Feeling Down? Change Your Mood

During the daily grind, you may often find yourself tired, stressed or just feeling down.  When this happens, it has further reaching effects beyond you.  You may not notice and it’s understandable.  But others do notice and it effects them.  So when you’re feeling down, change your mood and change the moods of others.

As leaders, you are regularly bombarded with issues and problems.  It’s difficult to stay upbeat and positive all the time.  Sometimes we’re drained and we’re too tired to even notice it.  It could be stress, fatigue and sadness that cause us to feel down.  When we feel down, we show it whether we know it or not.  It’s expressed through our body language.  Our shoulders droops down. We sit in with our backs slouched down.  We have a sad face which also droops down.  That’s why it’s called feeling down, because everything about us is down. 

When we feel down, we’re in that moment.  We don’t notice much else happening around us.  However, our team members are very observant and they do notice.  Our posture and negative mood are recognized by our team.  That in effect will bring down the team with us.  Something we of course want to avoid.  As leaders, we need to be motivators.   We need to be the cheerleaders and not the downer. 

Do you know that it takes a lot of energy to be down?  It sure does.  When you feel down and your entire body posture is down, it brings down your energy.  It’s difficult to break out of this cycle but for your benefit and the benefit of your team, you must.

While different people have different ways to pick themselves up, there are some common things that can work for most.  When feeling down, here are some things you can try to change your mood.

• Mid-day Exercise – Most of us have heard of this. Exercise makes us happier.  And it’s true, proven over and over again by scientists.  According to Wendy Suzuki, a Professor of Neural Science and Psychology, exercise has “a positive chemical effect on your brain reducing stress and improving mood”.  You can read more on the positive effects of exercise here.
  
  
• Listen to Music – Most of us do this already. We listen to music to put us in the right mood. And we have music for every mood we want to be in.  Whether it’s happy, sad, romantic or just relaxing, most of us have a playlist to help us get into the mood.  It’s been proven that music helps prevent depression and sadness.  A caution to this is to listen to the right music.  You want to avoid listening to sad songs when you’re already feeling down.  It will keep you down, if not take you down even further.  To change your mood, you must choose the right type of music.  Listen to happy songs, happy music.  Listen to high energy music.  Something that can change your mood from being down and giving you the feeling of getting up and possibly even dancing.  You can read more about how listening to music can change your mood and be good for your health here. 
  
  
• Smile – It may sound silly or even contradictory to smile when you’re feeling down. But it works.  It’s commonly understood that being happy makes you smile.  However, what most people don’t know is smiling can make you happy.  Change your facial expressions and change your body posture.  Sit up straight and put a smile on your face.  Notice the positive change starting to take place.  Smiling when you’re down can be the beginning step to changing your mood and feeling good.
  
  
• Engage With Others – When we’re feeling down, often we want to be left alone. This can be a bad idea as being alone with our own thoughts, we can dwell on whatever the situation we’re in.  Instead, engage with others.  Engage in conversations or activities to change your focus and change your mood.   A note of caution here is to avoid engaging with someone who’s a downer.  You need to change your mood to a positive mood, therefore, you need to engage with someone with energy.  Someone who can help you make the positive change. 
  
  
• Quick Inside Out Change – One last thing I’d like to share is something that I personally do a lot of. All of the things I’ve shared here are things that I personally do to change my mood.  But this one is one I use the most, because it’s quick, easy and has the best change for me.  Other things I’ve shared may take more time and effort to do.  When I feel down and I know I need to pick myself up, I start by changing my breathing pattern.  I increase my breathing speed as well as breadth energy.  Then I get up and jump around, getting my blood pumping.  This inside out change of the body is a great change for my mind and my mood.  This is quick and simple to do, something you can do immediately wherever you are. 
  
  

The commonality in many of these suggestions involves movements.  Physical movements and physical change will bring better health to you.  It will improve you mind, body and change your mood for the better.  When you find yourself feeling down, try these suggestions to change your mood.  If not for yourself, do it for your team.  Remember, your team depend on you.  They count on you and look to you to provide energy and motivation.  You need to be a consistent leader that your team can depend on. You can read more about How To Be Consistent here.  Whatever works for you to change your mood when you’re feeling down, do it and become the leader that your team needs you to be.

Picture by: Nik Shuliahin
https://unsplash.com/@tjump