I mentioned recently that one of my favorite things is my daily meditation book, Meditations for People Who Worry by Anne Wilson Schaef. Yesterday’s meditation talked about bad moods. The timing was uncanny because Tuesday I was in a rotten mood for no particularly good reason. Sometimes bad moods just happen. A friend of mine recently shared the quote, “Was it a bad day? Or was it a bad 5 minutes that you milked all day?” Tuesday I was a milkmaid.
In the meditation, Schaef talks about how “catchy” bad moods can be for the people around us. It is so true. How many times have you walked into a store, or a restaurant, or a salon and just felt the negative energy in the air? You feel yourself being repulsed and you don’t even know why. In an ideal world, we all have the healthy boundaries to say that the other person’s lousy mood is all about them. It doesn’t have anything to do with us and we remain our happy little Pollyanna selves. That is correct in theory, but most of us have a little sponginess in us that soaks some of that negativity right up. Schaef says that when we are in a bad mood (it happens), it is our responsibility to own it and to warn others of our mental state. She says to kindly assure others around us that our mood state is “ours” and it has nothing to do with them. Let them know that we need a little space, which most people are happy to give to people in crummy moods. Even if we know someone’s bad mood isn’t related to our doings, angry, grumpy people aren’t the most fun people to be around. She says that this “warning device” is the best for all parties involved. Of course, when you are in a really bad mood you can always take the more selfish advice of Bill Watterson (creator of the cartoon Calvin and Hobbes): “Nothing helps a bad mood like spreading it around.” That could be more fun.