Have you ever felt this?
“I want to stop being a slave to my moods.”
It’s a pretty common theme I hear when I talk to people — particularly about personal productivity.
When I ask them to elaborate, it usually goes like this:
“I feel that my productivity is at the mercy of my mood. If I’m in a good mood, I can do anything. Some days, no one can stop me and others, I just put things off.”
Sound familiar?
The truth is, most of us have experience being in this state of being a “mood slave.”
Why?
Because we’re trained to be that way.
We are trained from childhood to draw emotional instructions from the outside in.
Think of a child. They have a rich inner world, full of imagination.
(I used to get lost in my inner worlds. Maybe you did, too.)
Then the parents say, “Pay attention. Stop daydreaming!”
Then they go to school, and the teachers say the same thing.
You’re drawing castles or envisioning inventions, the teacher says, “Stop goofing off! Stay on-task!”
Imagination and inner-world-creation becomes “being distracted.”
If you want to move around (especially if you’re a young boy), the teacher says, “ADHD. Get the Ritalin.”
We train the imagination out of kids. We train them to be little robots. We train them to grow up to be dull adults who are mood slaves.
Then we say, “Listen, pay attention to the teacher. Now, watch the television commercials. Here’s some edutainment.”
Hey, I get it: I’ve been the sole adult in the house with 4 kids between the ages of 2 and 12. The TV is a wonderful invention in that scenario.
But when it becomes habitual, we lose something.
The kids are being trained to draw their emotional instructions from the outside world….instead of their inner world.
Fast forward 25 years and these people are completely reliant on external inputs to change their mood.
Feeling sad? Rocky Road ice cream. Depressed or anxious? Breaking Bad. Lonely? OkCupid.
(I have to laugh, by the way, when people say “I don’t watch much TV, just some Netflix.” The channel doesn’t matter if the content is the same. TV on a laptop is still TV. And you’re the one that’s being programmed.)
Then: “I can’t be productive, until the mood strikes.”
Which really means: “I can’t create the life I really want, until the mood strikes.”
No. This is backwards. Humans have been programmed backwards.
Humans naturally start by drawing our mood from within ourselves. Some parents reinforce this, some of the time: “You stubbed your toe? Think of a happy place.” Boom! Pain is gone. Or the little girl falls down. She looks at the parents with expectation, pinging them emotionally to see if she should cry or not. Mommy says: “You’re okay. See? You’re fine.” Little girl sees a caterpillar. Mood change. She’s fine.
The mind follows the emotions. What do the emotions follow? The thoughts.
Your habitual, automatic thoughts are responsible for your emotions. Your habitual thoughts are trainable. They are trainable, by you.
Have you ever deliberately tried to train your thoughts? No? Then guess who is training them? That’s right, the external environment. The newspaper, the magazines, the celebrity gossip sites, the “TV” (whatever screen you use to mainline it.)
Whatever thoughts you trigger in your mind become your emotions. Your emotions become your actions, and your actions become your life.
Are your emotions dominated by fear and defensiveness, scarcity or lack? If you say, “Money is tight right now,” Poof! So it is. If you say, “I’m sure we’ll figure out a way to afford it, because it’s important,” Poof! So it is.
Just add a few words, take away a few others, and your life is different.
Ok, how do you harness your emotions to be productive?
First, clean out all the inner thoughts that are holding you back.
Like: “I’m creatively blocked.”
Like: “It’s a huge project, I’ll never get it done.”
Like: “I’m so busy, I can never find time for anything.” (Poof! So it is.)
Like: “I’m anxious.” (Poof! And so on….)
You can’t just subtract a thought, you have to replace it. The Buddhists call this “changing the peg“; envision driving a new wooden peg into the space where an old, rotten peg was.
Here are a few fresh new pegs to try:
“I can do 5 minutes.”
“The Universe wants this project to happen, and it wants to come through me.”
“I always find time for what’s important.”
“My mind is always relaxed.”
Ever heard those bros at the gym say, “Light weight!” before they lift? Me too. (Maybe you say it? I do.)
There’s a reason they say that. It works.
And it can work in any other area of your life, too.
Why not try it today?
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Also published on Medium.