Tracking my moods was not a topic I ever thought I’d be sharing with a public audience.
Yet here I am, ready to spill the beans on my odd yet life-changing mood tracking techniques.
So let’s get down to how I got started with tracking my moods.
In one short, scary-looking word: DEPRESSION.
I have lived through some ass-kicking, soul-crushing bouts of depression. The kind of depression that leaves you gasping for air and wondering why what the hell you did to deserve it. The few times I’ve experienced this sort of depression, it drained me of my authentic self and replaced it with a self-loathing version stuck in unhealthy habits and destructive patterns. Depression has sucked the life out of me on multiple occasions.
After one such episode, I decided enough is enough.
I began plotting my way back to my authentic self.
I need to break the chains that had been bonding me to anxiety and depression. In his compelling book Breaking The Habit Of Being Yourself, Dr. Joe Dispenza dives into this topic on a deeper level.
But on this post, we will stick to the tracking of moods which leads to further insight into oneself.
I was craving more joy, passion, and freedom within myself. I knew it was there, I just needed to learn how to manage and overcome the thoughts, feelings, and actions that were holding me back from the person I so desperately wanted to be.
This was when I discovered the power of tracking my moods.
MY CURIOUS DISCOVERY OF MOOD TRACKING
Keeping track of anything in life can seem tedious. I first started tracking myself with calories back in college because I wanted to see exactly how much junk food was eating quantitatively. I was trying to lose a little belly flab and get that six-pack I never had back for the ladies. So, I began to run at night, track my calories, and quit unhealthy habits I had at the time. It helped, but I gave up on the tracking after a while. I was in my early 20’s and wasn’t in the mood for serious health talk.
Fast forward over a decade later.
The nasty bout of depression hit me like a brick wall. I was blindsided and sent flying through the air towards a dark, dreary four-month existence. I knew I couldn’t go on avoiding the more profound pain within me that was triggering this depression. That was the crux of it, the external events we’re the gasoline, while the inner stored pain was the actual fire. It took me close to thirty-five years to come to this revelation. I wasn’t going to solve any of my problems by avoiding the outer events in my life, because those external events would always be there. You can’t always avoid pain, drama, negativity, shitty situations, death, hurtful people, and unhealthy events. They have been around for as long as humans have walked this earth.
That begged the question: how do I manage this depression from a personal perspective?
MEASURING AND MANAGING PAIN
I had to figure out a way to measure the pain to manage it.
But what does that mean?
Well, I had a hard time answering this question until I started “measuring” my pain.
Then, over time, it clicked.
By keeping track of my pain, my moods, and my emotional triggers, I could then measure the effects that they had on my everyday life. Quite literally, I could see how these moods we’re controlling my life. You can tell which people, places, and situations cause you the most emotional uneasiness. This is a valuable discovery since many of us walk through our lives unconsciously, never taking the time to think about how we are thinking. We just go on auto-pilot. This can be dangerous when our thoughts are mostly negative because they then create negative emotions that create negative actions that create a negative state of being.
A QUICK SPORTS ANALOGY
You’re the best player on your high school basketball team. Typically, you have no problem scoring twenty points per game, but recently, your scoring average has dropped below twelve per game. You are missing easy shots that you usually make, feeling more tired and lethargic, and not quite on par with your usual level of focus. But you’ve been playing the same way you always play, and nothing is new with your teammates or coaching staff. So after a few weeks of scoring well below your average, you begin to track a few things such as; the number of shots taken in practice, sleeping patterns, diet, and personal life.
Has anything significant changed that could affect you on the basketball court?
After tracking yourself for a few weeks, the answer became clear as day. You had broken up with your significant other the same week that you started playing poorly. This, in turn, affected your sleeping patterns, which in turn made you more tired at practice, which in turn affected your more inferior play during practice and then in the games.
Bingo…now you know the problem.
The fix may be managing the emotions of your breakup more healthily so you can get more sleep, feel more rested and focused, and stay late after practice for your fifty extra shots.
Now, this is an exaggerated and obvious example, but my goal is to show you how tracking areas of your life can be beneficial.
HOW DOES TRACKING MOODS, PAIN, AND THOUGHT PATTERNS IMPROVE ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION?
There are many reasons. But let’s start with the basics.
As I’ve mentioned above, tracking any area of your life will give you valuable feedback into trends, patterns, and habits you are living. Once you have an understanding of how you’ve been living, you can then go about making the appropriate changes. There’s a reason why many pro athletes will go back and rewatch themselves playing in the most recent game; it’s to critique and correct any mistakes they may have made, and also to see what they are doing well so they can keep doing it.
Your moods are no different. By tracking them for months, you will have a wealth of information about yourself that was free to acquire, and that has both short and long-term benefits.
Understanding your thought patterns and stemming emotions will pay dividends when you’re battling against anxiety and depression.
Why?
Because tracking your moods gives you an essential tool in your toolbox: SELF-REFLECTION.
Once I began tracking my moods, I instantly noticed a trend; I was almost always more depressed in the morning than at any other time of the day. I never thought much about it before I began tracking my moods, I had just assumed I was anxious and depressed most of the time or the right amount of the time. But that wasn’t the case. It turns out my nights we’re pretty good; it was the morning’s and sometime early afternoon’s that we’re the worst. And that made it feel like it was all the time.
After I saw that my mornings were my worst, I started to focus my attention on making them work for me. I went to bed earlier so that I felt more rested; I set my alarm for the same time and began to work out first thing in the morning; and I would start my day with deep breathing and something I enjoyed like meditation, video games, or reading, to get my mind off of any worries that usually would pop up.
After a while, my mornings became less anxious, less depressed, and more enjoyable. This, in turn, affected the rest of my day positively.
HOW TO TRACK YOUR MOODS
You can track your moods in a number of ways.
Here’s how I have tracked mine:
- Get a piece of paper (or you can use a computer) and write down the current date.
- Then next to the date, write “M” for the morning, “A” for the afternoon, and “E” for the evening. Give yourself a little space in between each letter.
- Morning’s are from whenever you get up until noon. The afternoons are from noon until 5 pm. The evenings are from 5 pm until you go to bed.
- You then track your mood from 1-10. A “1” means you’re in an awful mood, while a “10” means you’re in an excellent mood.
- I recommend doing this for at least a few months. I do mine in three, six, nine, and twelve-month increments.
- After you finish tracking your moods, you then create an Excel Sheet and mark the three columns that represent morning, afternoon, evening. Each row represents a new date. Add in all of your data. When you have everything added, take the sum for each column and divide them by the number of days you tracked. That will give you an average number for each time window (morning, afternoon, evening) so you can then see where you struggle and make the proper adjustments.
- After you begin making the appropriate changes in your life to manage your anxiety or depression, go back and track again to see if said changes are working. If they not, then you know you need to go a different route.
IN REVIEW
Tracking your moods, albeit tedious at times, can play a significant role in helping to manage both anxiety and depression. I have been doing this exercise on and off now for years in different areas of my life. The benefits are real. The journey of self-discovery and deconstructing your inner workings is exciting and rewarding. If you are currently struggling, give this exercise a try. Find your patterns. Work on changing the root causes of those patterns. The results will be a healthier version of yourself.
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