Interrupt Your Pattern

At one point or another everyone gets stuck in a negative frame of mind. We find ourselves in a funk that’s just seemingly impossible to break out of. My friend at work and I call it wearing your “cranky pants” and it can be really hard to get them off sometimes.

What we need to do is interrupt our pattern. When we’re in these bad moods, it’s easy to focus on the fact that we’re in a bad mood and having trouble breaking out of it, which puts us in a worse mood and the cycle continues. It’s like when you can’t sleep at night and all you can think about is how you can sleep, which keeps you up even longer and on and on. We need to put our foot down eventually and say “Hey! I’m ready to be in a good mood now and I’m going to break this pattern!”

Now, however you interrupt your pattern is up to you, it just needs to be something new and different that you’re not used to doing. If you’ve been going straight home from work, in a bad mood and locking yourself in your room everyday then don’t go home after work, drive the opposite way and find a new restaurant to eat dinner at. If you’re stuck in the middle of work or school in a bad mood, go take a 10 minute break to give a homeless person a dollar. Anything that is a change to your daily routine will shift your state and give you an opportunity to start over in a better mood.

I was in a bit of a funk the past couple days after partying a little too hard in Vegas and spending a little too much money.  I felt like my life fell of course after all the great work I had been doing on my personal growth. So, instead of going straight home for another night of moping around, I stopped by the library on the way home, opened up an account and checked out a book. On the way home someone on the street commented on the book I was holding and I ended up having a great conversation with him and making a new friend. Obviously my previous routine of being in a bad mood the couple days wasn’t working so by simply changing up one course of action I opened the door to new possibilities and put myself in a much better place.

So use your imagination. The next time you find yourself in that repetitive cycle of sulking do something spontaneous and interrupt the pattern. Jog through the park, learn your favorite recipe and make it for your neighbor, jump in the pool of hotel you’re not staying at, howl at the moon, get out your old yearbooks, go on Pandora and listen to genre of music you never listen to. . . or write a blog ;)