How to Create a Good Mood (and Accomplish ANYTHING)

Mood Affects Everything

Life, or our perception of it, is shaped by moods. Every experience I have is influenced by the mood I am in. Accordingly, every goal I have is impacted by the mood I carry. In my life, a good mood speeds progress to achieve my goals and create the life I want, while a bad mood robs me of the focus and drive I need to make that happen.

I’m certainly not the only one to experience life this way. As a Men’s Empowered Action Coach I see this first hand how mood either works for or against a man as he approaches issues and situations in his life.

Mood is important. When I am in a good mood my life flows with possibility. I’m optimistic. I can manage uncertainty. It’s in my good mood where I move forward in my life, get stuff done, and achieve my goals.

One of my goals was to leave my well-paying career in the U.S. and move myself and my family to the coast of Ecuador. When I announced this really big goal of mine, discouragement began to show up from some people around me. Have you noticed how that happens?

A Good Mood Is Protective

I have energy and ability to focus

Fortunately my tools for making a good mood were my protection against other’s negative energy. Just so you know, I am not immune from my own self-sabotaging thoughts, so a good mood serves as a light chasing away my own darkness. My good mood raises my vibration above the chaos and turmoil of current events too, so I stay focused in spite of collective negative chatter.

A bad mood on the other hand—well it’s pretty much the opposite of flow and light and high vibration. Moods like anger, fear, anxiousness, shame, worry, bitterness (pick any negative mood descriptor that works for you), make my world small. I become limited in my ability to see all that is possible for me. Progress on my goals suffers, if not altogether stops.

I define a good mood as one of joy, peace, love, happiness, satisfaction, contentment or any positive, upbeat descriptor that resonates within me. When I am in these “good moods” the possibilities I see for my situation, my circumstances, and my life are many. My world expands. I have energy and ability to focus on the road ahead to accomplish my goals.

I’ll take a good mood over a bad one any day of the week. Which mood helps you achieve your goals? I have a secret for you. You can choose to put yourself in a good mood anytime you want.

Situational Good Moods

Many things in life can create a good mood. I’m the first one to admit it’s awesome to get a promotion. I love the recognition and the extra pay. High five man! Happy mood. I can get a good mood from finally having that “thing” I wanted too. I’m satisfied, so let the good mood roll on in. What about sex? What guy isn’t in a good mood with that, right?

The downside of these examples is they are all situational. How many situations will you and I need to create to keep this kind of good mood strategy going? External validation, external reward, and external stimuli might make for sweet icing on the good mood cake, but dependence on external anything for our good mood risks not having any cake at all.

Internally Create a Good Mood

Your list for a good mood may be similar or different to mine. Regardless, being able to create a good mood internally, with no external reliance, depends on a relationship to three things: Fact, Possibility, and Uncertainty.

I learned this concept from Alan Sieler in his book Coaching to the Human Soul, Vol 2. In my own life, and in the lives of men I coach, I know that the correct relationship to these three important concepts can create the “good mood” needed for consistent and persistent action to achieve any goal.

A Closer Look at Fact, Possibility, and Uncertainty

Fact — A Good Mood Depends on a Correct Relationship with Fact.

Facts are things “that cannot change”. They are the events/actions/words of my past. They are also things that cannot change in my present moment and immediate future. If I’m on a 4-hour flight at 30,000 feet, I can’t decide in the middle of it to get off and take a bus. My past, my present moment, and my immediate future make up my landscape of “what is”.

Generating a good mood depends on a correct relationship with fact. Knowing what the actual facts of my current situation are, is the first place to start. I ask myself these questions.

• Are these actual facts or things I have come to believe from past experiences?
• Can I change these facts in my immediate future?
• If I cannot change these facts, am I willing to accept them?
• Am I unwilling to accept them?

The answer to the last two questions is going to determine my level of suffering and my potential for possibilities moving forward.

I do not control the universe, so I cannot control everything that happens in it. When something happens, it becomes a fact. It doesn’t mean I have to like it. What matters is my choice to see it as only a fact of “what is” and not “what will always be”. From this place, I move forward.

Acceptance Shifts Suffering — Accepting “Fact” and Choosing Possibility to Move Forward

I moved to Ecuador to live on the ocean and enjoy the beach. When a major earthquake struck and my town was destroyed, it didn’t mean I needed to go back to the U.S. It did mean I needed to leave my town on the coast which I loved, and live in the mountains, which I enjoyed far less, while I re-grouped and made a new plan.

When I am clear with myself whether I am accepting or not accepting the facts of my situation, it helps me to see what I am actually choosing—a mood of suffering or a mood of potential possibilities.

Initially, I resisted my new environment in the mountains, but then chose to accept that what I experienced and came to love on the coast was over in the way I had known it. Nothing could change that, and to hang on to what didn’t exist any longer only invited suffering into my life.

Who wants to suffer needlessly? How does that help you and I achieve our goals? When I recognize suffering is what I am choosing, it becomes like a slap in my face and wakes me up to choose differently. Differently means accepting “fact” and choosing possibility to move forward in achieving my goals.

Possibility — Possibilities Are the Doorways to Positive Mood Shifts

Possibilities are what create the mental and emotional landscape of wide open space from which to live fully and achieve goals. They are the things of “what is open to change?” From there, I can see what actions are possible, and then see what new choices become available.

Possibilities are the doorways to positive mood shifts. It is the way out of moods that cause me to suffer.

Have you ever done this? I will admit that change is possible, and in the next breath I will deny any possibilities exist for my current situation/circumstances. Do you see what I did?

I just said I have no future that is different from the moment I am in. How screwed up is that?

It isn’t logical. Even if I acted like a toadstool in the dark and did nothing, the external world would act upon me in various ways and force me and my situation to change…maybe worse, maybe better, but definitely changed.

Change and Possibility Happen Together

My point is by not accepting that I can change, that my circumstances can change, and that my mood can change, I am limiting the possibilities available to me.

Bringing this awareness to my consciousness allows me an opportunity to choose differently. I can accept new possibilities for myself. When I do this I have just opened up a world that is bigger and more expansive than my current moment. I’m no longer a toadstool in the dark; I live in the light of possibility.

I need this light to achieve my goals.

I don’t know for sure that my life in Ecuador is going to work out like I’ve planned. Living in possibility however, gives me my best shot at dealing with the various challenges living here to make it work. I also don’t know the end of my story.

…which brings me to point number three.

Uncertainty — Uncertainty Can Be Met with Only Two Things

The world is an uncertain place. Do you accept that? I do—and I have to remind myself of it too because I prefer certainty. Who doesn’t?

I like knowing my life on the beach in Ecuador will be sunny and go on uninterrupted, that my investments will keep going up in value, and that my wife and I will love each other until our dying breath. Who wouldn’t want certainty in these things?

Life doesn’t run according to my plan, or yours either. Have you noticed? Life has been, is, and will continue to be uncertain at various times and in various situations. If I choose not to accept this, I am inviting undue suffering, increased fear, and negative moods into my life.

Uncertainty can be met with only two things: acceptance or non-acceptance.

If I cling tightly to a belief that “I control everything” to avoid uncertainty in living, then when shit happens anyway, I risk internalizing my inability to control all of my circumstances as a personal fault, an inadequacy of who I am. From there, moods of anxiety and being a victim in an unpredictable world could permeate my being. Basically, I risk living in a mood of fear. How well do you achieve your goals being fearful?

For me, choosing not to accept uncertainty would only allow me to live in a very small, cramped box. It would be the size of what I actually can control, which in the scheme of the universe isn’t much. No thanks! That box is too small and has far too few possibilities for me to exist in.

Uncertainty Is Undiscovered Possibility

When I accept uncertainty as part of my life’s landscape, I am much more effective at managing my life and achieving my goals. I see it like this…uncertainty is only undiscovered possibility.

I accept uncertainty by giving it more certain definition. I ask myself the question, “What is it I don’t know about this situation? I also name those things I don’t have answers to. Unknown things feel more tangible, not so daunting.

Possibilities begin to appear. Action steps toward my goal become clearer. Paralysis is replaced with pathways.

After the earthquake, I became “stuck” living in the mountains. The mere uncertainty of when and where another quake would hit could have stopped me from achieving my goal of living my life on the coast of Ecuador. Fear and anxiousness, two of my own bad moods, could have sent me packing back to the U.S., sabotaging an important goal of mine.

Instead, I changed my mood by changing my relationship to Fact, Possibility, and Uncertainty. Three friends who have taught me how to create the “good mood” needed to achieve my goals. Today I live on one of the most beautiful beaches of Ecuador, coaching men to create the lives they want to be living, and enjoying my family as I do it.

How would a new relationship with Fact, Possibility, and Uncertainty help you create the “good mood’ needed to achieve your goals?

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Photo: Getty Images