By CARL E. FEATHER - Staff Writer - cfeather@starbeacon.com
ASHTABULA — High unemployment. Astronom-ical utility bills. Insane health-care costs. Wall Street bailouts. Mean bosses. Elected officials who seem to care less. Crummy weather, crummy roads, crummy flu. Salt on your car, eating away at the finish; a loud-mouthed co-worker, her laughter eating away at your gut, day in and day out. — and she just got the raise in the office.
Yeah, we’re in a bad mood here.
That overall sour mood came through like a ton of citric acid in the responses that 400 registered voters in the county gave to a Governing Dynamic citizen survey for the Ashtabula County Port Authority Economic Steering Committee. A whopping 77 percent of the respondents said Ashtabula County is on the wrong track.
You don’t need a survey to remind you that we’re grumpy and, in most cases, getting grumpier as the winter, Great Recession and politicians drag on and on. Stand in a check-out line, sit in on a gripe session at work or just listen to talk radio, and it’s evident we’re in a national bad mood.
Mind training expert Patt Lind-Kyle says for many people, being in a bad mood is, well, just a way of life.
“As a society, we’re overworked,
overstressed and overextended, which all too often is a recipe for a bad day,” points out Lind-Kyle, author of “Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain: Applying the Exciting New Science of Brain Synchrony for Creativity, Peace and Presence” (Energy Psychology Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-1-60415-056-8,
$26.95). “And the real danger is that bad days turn into bad weeks, which turn into bad months, which turn into bad years.”
How’s that for a recipe for a bad life?
Lind-Kyle says it doesn’t have to be that way, and like any good author and self-help expert, she has the solution: recognizing your brain is wired for happiness.
“You’ve just got to learn how to tap into it,” she says.
Lind-Kyle isn’t talking about brainwashing. She’s talking about consciously exploring and redirecting your brain patterns through mind training, a process that has been scientifically proven to be effective.
Here are tips, provided by the author’s publicist, to get you started in this journey of mind training:
1) Realize that your thought patterns are — almost literally — in a rut. Here’s a surprising news flash: Before you’re ever placed in any given situation, your potential responses are already very limited by the way your brain is wired — and often, those responses contribute to your negativity. Since there will always be stressors and inconveniences in your life — unless you move to an ashram, that is — you’ve got to go to the source. You’ve got to rewire your brain and re-pattern the way it works.
2) Harness the power of intent. You’ve heard it before: To some extent, you live the life that you create for yourself — so it’s important to gain control by clearly stating which changes you’d like to make. Just don’t stop there.
“Stating your intent to not let bad moods rule your life is a good starting point, but wanting to be happy just isn’t enough,” asserts Lind-Kyle. “In order to make the changes that will lead to a better quality of life, you literally need to carve new channels, new neural pathways, in your brain. And in the beginning, that can be as simple as waking up each morning and stating to yourself what specific goals you want to accomplish before you go to bed. Eventually, you’ll want to incorporate a more focused mind training regimen.”
3) Stop the negative feedback loops. You know what these are. Something has rubbed you the wrong way — maybe something as simple as your spouse running out of the house without starting the dishwasher — and you can’t stop replaying the scenario in your head. Before you know it, you’re reminded of all of the times your spouse has forgotten a responsibility, and you’re venting to your coworkers around the water cooler. Then they start to share their own gripes, and pretty soon, everyone is steamed up for no reason whatsoever.
4) When a bad mood strikes, practice being present. When was the last time you stopped to literally smell the roses, enjoy the warmth of the sun on your face, or listen to a beautiful piece of music with no other distractions? For many of us, it’s been awhile. Chances are, you’re too focused on rehashing what’s past or fretting about the future to enjoy the here and now. And that’s bad. A lack of awareness of your sensations can cause you to become forgetful, to have difficulty meeting deadlines and maintaining a schedule, and to have increased anxiety and stress. That’s an instant recipe for a bad mood.
5) Give mind training a try. Good news: New research has revealed that the brain never stops changing and adjusting. Repetition and new experiences (whether they are physical, emotional, or mental) literally reshape the brain’s soft tissue — a quality known as neuroplasticity — and revamp the areas of your life with which you’re dissatisfied. That’s why Lind-Kyle is such a staunch proponent of mind training.
6) Know your personality type. (It might yield insights into your bad-mood patterns.) The fact is, some personality types are more prone to bad moods than others. For example, if you generally fall into the “Type A” category, you’re more likely to be thrown off-kilter by an unexpected Internet outage than your “Type B” counterparts. And if you really want to delve deeper into the study of personality, Lind-Kyle recommends the Enneagram, a system that describes nine personality types and offers a set of directions that guide each type to psychological health and spiritual liberation.
7) Exorcise old demons. The fact is, many human behaviors are emotion-driven. Repressed painful experiences are stored in your subconscious and in your body, and when a situation evokes an emotional memory, your behavior is affected. When destructive and disturbing emotional reactions are triggered, you unconsciously fall into behaving in the same way you always have, driven by this old pattern. For example, if you were repeatedly told as a child that you would never accomplish anything worthwhile, as an adult you might find a fulfilling life elusive because low self-confidence and poor self-image influence your reactions to life’s flow.
8) Finally, ask yourself: Is my lifestyle the real bad-mood culprit? If you’ve been reading the preceding tips thinking, “Yeah right! I don’t have time to train my mind. I have to work 12-hour days just to pay the bills!,” you might have hit the nail on the head, says Lind-Kyle. Your lifestyle is probably part of the reason you’re unhappy. The high-pressure job you have to work to pay for the big house and new car and gym membership is sucking up all your energy and perpetuating a pace and intensity that’s the very antithesis of the mental quality that leads to true happiness.
