Up the Mood Elevator

By Larry Senn

The Importance of Moods

In the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Hermione, a heroine whose emotional intelligence matches her dizzying intellect, laughs heartily when her emotionally-limited friend Ron comments, “One person can feel all that?” Hermione keenly observes that people have incredibly malleable moods throughout their lives. Could you count how many times your mood changes in a single day? You might wake up hopeful about the day and then quickly diminish into stress when you look at your calendar scribbles.

Larry Senn argues that it’s worth noticing the positive and negative nature of your moods. He calls this moving up and down the mood elevator. His book explains that those confident people who don’t seem to “sweat the small stuff” operate near the top floors of the mood elevator and are usually better parents, leaders, and lives.

But why is this important and can anything be done about the Mood Elevator’s volatility? While it is true that everyone experiences each level of the Mood Elevator at some point in life, controlling the levels on the Mood Elevator can be done if we can gain control of our thinking. It’s possible when we start to understand the nature of moods.

Where do moods come from?

We commonly believe that moods are the result of external circumstances, when really it’s a more complicated than that. While events bombard us, we must remember that we are still the thinker. We may go to bed depressed and wake up hopeful; nothing about our circumstance has changed, only our thoughts about that situation.

“Life is largely what we make of it through our thinking.”

-Senn

Keeping Perspective Makes Us More Creative

Does it surprise you that a study reported that people have the most new or creative ideas while they are in the shower? The relaxation allows our minds to become more clear and focused. When up the Mood Elevator, our minds have the complete range of capabilities from the basics of memory and processing up to the highest levels of insight and wisdom. Alternatively, we tend to have lower quality thoughts when we are late, rushed, or frustrated.

Emotional Intelligence Makes Us More Successful

A study was performed by Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, in which Harvard graduates from classes in the 1940s were followed into middle age to see who would be more successful. Not surprisingly, those with a higher emotional intelligence (EQ) had higher salaries, life satisfaction, friendships, and family. This is important since emotional intelligence is much easier to gain than IQ.

Senn argues that a higher EQ means a person spends more time on the top floors of the Mood Elevator. When confronted with relational issues, a person with a high EQ will remain patient. When his extremist uncle goes on a rant about the tax reforms, the man with a high EQ reacts with curiosity.

Controlling Your Ride

Now that we’ve established that operating on the top floors of the Mood Elevator can substantially increase your likelihood of success and happiness, we can dig deeper into achieving control over our elusive moods. Where do we start? The answer: look to your feelings as your guide.

The first step in managing mood states is knowing your mood state. To an extent, we create our own feelings about situations with our thoughts; so, using the Mood Elevator as a barometer, determine what levels your feelings reside on most. Are you most often below, above, or near the center of the scale?

It’s important to note that since we can usually justify our thoughts regardless of how unreasonable they are, this technique will provide you with an impartial estimate of where your thoughts generally lie on the Mood Elevator.

Stopping on the Right Floors

Just like a real elevator, the Mood Elevator has a stop which you can activate when you start to dip into low quality thinking. This stop is curiosity. It is right in the middle before we drop down into the lower mood states. Some may argue that curiosity is the most important level on the Mood Elevator because living life with more curiosity is a great way to avoid falling to the lower floors.

If you thought the paragraph was profound nonsense, you went to one of the most over-used lower levels of the Mood Elevator — judgment. Here is the corrected paragraph:

Just like our crazy uncle’s outbursts, when things do not fit the way we want them to, it is easier to make them wrong than to explore the unknown. This judgment is why so many people see what is wrong with something first rather than what is different or what they can learn from it. Too much judgment over curiosity is the cause of many divorces and strained relationships.

A Microsoft CEO once said, “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance.” Quick judgement failed him.

Shifting Your Normal Mood

Senn uses an illustration about an old Cherokee telling his grandson about a conflict between two wolves, one good and one evil, that live inside people. The grandson asked the old Cherokee which of the wolves wins, and he replied, “The one you feed.”

Senn says we may not even know if we spend the majority of our day on low levels of the Mood Elevator. We can even believe we are being “realistic” but have actually developed a gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life. “Unhealthy normal” occurs when any lower-level mood state becomes so familiar that we do not notice it and it becomes the new norm.

Thankfully, Senn offers some simple solutions. The first is taking care of yourself through regular exercise, good sleep, and healthy food choices. American Journal of Psychiatric Health concluded, “Exercise improves mental health and well-being, reduces stress and anxiety and enhances cognitive functioning” (Senn 91). One of the biggest payoffs of regular exercise is increased energy and stamina. This directly correlates to staying up the Mood Elevator. Likewise, the food that we choose to eat can also help us improve our “ride.”

The second way to shift our set point on the Mood Elevator is the cultivation of a specific perspective: a gratitude perspective. Gratitude is an overriding emotion. It is almost impossible to be grateful and angry or depressed at the same time. Since gratitude is more about others than it is about us, it can also override lower mood states like self righteousness, envy, and depression. In everyone’s own unique Mood Elevator, gratitude is most likely near the top. Regardless of what is happening, at the very least we can be grateful for the miracle of life itself. A gratitude perspective allows us to step back and look at all that we do have.

On the Ride Up

While the previous two techniques help with longterm movements up the Mood Elevator, here are a few tips to help minimize the damage of low level encounters:

• Pattern Interruption — It is a way to let go of one train of thought and switch to another. Good sleep, speaking with a dear friend, positive self-talk all are all examples of a
• Separate Realities — Two people rarely have the exact same thoughts about a particular topic. This is why a husband and wife rarely agree on topics like ABC’s The Bachelor. Before we become angry with another person’s view, we can ask ourselves, “what makes them see it that way?”
• Fresh Starts — A fresh start includes having the ability to forgive someone for his or her transgressions and to move on. Forgiveness is the key to starting fresh and mending any relationship — even with yourself.
• Humor Perspective — That is why “sense of humor” is listed in the top half of the Mood Elevator. When life gets extreme and we become overwhelmed, we can choose to laugh or cry. Which one are you more inclined to do? Learning to laugh at the occasional absurdity of life can help us maintain access to the upper levels of wisdom and clearer thinking.
• Faith, Hope, and Optimism — Senn points out that one way to have hope is by having faith. Faith that there will be an answer, that you can handle it, and that it will somehow work out. Faith and hope are often linked because faith gives us hope, and hope creates possibilities and healthier thinking.

We have been given the gift and power of thought, along with the consciousness and the ability to experience feelings generated by these thoughts. It is through these gifts that we experience life. The key to understanding the role of thought is knowing that thought takes us up and down the Mood Elevator. By learning to control our thoughts, we can ride our Mood Elevator more effectively.

“Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.”

–John Wooden