How to Start Your Day On A High

·         Do you sometimes feel that ‘nothing’s going to go right today’?

·         Would you like to be more in control of how you feel?

If you learn how to recognise your emotional state, take responsibility for it and choose your attitude for the day, you can turn around a day which didn’t seem promising at the start.

There are 4 steps to this:

1. Begin by connecting to how you are feeling right now.  Sometimes, our surface mood disguises a deeper emotion. We may feel grumpy and out of sorts but if we take the time to sit quietly or reflect as we walk the dog, it may be that we discover we are still angry or disappointed about something that happened yesterday.  Identifying and naming the emotion is the first vital step.

2. Recognise that the emotion is in you.  We sometimes attribute how we feel to the external circumstances be it the weather or someone that annoys us:  ‘He ‘makes’ me feel irritated/nervous/ inadequate.’  Separate out the circumstances from your reaction and you will find that you have a choice about how to respond.   If you’re not convinced, think of it this way.  If you choose to be cheerful, the rain may still be falling and the client grumbling.   The emotion is not in the rain or the client but in you.

3. You are more than your mood.  Moods and feelings come and go but your core self remains.  Try out the difference between saying ‘I am anxious’ and ‘I have some anxious feelings’.  The first identifies the entire self with the anxiety; the second suggests that the anxiety, though present, is not the whole story.  I find that this prevents me being overwhelmed by the feeling and affords a space to make a choice about how I will handle it, which takes us to step 4.

4. How do I want to feel today?    It is important to acknowledge at this point that sad feelings may be entirely appropriate.  Few of us get through life without experiencing loss or difficulty.  In such cases, we may not be ready to ‘cheer up’ but we can still make a choice about how we wish to feel: calm? accepting?  Maybe we need to express some angry or rebellious feelings before we can move into what the day brings. 

Let’s assume that no major crisis has arisen.  You can get clear about the positive emotion you want to experience: motivated? lighthearted? optimistic? hopeful?  Ask yourself what positive thoughts you can adopt and what actions you can take to promote your desired state.

Start the day by encountering yourself (Good morning, how am I?) in these 4 steps:

Awareness, Ownership, Detachment and Choice

and when you meet other people, you’ll be able to greet them authentically:

Good morning, how are you?

Inspired by Anthony de Mello: Awareness