I don't have to be in the mood I'm in

There's a possibility this will feel almost offensively obvious, which it was for me when I realised it.

But apparently I spent like 30 years of my life believing that once I was in a bad mood, I just… lived there.

Not forever, obviously (I wasn’t forwarding my post).

But if I woke up pissed off, overwhelmed, anxious, defeated, irritated by the sound of somebody breathing three rooms away, then that was simply The Mood Of The Day.

Weather system: awful

Visibility: poor

Chance of me interpreting absolutely everything through the lens of said horrid mood: 98%

And the really annoying thing I’ve realised recently is, that I don’t actually have to stay in the mood I’m in.

I KNOW.

Groundbreaking.

Someone alert the scientific community 👀

But I don’t mean I can just decide to be happy, that particular flavour of advice makes me want to bite furniture.

I mean that I can notice the state I’m in and do something that changes my state before I ask myself to deal with whatever put me there. There’s a very big difference.

The thing causing the bad mood might still be, and often is completely legitimate.

Maybe I’m worried about money.

Maybe somebody has upset me.

Maybe I’ve got too much to do.

Maybe something I tried hasn’t worked.

Maybe I’m scared of doing the next thing.

Maybe I’ve slept like my son in the first 8 months of his life (not at all if you were wondering).

Going for a walk doesn’t magically resolve any of that, neither does dancing to an aggressively loud song in my kitchen cause money to spontaneously appear in my bank account.

Doing a PQ rep doesn’t answer the email.

Shaking my entire body like a wet dog does not make the difficult decision for me.

The problem is still there, but I come back to it totally differently.

And THAT is the bit I’m becoming obsessed with.

Because think about what happens when we’re in a shitty state. The problem starts becoming the entire room. There’s the thing itself, and then there’s everything our brain starts building around the thing.

I’m behind.

-> This always happens.

-> I should have sorted this by now.

-> Why can everybody else manage this?

-> I’ve buggered it all up.

-> I knew this wouldn’t work.

-> Maybe I need a completely different business.

-> Maybe I should delete Instagram.

Maybe I should move to a small cottage in the Yorkshire Dales and communicate exclusively through paintings of cows...

By this point we’re not solving the original problem anymore. We’re solving the original problem plus the 78 additional problems my inner circus has constructed, staffed and opened to the public.

My Judge is on the door.

My Hyper Achiever has a clipboard.

My Stickler has noticed several breaches of health and safety.

People Pleaser is currently checking whether everyone else is enjoying themselves.

Fantastic. No wonder I can’t think straight and feel like the world may very well be ending.

But let's take a breath, because here’s where Scientist Lauren gets interested.

I’ve spent a lot of my life believing that the most sensible thing to do when there is a problem is to think harder about the problem.

More analysis.

More effort.

Stay at the desk.

Figure it out.

Do not stop until you have The Answer.

Except I’m increasingly discovering that sometimes the most useful thing I can do for my thinking...

is stop thinking.

Sometimes that looks like choosing to move my body, or put music on. Get myself outside or doing PQ reps.

Maybe it's even paint something or go for a walk for half an hour.

Change something, what I can see, what I can hear, what my body is doing (no seriously, have you ever had writers block and simply moved seats!?).

Then come back.

The problem was and probably still is a problem, but the reality is that my first interpretation of the problem wasn’t necessarily the only one available to me.

And that distinction, my experimental and creative friend, is enormous.

When I’m overwhelmed, I can see fewer possibilities.

When I’m defensive, everything sounds slightly more threatening.

When I’m ashamed, every solution seems to begin with me needing to become a substantially better human being.

When I’m frightened, the safest option suddenly develops an extremely persuasive marketing department.

But give me half an hour?

Move me, let my nervous system settle and get my inner circus stop shouting quite so loudly and sometimes I come back and think

"Oh! Hang on. What if I did this?!"

The circumstances haven’t changed, but my access to my imagination definitely has.

And I think we massively underestimate how important imagination is when we’re trying to change our lives. We tend to file creativity under things like painting and writing and making weird little clay frogs.

Which, for the record, I fully support.

But creativity is also the thing that allows you to look at a situation you’ve experienced 100 times before and conceive of response number 101.

Imagination gets considerably harder when your brain believes it is fighting for survival.

This is why I’m not at all interested in giving people answers.

I don't think most capable, creative, brilliant people need another person standing over them going

“Have you considered being more consistent?”

OMG NO, I HADN’T. THANK GOD YOU’RE HERE.

Most of the people I want to work with already know an extraordinary amount. Quite often, they can tell me exactly what they should be doing.

The interesting questions are:

• Why can't you access that version of yourself when it matters?

• What happens in the moment between wanting the thing and doing the thing?

• What voice appears?

• What happens in your body?

• What story suddenly becomes true?

• What pattern takes over?

And, perhaps most importantly:

What conditions would let you see another possibility?

That’s the experiment.

Maybe we talk it through.

Maybe you need to hear the pattern out loud.

Maybe we discover your People Pleaser has been quietly running your pricing strategy for six years.

Maybe you need to make something.

I don’t know yet, but that's rather the point I dare to say. Because I don't want to hand you my answer. I want to create the conditions in which you can access more of yours.

That is what I’m building with A Season in the Studio.

Three months for the itchy, spicy, won’t leave you alone thing.

The novel.

The paintings.

The community.

The business idea.

The workshops.

The creative direction.

The thing you keep saying you’ll do when you have more time, confidence, clarity, energy, permission or evidence that it definitely won't go tits up.

Bring me that, and then we get curious about what actually happens when you try to move towards it.

Perhaps your strategy is perfectly good, perhaps we need to meet the version of you who has to carry it out and give them more ways to respond than the ones they've practised a thousand times before.

I’m starting to think that’s where an awful lot of change lives.

In noticing...

Oh.

I’m here again.

I know this place.

I know what I normally do from here.

What else is available?

Sometimes the answer might be profound, sometimes it might change your business, sometimes it might change how you relate to yourself.

And sometimes you might just need to shake like a wet Labrador for 45 seconds. This is a personal fave of mine when my shoulders have somehow migrated to living up by my ears...

Science is beautiful really, when we start to really use it instead of leaving it in the classrooms we all remember from school.

So today, we've come a long way from 'I don't have to be in a bad mood' and reached an interesting hypothesis.

If we take the time to choose to notice, things can look entirely differently from expected.

If you enjoy reading these, I'd love to hear from you by the way.

You can always send me an email, or find me over on the ol' Instagram with your thoughts and your own stories.

Chat soon scientists,

Lauren