I found recently that my mood was lower than it normally is and had to question why? Usually, I am a pretty happy character and feel content and positive. I had to stop and really look into why I was feeling a bit “off”. What I realised, was that there was nothing different in my life and nothing wrong, I was simply immersing my brain in some heavy material.

I am an avid reader and found a new author I loved, who unfortunately, writes serial killer books and they were getting darker as I went along. Added to that, as a family, we were watching a television drama series also focusing on this theme (coincidence only!!). Essentially of an evening, I was filling my brain with negative images and thoughts then sleeping on that.

Whilst these were both absorbing stories which I was enjoying, I came to realise that I was filling my brain with so much negativity, that I was lowering my mood. So, I ditched the author and found a “happy” book to read and switched up my tv viewing also.

The result was that I was back to my happy self within a day or so. It made me really reflect on how much our brain and what is running through it, often without us realising, can directly impact how we feel.

We have no direct control over how we feel, but we can target our thoughts and turn them into a more positive focus to help us feel better. Of course, we can’t just “think” ourselves out of something like depression. But we can make small adjustments and those small adjustments can in turn make us feel slightly better which in turn can help us make other changes in our lives. It has a positive flow on effect.

As an example, say I am having a romantic dinner with my partner and he is running late. Now I can focus on the fact that he is late and start letting that negative dialogue build in my brain. It might go something like this:

“He is late again. I can’t believe it, he knew I was excited about this, gosh he is annoying”.

“He still isn’t here, our food is going cold, it is going to be disgusting by the time he gets here”.

“He always let’s me down. If this was his mates he would be on time. He is so selfish.”

“I don’t think I even want to have dinner with him now. He obviously doesn’t care.”

Now I am probably unaware that I am even thinking these thoughts, I have just let them have free reign in my now angry brain. I have gone from feeling excited to see him to feeling hurt and angry at him. And all he has done is be a bit late for dinner. Putting that in perspective, it probably isn’t that big a deal, but I have let this moment take over.

Now imagine he walks in the door, 30 minutes late. Again, not that big a deal but he is apologetic and says that he left early but there was a traffic jam and he had no charge in his phone. I am so irritated now from my negative thinking that I sit and have dinner with him but I am grumpy and it is a horrible experience for both of us.

Now if I had taken control of my thinking and been aware to keep it positive, it may have gone something more like this:

“He is late again. I can’t believe it, he knew I was excited about this, gosh he is annoying”.

“Oh well, it’s only dinner, I know he was looking forward to it too. I hope he is ok, must have got caught at work or something. Hopefully he will be home soon”.

“He’s still not here. Maybe I should put the food in the oven. I guess if it is spoiled, we can always order pizza, that would be like old times when we couldn’t afford fancy meals”.

“I hope he is ok, I am a bit worried. I’m sure he just got caught at work. I love his work ethic, he probably just forgot the time. Hopefully he will be here soon”.

You can see from this dialogue, I am keeping focused on the positive, keeping perspective and problem solving.

He walks in the door 30 minutes later and I greet him with a kiss and ask why he was late. He responds that he is really sorry, traffic was bad and his phone was dead. I tell him no problem and we have a great night together.

You can see how different my evening was from how I thought about the same event. My relationship was also directly impacted by my thinking.

How we think can impact everything in our lives from our personal happiness, to friendships, work, parenting and romantic relationships. How do we do this then?

It is actually quite difficult to keep our thoughts in a positive direction all the time because watching for the negative is how we stay safe. It is a basic human instinct. But we need to learn to tune into our dialogue and try and manage it into a positive focus.

Naturally there are times when things are not so easy to deal with. Nobody ever had a car crash and had positive dialogue around that, but the degree of negative dialogue matters too.

How do we start to train our brains to think positively?

• When you first wake up, try and think about your day and find a couple of positive things in it. It may be as simple as the weather is nice or you had a good sleep. They don’t need to be big things, anything works, it is a great way to start the day.
• During the day, stop and focus again on what is in your head. Have you been positive or negative? Small things in our day can cause all sorts of thinking and can make or break our day so tune in.
• Everyone has heard of the gratitude list. It may sound like self-help nonsense but it is a wonderful way of getting perspective. Write a list of the things in your life you are grateful for. Big, small, anything that matters to you. Often it is things we take for granted but if you didn’t have them, you would feel the loss. What are those things?
• The next time you are feeling low, pull out your gratitude list and remind yourself of what is good in your life.
• If you feel yourself thinking a negative thought, stop and examine it, how can you spin that thought into something more positive? Maybe you just need to put some perspective around it.
• If you are focused on a negative event, try asking yourself if it will matter in a few months time. If the answer is “no”, then maybe you need to switch up your dialogue around it to something more positive.

It can be draining trying to fix our thinking but it can have a wonderful impact on our lives. Remember that you can’t fix depression just by changing your thinking so please don’t put pressure on yourself if you can’t do this. It is hard to do when we are feeling low and doesn’t feel real either.

Practice and small steps and always being kind to yourself are the best starting point.

If you need help to work on your thinking or your mood, please reach out.