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Everybody experiences changes in moods, some people more than others, but nobody is a stranger to mood swings. You aren’t alone if there are times when you feel gloomy or elated for no reason at all, or for reasons you aren’t sure of. While we interact with the world, there is a lot going on inside us as well that also shapes how we feel at any given moment.
You may not be able to control what the world throws at you, but you can manage how your emotions respond as a result. But first you must understand how different things affect you emotionally.
What is mood journaling?
Mood journaling is making a note of your mood and related details, like what you were doing and what happened when you felt that way. When you do this mindfully and regularly you are mood journaling.
Why should you mood journal?
Mood journaling is a simple activity to help you develop self-awareness, and more resilience to mood-swings by identifying common triggers for different feelings. For example, you might think that you feel tired after exercising but your mood journal might make you realise that you feel tired and lethargic on days you don't exercise. Unsurprisingly, research suggests that mood journaling reduces instances of negative mood and reduces impulsivity.
How can you start mood journaling?
Step 1: Decide when you can do it.
Think of times in the day when you have a few minutes to pause and reflect. The time you start the day and when you are getting ready to go to bed can be two of these, the others can be while you are at work and later in the evening when you are getting back home.
The choice is yours because you know your routine best, when your moods tend to change and what you are looking to understand from this exercise. For example, if you are wondering whether you should change your job and want to know exactly how you feel at work, you may like to pick before, during and after office time slots.
Step 2: Ask yourself, what is the emotion I am feeling right now?
This is really about connecting with your body and mind. How is your body doing - is it tense? Is your mind racing or calm? Breathing slowly and deeply can help you focus on yourself.
Step 3: Write down all the words that describe your mood best.
It can be as simple as happy / sad, or be a complex set of emotions like excited, hopeful, nervous / tired, sleepy, pessimistic, sad. Now if you had to pick one umbrella emotion what would it be? Write that down separately in bold.
Step 4: Make note of what could have caused these feelings.
Next to the mood entry mention what you are doing and anything that may have happened to make you feel this way. You can stick a picture there too.
‘Every-fortnight or so, look back at your entries and try to find patterns.
How does your mood change over the course of a day, over a week,
are you happier while doing certain activities or at certain times of day,
are there particular things that put you in a good mood?’
When you start doing this, you’ll try to organise it so that analysing it later is easier. It may seem really confusing so we have put together a few ideas to help you.
3 Easy ways to orgainse your mood journal
1. Use colours to represent different moods. When you make a note of a mood you are in, use the respective colour’s pen to write it. Studying many mood entries together with the help of colours is easier. Glancing over the pages where you have been noting your mood-colours can give you quick insights into which moods dominate and whether there is a pattern. To keep it simple, you can use a color to denote the big mood you are feeling - the umbrella mood that is holding all other emotions under it.
2. Define a format for your mood entries. On excel or a diary you can create columns for different parts of a mood entry; for example, the umbrella mood, other feelings, what you are doing, and anything that happened. If you are using a diary you can consider using a children’s mathematics notebook - the one with little squares. If you are using colors to define the umbrella moods you can color one column of the squares for each mood entry.
3. Use a mood tracking mobile app. There are many apps on both Play Store and App Store that allow you to make mood entries and analyse them over time.
Download a mood journaling app that has;
Different ways to note your emotions: Allows you to note your moods in a way you are comfortable such as on a 1-5 scale or by giving you a range of emotions to choose from and a choice to use smilies or colours to express yourself.
Quick analytics: Provides the kind of analytics you want s.a. a mood graph to show you trends, a pie chart to show which moods are entered more frequently, a word cloud of emotions entered by you, daily mood trends, etc.
Social and private features: Most mood journaling apps are private in nature, i.e. the entries stay with you and you can’t share them directly from the app. This is great if you are introspecting and want to keep some aspects of your emotional life to yourself.
However, we are social beings. Most of our emotional highs and lows have to do with the people in our lives and being comforted when feeling down, or having someone to share our joys with, makes most of us feel better. There are a few apps out there that focus on this, by making mood sharing easy, intuitive and promote social connectedness.
My Mood Circle is an app in which you can quickly update your mood by swiping and posting pictures, videos or text. These mood-posts are shareable with your close circle of friends and can be easily seen as colours against your profile picture and posts. It also creates an easy to read mood-color graph so that you can visually see the ups and downs of your own and your close one's moods.
The bottom line is that there are different ways to create a mood journal, and there is something for everyone. No matter how old you are, how sorted in life, mood journaling is a big step towards understanding yourself better.
* * This article has been verified by a certified psychologist.
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