Do you just want to feel better? These psychological tricks can help.
When we are feeling bad or in a low mood, there is usually not one switch we can flip to be in a good mood and function again. And we don’t even have to. Our feelings have a cause and meaning, they send us messages that show us the way and help us to cope with our lives. In order to understand these messages, we cannot avoid dealing with our individual, unique situation.
At the same time, a bad mood can sometimes make life worse and harder for us than necessary and prevent us from making (wise) decisions and gaining valuable experience. Therefore, it is generally good to know strategies that can help us when we are feeling low. They make us just feel better. In addition to tried and tested mood boosters such as sport, potato gratin, gratitude and the sea, the psychologist suggests and Psychology Today-Author Alice Boyes suggests the following variants.
5 easy ways to make yourself feel better
1. Be extra patient with someone who is overwhelmed.
Whether you are a colleague, friend or sister, when people around us are pummeling (and maybe even getting in our way), it can put our patience to the test, especially if we are already feeling ailing. If we then react impulsively and irritably, that rarely makes the situation better. If, on the other hand, we meet the person with extra patience and understanding, we usually automatically feel more satisfied because we feel that we are doing something good. In addition, this behavior is more likely to lead to the situation (and our overwhelmed fellow human being) relax – and that others show us patience when we are overwhelmed.
2. Be extra friendly to a stranger.
Far too often we just hurry through our lives and use the people around us only like service posts for our purposes, without perceiving them for what they are: people who feel, think, rush through their lives like us. And who would probably be very happy about a little warmth, attention and humanity. Whether a compliment, a smile, an express thank you or make room for someone who comes to meet us, friendliness is a mood booster and is reflected by most people.
3. Think about what you can control or change.
Sometimes we feel bad because we are carrying around a lot of mental load that we cannot just take off immediately. While we are supposed to concentrate on our job, we keep in mind that we will want to call our mother later, need a birthday present for our friend, not yet know what to cook for dinner and write an email to our property manager. All of this weighs on us, while we cannot tick any off because we are busy with something else. We can relieve us if we think about what we can control or change in this situation. In this case, we could, for example, write down the points that we have to take care of later on a piece of paper or simply make outstanding decisions, for example the question of food (order pizza – by the way: here you will find five decision rules that will make your life much easier).
In most difficult situations, in which we feel powerless and overwhelmed, it does us very good to look for and then do what we can control or change about that situation. Even if there are only very small measures that do not change the overall situation much – they can mean the world to our feelings and attitudes.
4. Delete a To Do or parts of it.
Most of the time we get stuck in our processes and are so convinced that we have to do everything that we have set out to do, that we lose the measure of relationships and priorities. Because of the sheer amount of work we have to do, it never occurs to us that we could cross some to-dos off our list without this having any lasting consequences. Or that we could easily reduce our demands by 50 percent and it would still be enough. But if we did get the idea, it would do us good in many moments and make our lives a lot easier.
5. Tell someone you trust what you particularly value about your relationship.
Our intimate relationships are arguably the greatest lucky charms in our lives. Just thinking about them and thinking about what we particularly appreciate about a certain connection will therefore give us strength in many situations and make us more satisfied. It will also help us to recognize for ourselves which people are particularly important to us and do well. If we then also say (or write) it to the person, it not only makes our thoughts clearer for us, but also has the additional mood-lifting effect of a compliment, a friendly gesture – a contact with a person – and strengthens our relationship with the: the person concerned.
Source used: psychologytoday.com