Mastering Moods That Matter

     From Churchill to Oprah to professional football player Michael Oher (subject of the film The Blind Side), plenty of wildly successful people experienced less than perfect childhoods. In spite of circumstances beyond their control, each thrived, mastering personal moods and especially fears. During the worst of times, hope and positive expectation led them to people and circumstances that changed the course of their lives for the better. The point is this: No matter what is happening around you, no matter what the government or others are doing, you can choose how to feel and where to put your attention.

     Paying acute attention to how you feel is one of LodeStar Universal's important guiding principles for working with leaders. (Remember, lodestar means guiding principle and is the philosophical foundation on which the company rests.) Unlike many others in consulting, who rely exclusively on quantitative and analytical information, we help clients focus on strengths and turning those strengths into powerful opportunities. Although there's nothing wrong per se with the quant side of things, we simply believe that there's more to the equation than pure "logic." We help you build a bridge to optimism, where the juice, jazz, and great opportunities flow like water released from a dam.

     As for the importance of moods, compelling new research puts the case for mastering our moods with conscious effort at the forefront of our though processes. Mastering moods has an immediate impact, a short-range impact, and a broad, long-range universal impact. It is more powerful and concrete than most people imagine as evidenced in John Casti's new book Mood Matters: From Rising Skirt Lengths to the Collapse of World Power. A senior research scholar at an international think tank near Vienna, Austria, Casti's book explores the emerging science of Socionomics. This science is based on this concept: Societal moods heavily bias the kinds of world events that happen - not the other way around, as most people think.

     In other words, stock markets, terrorists, and politicians influence the state of our world far less than our moods bias events. What matters more than who is in office is whether or not we are in a state of optimism or pessimism as a group. This is not my opinion. It's what the research tells us.

     When in a state of optimism, we bias events in an optimistic direction, and when pessimistic, the opposite is true. The good news about optimism and pessimism is we can choose to be one or the other. Dr. Martin Seligman, author of Learned Optimism and long-time advocate for the benefits of choosing optimism over pessimism in life has been preaching the gospel of optimism for decades--as have I and the word we do at LodeStar Universal. I have continued to learn myself about what optimism means and its many nuances.

     So what can you do to master your moods and what can you expect as a result for going to the effort? There are dozens of exercises we use at LodeStar Universal in working with executive teams. For the purposes of his article, here's one fast technique, The 17-Second Rule:

Notice how you currently feel.
Anything less than peaceful and happily expectant needs attention (overwhelmed, anxious, annoyed, irritated, judgmental, or hurried are indications for needing attention).
Think about something you enjoy or that makes you feel upbeat - hamburgers, petting your dog, a child's smile, the fall weather - anything.
Hold that thought for 17 seconds. Time it if you need to do so. Just hold the optimistic feeling for at least 17 seconds (if you want to hold it longer, that's great, too; but 17 seconds is enough to get your energy going in the right direction).
Now, return to daily tasks.

If you will do this a few times a day, you will gradually train yourself

to higher awareness of the ebb and flow your daily feelings
to realize how quickly and easily you can shift the non-productive feelings into the positive by changing what you dwell on
to pay more attention to your feelings overall
to notice when things don't "feel" right early before the negative is embedded

When you make decisions from a place of fear, frustration, anxiety, or any other of the more negative feelings, it almost never, ever turns out well. When you are centered in well-being, your decisions will be on-target for more well-being. In other words, you will be acutely attuned to the positive opportunities that present themselves rather than the negative ones that often are "wolves in sheep's clothing." That's the beginning, the tip of the iceberg. It's a start.

When your mom said, "Put on a happy face," she wasn't kidding. Neither am I. The world depends on it.