291: How to Boost Your Baseline Mood

You are listening to the Vibrant Happy Women podcast. I’m Dr. Jen Riday and in this episode I’ll be talking about how to boost your baseline mood. Stay tuned.

Hi, I'm Jen Riday. This podcast is for women who want to feel more vibrant, happy, aligned, and alive. You'll gain the emotional, physical, and spiritual tools you need to get your sparkle back and ensure that depression, anxiety, and struggle don't rule your life. Welcome to the Vibrant Happy Women Podcast.

Hey, my friends. I am coming to you from a place of solitude. I have been completely alone in a hotel in Chicago for a week. And, oh, what bliss. No humans to be responsible for, no laundry, no dishes, all the things, just a moment to breathe and to remember who I am as an independent human. And a moment to have clarity about what I want to do in this next chapter of my life, the next year, whatever. So, it has been blissful, euphoric, wonderful.

I want to challenge you to find a way to do that for yourselves. You deserve it. You need it. You are not just a mom. You are not just a wife, or an employee, or a friend. You are a human being first. And as part of that being that comes along with being human I hope that you can be your most vibrant and happy, calm, grounded, peaceful, centered self. You deserve that. Your loved ones deserve that and they need that.

Now, you might get a hotel. You might go stay with a friend. You might, who knows what, go camping. You might even join us for the Vibrant Happy Women retreat happening in Florida in early February. Whatever you choose, find a way to recharge and remember who you are independent from everything that’s been going on in your life. It can bring you so much clarity.

Well, today I want to talk to you about raising your emotional baseline. What do I mean by this? There is a scale, I call it the emotion scale. Some emotions feel icky. Some emotions feel amazing. Well, these aren’t just random but they actually move from most icky, most uncomfortable to most amazing. So, let’s say that the lowest emotions, let’s imagine them being negative numbers and the higher emotions being positive numbers. Maybe we say minus 10 to plus 10.

Well, down in the minus 10s you have shame and guilt, somewhere above that, depression. I’ll just kind of say some of the emotions that would move you up the emotion scale. Envy, anger, worry, doubt, overwhelm, frustration, boredom. And now we move into more of the positive numbers, feeling content, feeling hopeful, feeling optimistic, feeling happy, enthusiastic, empowered, loving, joyful. You get the idea.

Well, along the scale the emotion scale you have what is called an emotional baseline. It is the range of emotion that you feel most often. So let me ask you a question. What is your emotional baseline? Is it angry? Is it frustrated? Is it sad and depressed? Is it happy, enthusiastic, joyful? There is no right or wrong answer and there is no need to shame yourself for where you fall on the scale. The fact is most of us learned our emotional baselines from our families of origin, from our parents.

Now, we all want to be independent humans and to improve upon things that we learned as a child. We want to pass on better skills for the next generation. So, it is my intention to teach you in this episode how to raise your emotional baseline. So, if you consistently feel depressed, sad or discouraged, maybe you could raise your baseline to be more of content, or hopeful. If you consistently feel angry or worried maybe we could raise that baseline to optimism. We can work on this every day, the way we might work on lifting weights.

So how do we do this? Well, we start with question one, finding out how you feel now. How do you feel right now? Be honest, and if you’re not sure just rank from negative 10 to positive 10. I’m feeling about at a four. I’m feeling optimistic or happy. Okay, so you rank where you are. And then you ask yourself the next question: how do I want to feel? Well, I would love to feel loving. I would love to feel joyful, empowered, enthusiastic, ecstatic. I’d love to be at a positive 10. Who wouldn’t?

And then you have to decide how can you bridge that gap? So, there are a number of things that can help you bridge that gap. A big one is simply moving your body. I don’t know how many times I have been on the dance floor. But moving my body to music makes me feel completely joyful, even euphoric. I love the feeling of just dancing all out. A good walk can accomplish the same thing for me. Simply standing up instead of sitting can do that for you, so moving your body.

Then you can also work on changing your thoughts. What are you thinking? Now, this one I’m going to go a little deeper in. I have spent many years working on changing a story I have about my marriage. And that story is that my husband is not empathetic. He doesn’t really care about me because he doesn’t feel what I feel.

I’ve had another story that our family is dysfunctional. Well, I have mostly let go of those thoughts but I’m still working on them. The way I do that is this. I know what I have been feeling and thinking based on what I just shared. I’ve been feeling and thinking that he doesn’t really love me. That thought causes me to feel disappointment or disillusionment, not a very positive emotion. Well, to fix this I need to figure out what I do want to feel. I do want to feel in love in my relationship. What does love feel like? Well, love to me is the feeling of being cherished, adored, admired and valued.

Now, imagine feeling those things, admired, cherished, adored, valued. It’s such a good feeling. So, I could spend my time wanting to feel this. Knowing I’m currently feeling disillusioned, how do I bridge the gap between the two, what I’m feeling now and how I want to feel? Well, I practice feeling what I want to feel. So, I could practice, what would it feel like to feel admired, cherished, valued, adored, what would that feel like?

I can also flip it around and practice feeling those things for my spouse, generating admiration for him, practicing adoring him, practicing cherishing him, generating that gratitude and those thoughts of valuing him. If I practice that a little each day I can slowly raise my emotional baseline. Our brains take the thoughts that we think most often and turn them from little dirt paths, into roads, into super highways.

So, if you have felt discouraged, depressed, sad, angry, frustrated, worried, there is probably a thought you’ve been thinking a lot that keeps you stuck at that emotional level. If you’d like to raise your emotional baseline, yes, move your body, that helps a lot. But also analyze what you’ve been thinking. What thoughts are keeping you down in the basement of those negative one to negative 10s? What do you want to feel? How do you bridge the gap? Move your body, change your thoughts. Practice feeling the emotion you want to feel.

Now, this is not easy sometimes. With my husband there are still some things I need to forgive and let go of. But I notice immediately if I start to dwell on the things he doesn’t do the way I want, the things he says that aren’t as empathetic as I would love, then my emotional score on the emotion scale drops into the negatives. And there I am further reinforcing being in the emotional basement, in the low vibe emotions. So, I have to practice staying in the energy of love, or staying in the energy of joy, or staying in the energy of abundance.

Every time you practice, just like when you lift weights, your brain will start to turn that pathway into a road, and then into a super highway which makes your emotional baseline higher. Your brain will automatically begin to think more of those high vibe, high emotion, pleasant feeling thoughts. So, do you see how this works? And the benefits go beyond how you feel.

When you feel amazing about your spouse or about your kids instead of those low vibe emotions of doubt, worry, frustration, anger, hate, envy, depression, shame or guilt, when you feel optimistic, hopeful, enthusiastic, happy, empowered, loving, joyful, your emotion is contagious. They will start to reciprocate the emotion you were showing toward them. I have seen this so many times.

How would it feel for you if your spouse suddenly came to you in an energy of constantly cherishing, admiring, adoring and valuing you? You would feel amazing. You would probably start to react differently because your spouse has changed the pattern. When you have the same power, if you take 100% responsibility for how you feel, what you think about your spouse, about your kids, about your life, about your wealth, about your health then you can change how you feel. It will end up changing how you behave. It will end up changing your results.

You can generate the exact feeling you want in your relationships just by practicing. So, my challenge to you is to practice today feeling what you want to feel. Step one, figure out where you are right now, negative 10 to positive 10. Figure out where you want to be and then figure out how to close that gap, how to bridge that gap. You can move your body, that helps a lot. Maybe you go hug or touch someone, maybe you write some affirmations.

But most of all I want to challenge you to practice feeling the emotion you want to feel, generating it in your body, generating love for your spouse, generating love for your kids, generating all of those feelings of cherishing, valuing, adoring and admiring. Because for me those are the energy of love. You’ve got this. You can be 100% responsible. You know, they say marriage and love are not 50/50, it needs to be 100/100.

So, take that step, practice every morning maybe when you’re brushing your teeth, feeling the energy of cherishing, adoring, admiring and valuing your spouse, your kids, yourself, your mother-in-law, your mom, your dad, whoever is in your life. Practice it. Raise your emotional baseline. You’ve got this my friends, you deserve and can feel however you want to feel. I love you. Have a good week. Until next time, take care.

If you enjoy this podcast, you have to check out the Vibrant Happy Women Club. It’s my monthly group coaching program where we take all this material to the next level and to get you the results that will blow your mind. Join me in the Vibrant Happy Women Club at jenriday.com/join.