Mood Follows Action

When we are feeling down, one of the best things we can do to help change our mental state is to change our physical state.

Please note: the following ideas are in reference to helping manage mild feelings of sadness or lack of motivation, which is different to a mental health issue. If you are concerned that you or your friend’s moods may be a sign of something more serious, please follow this link for help.

Conventional wisdom holds that motivation leads to action: the better you feel, the more likely you are to do something positive. However, motivation is a feeling, and it is hard to control our thoughts and the subsequent feelings they generate. Therefore, when motivation dwindles, the best thing you can do to change your mood is to change your behaviour.

Mood follows action

In these uncertain and challenging times it is absolutely understandable that our emotions are intensified. The smallest thing, such as burning a slice of toast, can make you crumble in a heap. I had one of those moments last week - I woke up feeling a little sad, it was really cold, my printer wasn’t working, and well, COVID all had me feeling … meh. After lunch I didn’t feel satisfied, so tried a (large) handful of nuts. Nope, didn’t do it. My daughter had just made some cookies so I thought I’d better sample one (OK, it was two), then I finished off the leftover chocolate chips that hadn’t made it into the cookies. Now I was starting to feel pretty rotten. I was meant to be writing this blog but started scrolling through Instagram, wasting time, feeling full, grumpy and sad.

I knew that the only way out of this moment was to take action, to change my current behaviour. The last thing I felt like doing was exercise, but I have been doing this for long enough to know that it could most likely break this little cycle of sadness I was in. So I put on the music and picked up my weights. Within about two minutes I was singing along to the music and feeling much better. Although this is a small sample size (of one) I can confirm that mood DOES follow action!

If you wait until you feel good in order to make changes in your life, you will most likely be waiting for a very long time. You don’t have to feel great, or even good for that matter, to act. Consistently doing something over a period of time may increase motivation a little, but it’s the decision to take the action over and over again that builds motivation, not the other way around. If motivation alone really worked, New Year’s resolutions would actually result in change (statistically two-thirds of people have broken their New Year’s resolutions by the end of January).

Start with behaviour

In order to ensure change, focus on what you can control, which is your behaviour. Behaviours are concrete and are the control panel for what happens next. If we want to shift the way we function in our daily life, it’s not enough to simply change the way we think, we need to start by changing our actions and behaviours first. Change your behaviour and your thoughts, habits, feelings and perceptions will change.

show up

Start by turning up and acting in service of your core values, even when you don’t want to. That’s the only way you will become them. If you value health and fitness, make exercise a priority, even when you don’t want to. You may not change the world at that training session, but you might change your mood just a little. If you are feeling down, get up and go for a walk, do an online fitness session, call a friend who lifts you up, or read a book that makes you happy. Change your state and you can change your mood.