Today I woke up in a pretty bad mood.
To be completely honest, I wasn’t even really wanting to write this blog post.
That’s how bad of a mood I was in.
Here’s the deal. Being in a bad mood sucks.
But it sucks even more for the people around you.
And to a point, choosing to persist in a bad mood only speaks to the beta mindset of giving away your power.
One of the best things you can do for your dating life (and in every other area of life) is to adopt a positive frame of mind, and create a destiny that actually fulfills you and satisfies you in life.
Don’t get it twisted. I’m not advocating that you always try to put on a pretty face or be a people pleaser.
I also understand that sometimes, you and I are going to get pissed off and angry.
And guess what?
There’s a time and a place for that. It happens to everyone, and we should get angry, frustrated, and annoyed sometimes.
But I’m also saying that if we’re always in a bad mood… well, there’s something else that needs to be said about that.
If you’re constantly, consistently, chronically waking up in a bad mood, or developing a bad mood every single day, that’s a symptom of something else… a symptom of a life that isn’t being lived on a true alpha-mentality path.
To take control of your destiny and truly embrace the alpha mentality, you have to learn how to defeat your bad moods before they even get a chance to get started.
I have enough life experience by now to know that the best way to defeat a bad mood is before it starts.
Here are some tips for how to do that.
1. Become Aware Of How Your Bad Mood Started
The more aware you become of what causes or triggers your bad moods, the more progress you can make toward stopping that same situation before it starts in the future.
This is a process of habit changing, and making big or small changes to your life that will help you to stop giving control of your life to the chaos outside of yourself.
This will also help you avoid stressful situations before they’re allowed to develop.
You may need to stop spending time around certain people.
You may need to start standing up for yourself, in ways that you haven’t before.
You may have to step away from activities that bring on stress or bad moods, and find alternatives.
One Example For Me Comes From My Work
Nothing will put me in a bad mood faster than trying to work with an incompatible client.
So for me, finding the right clients and nourishing those positive client relationships are a vital part of avoiding bad moods and stress before they happen.
2. Stop Giving A Fuck
No matter how perfect your life is, things are still going to happen that are going to piss you off…
…if you let them.
See, here’s the thing:
Stressful things, obnoxious things, and annoying things are still going to happen; regardless of how much work you do to try to make your life perfect.
You can’t control everything that happens in life.
And you can’t control what other people do.
But you can control how you respond to it, and whether or not you give a fuck about it.
Sometimes, improving your mood consistently in life requires you to stop letting other things, people, and situations bother you.
You only have so much energy.
You only have so many resources to devote to different situations in your life.
If a situation doesn’t directly require you to invest resources into it, it’s often best to just move past it and forget about it.
For Example…
Yesterday I was out taking a walk, and this big, jacked-up truck drove past me.
It was so obnoxiously loud that it literally hurt my ears.
It was so abrasively obnoxious that it legitimately threatened to put me in a seriously bad mood.
My anger literally spiked as the truck (which sounded like it didn’t have a muffler anymore) drove past.
But before the bad mood could settle in, I took a deep breath and resolved not to give a fuck about it.
I can’t control how someone else drives.
I can’t control how loud his truck is.
All I can do is control my state of mind, my mood, and my outlook on life.
The Truth Is, I Don’t Want To Give The Guy In The Loud Truck Power Over My Happiness
I want to control my happiness.
So I intentionally take back that control and refuse to give a fuck about that situation.
This is called taking our power back from the chaos, and it’s a vital step on the road to fully embracing the alpha mentality.
3. Be Grateful For The Good Things In Life
Life is full of ups and downs.
Some days may be really good, while others may be really challenging.
But I’ve learned that gratitude and a positive outlook always trump negativity and pessimism.
When my day is starting to get stressful, and when I’m threatened by a bad mood that I can feel rising up from inside of me, I try to remember the positive things.
When someone starts to stress me out or annoy me, I think about my friends, my family, my loved ones, and how good my life.
I think about how grateful I am to have the awesome life I have, and I feel empathy for the person who is annoying me… because odds are really good that their life probably isn’t as good as mine.
Instead of getting annoyed at that person, I try to think with empathy, and my attitude becomes one of helpfulness.
Instead of letting that person put me in a bad mood, I try to get myself into a positive mindset… a mindset where I desire to help them by spreading my own positive mood and outlook.
This can be very challenging. And it requires us to take a great deal of responsibility over our own emotional state.
It’s also important that we don’t tolerate any bullshit while doing this.
If someone is annoying you because of your attitude… well, that’s one thing. But if they’re actually acting out of line, you may need to have some ‘healthy confrontation’ to get them straightened out or out of your hair.
But At The Same Time, That’s Exactly What The Alpha Mentality Is All About
It’s about taking responsibility for ourselves.
It’s about becoming the best person we can possibly be, and striving to make a bigger difference in the world.
It’s about chasing excellence, always striving to be better, and always seeking to leave a lasting legacy of greatness in our wake.
4. Understand That Failure Is A Part Of Life
Sometimes, the biggest causes for my bad moods are rooted in feelings of failure.
I’m a very achievement-oriented person.
So when I go for too long without some kind of ‘win,’ or when I experience a ‘loss’ of some kind, it can really fuck with me.
Those ‘small wins’ are like my food and water. Without them, I can start to wither away. And when I’m in such a state, even the slightest things can piss me off.
But here’s the thing.
This is really rooted in the contrasting feelings of hopefulness and hopelessness.
Here’s what I mean by that.
See, when I’m experiencing wins in my life, it gives me hope for the future.
But when I’m experiencing losses, failures, or even a lack of wins, it tends to fuck with my headspace because I start to doubt that I’ve got what it takes to actually succeed in my life.
But here’s what you need to understand if you start to feel this way.
Failure is a natural part of life. It’s going to happen.
If you feel like a failure, go ahead and be angry about it for a little bit.
That’s fine.
But at a certain point, failure should start to feel less hopeless, and more hopeful.
This is a vital lesson that you must learn as you walk the alpha journey.
We must learn to accept the outcome of every situation with optimism, and create hope within ourselves that next time is another shot at victory… and if we continue to try, we will never truly fail.
This isn’t an easy thing to master. And in all honesty, I’m still working on it, every day.
But I get better and better at it.
And as I do, I come to realize that small failures don’t have near as much power over me as they used to.
Instead, I’m actually thankful for them, in an ironic sort of way.
Why?
Because I know that they hold vital lessons that I’m learning about my future, that’ll help me to avoid such failures again.
And that’s worth so much… it’s almost so useful that it feels like a win to fail for me at this point.
But in order for this to ‘click’ with you, you need to understand the value of creating ‘hope’ for yourself. You also need to understand the value of believing in what you’re doing, and committing to the long-game.
There’s no such thing as a ‘quick win’ when it comes to true success.
We all need to learn this.
In Conclusion
Having a bad mood sucks.
Being in a bad mood sucks.
But neither you nor I have to stay in that bad mood if we choose not to.
Remember that at the end of the day, we have ultimate power in deciding how we will live our lives and what our moods are going to be allowed to manifest within us.
Choose positivity.
Choose happiness.
Choose self-control.
Choose optimism.
Choose to embrace the good mood, and to snuff out the bad one before it’s allowed to start.
Go with grace, my friends, and never give up your power.
Until next time,
Joshua K. Sigafus