
There is definitely an interplay here, where attitude influences one’s mood throughout various situations, yet one’s mood in a situation will influence the attitude held towards that situation. Eventually it comes back around, when the mood that influenced the formation of an attitude, now affects mood when the same situation is presented again.
It seems that mood, or emotional states, have a much more profound effect on the mind and body. Emotions are well known to alter signals and communication throughout the brain, and can cause major changes in our bodily functions. Our physical health also plays a crucial role in mental health. Science has continually confirmed that processes such as chronic inflammation, imbalanced gut microbiomes, heavy metal toxicities, and hormonal imbalances have major effects on our mood and overall levels of happiness.
So when a good mood is present, individuals may find themselves crushing projects and enjoying work, maybe even finding time to do all the little things known to help build the foundations of our health and wellbeing. Through this, more positive cycles and patterns can take hold, creating a positive feedback loop, which in turn creates more positivity, and elevates mood even further.