Is Low Mood a Thing?

I have days where I hate my job, this little town and the whole world, too. Last Sunday when the Bengals lost, Lord, it put me in a bad mood. These lyrics are from Montgomery Gentry's lucky man song and it might resonate with many of us. We all have days where everything seems to go wrong and our mood takes a hit. But recognizing these low moods and finding ways to improve them is crucial for our well being. Today we're diving into the topic of low moods, how to recognize them and discover effective ways to lift ourselves up. I'm Curtis. My pal right over there is Joe. He's always in a good mood and we are dudes in progress. Hey, Joe.

Hello, my friendly friend.

Are you in a good mood, Kirk?

I'm in a pretty good mood, yeah. We're recording this on early Friday morning. Early for some, late for some right here at 07:00 a.m. on a Friday morning, 07:00 a.m. eastern time. I always like these early morning recording sessions. It's a nice way to start off the day.

I agree.

And so I'm glad to be here with you, my pal. And I'm glad that you used a bangles reference and you're opening, man. That's awesome. I never, I don't think I've heard that song. If I've heard that song, I don't remember hearing that song.

But wow.

Yeah. I can certainly empathize with Montgomery Gentry's lyrics right there. Last Sunday when the Bengals lost, Lord, it put me in a bad mood. I've had a lot of those Sundays in my life.

Dude, you have got to listen to this song. That's only, there's great lyrics, but he goes through a litany of things of why he's a lucky man after that intro. And I would love to read the whole lyric sheet on this song because I could have, there was, it's just awesome. Definitely check out that song.

Yeah.

And it just so happens maybe they're from Cincinnati because the Bengals losing put them in a bad mood. I just thought that was fun.

No, I don't think either one of them are from.

Oh, okay. Maybe they just like the Bengals. I guess so.

Montgomery Gentry, that's John Michael Montgomery's brother.

Okay.

Very renowned country singer in his own right. And I can't remember Gentry, but I used to know those. I recognized them. Definitely very popular.

Oh, please.

Won many awards as country music duo.

Do you have Amazon music or something where you can bring up that song? Do me a favor and listen to that. I think you will really resonate with that song. Does this topic resonate with you? Have you ever felt the world is just against you? Like, you spill your coffee on the keyboard, your car won't start. You step in the puddle on your way to work, you pour barbecue sauce.

On your sugar, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're like. You feel like the whole world's just against you. The universe is. Every section of the universe has conspired to make your day crappy. I have certainly been there, dude, and I. Sometimes I'm. You do feel like, man, I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reason.

Things are piling up. I had this conversation, I think, even this week, with someone at work during one of our sessions, just shooting the bowl a little bit, and it was a guy that I'm working with. I'm showing him how to support an application that I built, and he's taken it over. And I think we were doing some production release on a Monday. And I said, dude, I gotta tell you, my computer wouldn't start up this morning. My personal computer. I had another issue. I had Internet problems. I had this. I had that logging into my computer here was bad. This is not a good day to be doing a production release on a new bit of code. And he laughed, and I said, I gotta tell you, dude, sometimes Mondays are polarized. They're either really easy or they're just really hard. I can't figure it out.

Yeah. It's funny that these days, many times surround work and preparing for work and things that happen at work, things that happened before work. I can think of a day that this happened probably a couple weeks ago. I was preparing for a meeting, and I was ready to go, to go at 06:00 because I wanted to get in at 630, avoid the traffic, get in at 630, and start my day. And so I got up really early, did my morning stuff, ready to leave the house at 06:00 couldn't find my keys. This is typical these days. I couldn't find my keys. And there's something about. Something triggers in me, man, when I. When stuff like this happens, I couldn't find my keys. And then I'm like, okay, I know I left my keys there. Wherever there is, I know I left them there. I was preparing for the morning. Everything's ready. I know I left them there. But I'm leaving early enough to avoid any kind of catastrophe. But I didn't leave at six. I left about 20 after six because my keys happened to be in the my pants pocket from the evening before. And I have a routine where I put my keys in the same place, but I still have plenty of time until I run into traffic on the way to work. And traffic has completely stopped. I remember this day. It was a couple weeks ago, and I was preparing for a presentation, early morning presentation at work. And, gosh, traffic. And I'm trying to look at Google Maps, figuring out how to go. And no less than three times that, I almost rear end the person in front of me. And. And I'm like, joe, you just, you gotta settle down. Just relax. So I'm heading into work, and I get into work. So I'm a half an hour late and late later than I wanted to start. Now, the presentations at 08:00 okay. I get into my computer. I want to do the last few moments of my, of my PowerPoint presentation. And then I get an email that says the, hey, we need to start early this morning. And the email was from the night before?

Yeah. You didn't see it. Yeah.

So if I. And I'm like, oh, gosh. And they had to do with one of the executives in the meeting that, that had to do something. Executive, yes. And, and so I'm like, oh, my gosh. So I go, okay, I got to get this rolling now. I'm out of time. That. The nice, relaxed moment that I wanted to have as I'm preparing, I'm out of time. And so I go to plug my computer into my docking station, and for some reason, the monitors aren't coming on. And so I had to use the laptop by itself to put the finishing touches on the presentation. And I thought to myself, there's no way this could go any worse. Now. The good thing is it didn't. Okay, it didn't go any worse. But that series of events put me in such a bad way for the rest of the day that I almost thought that I had to go home and just start over.

I know, great.

I hope I'm not jumping ahead of you here, but when you talked about series of events, spilling coffee on your shirt, barbecue sauce on your white shirt, the car won't start. Wow. I've had. I've had that day, that morning just recently.

I'm gonna use this session with you, Joe, today to help me through a bad mood that I've had probably for about three or four months. And.

Wow.

Yeah.

Kind of in a funk, huh?

And not something that was outwardly showing itself. We'll dig into this a little bit, but have you had something recently where you were in a bad or low mood for an extended time.

For an extended time, yes. But we've talked a lot about it, and the first thing that comes to mind was the great flood of 2023.

Yeah, that's exactly.

That had a dramatic impact on me for a long time because I just couldn't get anything right. I couldn't get anybody to respond to me. I didn't feel like I was making right decisions on contractors and on the things I needed to do to get things moving along. And I was living in disarray. My job was interesting. Right. So that's a pretty dramatic example, Kurt. Maybe not what you're looking for, but I'm telling you, for six months, easily for six months, I was in a. I was in just a bad way. A really.

That is. That's an extreme example because it went on for a long time. My wife's kind of. I don't want to read her mail out loud, but she's been since her mom died, dealing with lawyers and nursing homes, and, oh, my gosh, the struggle of that has, I think, put her in a tough mood, which has led to this issue I'm talking about. It's related. If your wife's going through a tough time, I don't know if this is definitely a guy thing.

Sure.

It really impacts us, I think, in our mood, but it's just something that slowly nags at you for a long period of time. And the evidence for that source is everywhere you go.

Yeah.

Everything reminds you of this issue, it seems. And in my case, it was. This isn't all that extreme as years or my wife's gone through, but just having no vacation plans started getting at me. And it started now. I went on a Disney vacation end of January into February, which was awesome. But I think stress and buildup and the grind of work. I can't even remember us back in college, all those things. I know for myself, about six months of that, and I need a real deep vacation break, a getaway time. And we talked about vacations.

Well, when I. We have a whole episode on vacation, a couple episodes on vacation at some level. But the thing about vacation, and I can certainly understand this, and I don't want to discount that feeling because somebody might say, come on, Kurt, you're depressed because you haven't had a. Or you're in a low mood because you haven't had a vacation since January. My gosh, there are people who haven't had vacations for ten years. For one thing. I would say, shame on me.

I do. Yeah, I've thought this through. Yeah, I felt the shame of this.

Well, no, not shame on you, shame on them for not taking.

I understand that feeling and I've. That's part of this low mood, right? Why am I feeling this way?

Part of it is you don't have anything planned. And we know. Let's take vacation for an example. We know that. I would say more than half the fun of vacation is knowing it's coming.

Absolutely.

Because you're living your vacation in your head. The things you're going to do, the people you're going to see, the drinks you're going to have, the meals you're going to have, the beaches you're going to sit on the boat, you're going to the boat, you're going to ride the. All that stuff. Right. And when you have nothing there, and I know that vacationing, especially Disney, is, is a very important part of your life and it's important part of who you are and it's important part of your experience of life, and it brings you joy and happiness and all that stuff that we all want. But when you have nothing to look forward to. I get it.

I knew you would. And this is why I'm having this conversation with you, because you're a supportive friend, which is part of the things we're going to talk through. And I. So we're going to use this book that I've been reading from Julie Smith. Why has nobody told me this before? She's a clinical psychologist and I've enjoyed this, comes from the first few chapters of the book. But we're going to understand low mood, watching out for mood pitfalls, things that can help, how to turn bad days into better days, and getting the basics right, which won't take very long because we've talked about those before. Joe, understanding low mood, that's part of the problem. We always say you can't fix the problem if you don't understand it. And nobody's happy. All the time. Mood is fluctuating, so you're not weird. If you do come into feeling down. Sometimes I wonder if I've come to the point where I know I'm nothing depressive person. But the reason I like this topic, low mood, because I have these points of low mood that I could, they're not clinically a problem, but it's fun to have someone that is experiencing clinical technique, helping people clinically to get some ideas. But everything we do or don't do influences our mood. When this was the thing that I really resonated with when you feel down, all you want to do is hide away. That's part of my problem. Ignore the problem. You don't want to do things that help you out. And so this is helpful to know that is common because therein lies the solution.

I'm curious, Kurt, how would you define or how does. I don't know. Do they talk about. Does she talk about low mood in this book?

Yeah. Yeah.

And. Okay. Is that the subject of.

There's other topics. So this is one of four or five main topics. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So focusing on low mood, specifically, what's the difference between low mood and depression? Or even maybe a low grade depression, or maybe a low grade depression and low mood is the same thing. But putting her book in context and putting her information in context, what's the difference between being depressed and a low mood?

I don't think she gets into that directly. I would just answer my own experience that I think low mood is a cousin of depression. I think depression is a much more serious condition that really needs professional help. That's my take on it. What do you think?

It sounds like it. It sounds like low mood is. Depression is real. First of all, depression is real. And depression much depression comes from physiological issues and not just life experience where you're just having a rough time for a moment. So it sounds like low mood is just where you're not at. I don't want to say peak performance, but you certainly have a low grade tempering of your mental. Your mental faculties because of what's going on in your life.

I think when you. When I've taken some of those through work, they'll have these questionnaires, health around your health, and they'll get into the mental aspect more so now than they used to. And that's where I say, I don't feel I've ever been in clinical depression, because they'll say things. Have you ever missed work because you're depressed? No, not really. Have you laid in bed for three days? No. Stuff like that, right?

Yeah. I think we need to be careful of that. And I don't want to go into a whole episode of depression because there's certainly a time for that. But this low mood thing is something that everybody experiences. And I'm really curious to find out and understand a little more about low mood and our strategies. Behind.

Again, I'm just using my experience. Like I said right from the outset, you may not have noticed I was in a low mood because it wasn't all that outwardly, and it wasn't every moment of the day. It's not like I was ruminating on it that deeply, but it just kept coming up where you went to Portugal, and we did an episode on that. You just got back from the beach. I'm doing a podcast interviewing people weekly about going to Disney World and on vacation, going to Morocco and Disneyland Paris. And this is the thing that keeps it, is that these evidences, if you start ruminating on it, the evidence just keeps showing up. And that's what I'm talking about. It just kept coming up to a point where it broke a little more and maybe I'll save this down the road, but my wife and I were in the car and she said something to me and it just set me off a little bit how it just, it was just cooking on underneath the surface for, like I said, two or three months.

And you react, it, you probably reacted out of character. Yeah.

Not in my best self, as we've said before.

Right, right. That's when, you know, when you can recognize that, even though you didn't stop it in the moment, but when you can recognize after it happened. Yeah. Something's going on. Something's going on that, that pulled that reaction out of me. And first of all, kudos to you for recognizing it. Right. To recognize that there's a, there's some kind of funk going on here. And really can, I'm impressed that we're talking about it publicly right now. So I think this conversation, I told.

You this would be helpful for me. I, this reading this book this week is really why I started this and where I've, I haven't gone through this process, but some of these things that you can do and you talk about journaling and this keeps coming up in some things I read. I think it's great. I don't do as much of it as I probably should, but you can ask questions. What's been happening to lead up to this moment that you're reflecting on what's happening just before you notice the feeling? What were your thoughts at the time? What were you focusing your attention on? What emotions were present? Where did you feel it in your body? Any other physical sensations? What urges appeared to you? Were you overeating? Were you doing things that, you know, over drinking? Did you act on those urges? So just reviewing, going back and reviewing those things of what was going on and me talking about this with you is probably the first time I'm really reflecting on that, that I was having that, those emotions in bad mood there.

And it's, and it's hard to do that, Kurt, if I'm to be honest, if I'm being honest with myself, it's hard to intentionally go through some of these exercises, even though they'll help. I have an expert here, a psychologist, that is giving us direction on understanding low mood and pulling ourselves through it, recognizing it, but still, to intentionally think about some of these questions, and I'm looking at the questions that you have listed here, like, what urges appeared for you? Where did you feel that in your body? What physical sensations did you notice? What were your thoughts at the time to intentionally go through those questions, important, but let's recognize that it's a little bit of work, right?

How did your actions influence your emotions? Like, I shut down. I went quiet. I'm nothing. We do this a lot, my wife and I. Both her and I, we don't talk to each other for a couple of days. Sometimes when it gets bad.

Wow.

Yeah. Not good.

But do you know that about each other?

I don't know. That conversation with her.

We're in this moment, right? We're in this moment. We know, okay, we're in this moment right now. We know that we're going to in. Within a couple days, we're going to be back to snuggling. Well, you know what?

To her credit, she just walked up to my office one day and said, hey, what are some of these geeks going down to disney world? Can you tell me the dates? That was how the conversation started. I had said nothing. Maybe somewhere in that quietness, she knew what my problem was.

Definitely right. That's clear as day, man, that she recognized this in you. She knew that there was a funk going on, as I say. And she, God bless her, she did something that she knew would help.

Extreme action put me change my mood immediately. Why would have been asking her, that's so cool part like you said, I've been wanting to plan something, even if it was out a year or so. That was part of I kept asking her and she kept ignoring me. So that was part of adding to my issue. Thoughts, Joe, aren't necessarily true. We have this thought bias. We think everything we think is true. I'm here to tell you that's not true. Some of the things, there's these mood pitfalls you want to watch out for. I got a few of these mind reading. An example of that is when your friend looked at you funny, you thought that they hated you. You get this thing in your mind. It's not actually true.

Last episode, I think it was last episode, we talked about. I have a tendency to catastrophize, and if something triggers me wrong, for example, if somebody looks at me odd and it triggers me somehow, I will take that and create a whole narrative behind it. And it's usually not God. Right? So we have to be careful of this thought bias. It's true. Also, I remember reading this a long time ago, or talking with a professional about this a long time ago, that our thoughts are not our actions, our thoughts. We may have something come into our head. In fact, I just recently listened to a podcast episode of stuff you should know, which is a really good podcast, very popular podcast stuff you should know. And they. This. They talked about something called the call of the void, and that's when you are standing. I won't go too deep into this, but I want to give you some context. The call the void, about when you're standing on the edge of something, like you're up high and you have this urge to jump. Like, where does that come from?

Yeah, that's weird. You're right, though. What would happen if I jumped?

What would happen if I jumped? Or even in a odder way, you're driving down the road and you think, what if I just didn't put the brakes on? What would that be like? And that there's a. That's a thing called the call of the void. And the big idea behind it is people freak out over this. They really. And it causes some people serious anxiety, and they think there's something mentally wrong with them, and it's completely normal. The core of that is, we are not our thoughts. Right. Our thoughts are not our actions. They're just things bouncing around chemicals or whatever it is. So I really like this list that you have here about thought bias.

Along that same line, emotional reasoning, feelings are not facts, but just information. Yeah. You walk out of an exam feeling deflated, like you didn't do well. I've done that and come to find out you actually did. All right.

But you know what?

If you.

Even if you didn't do well, that's okay, right?

You can bounce back.

You can bounce back. You can learn from it.

Sure. Overgeneralization, maybe that fits with your catastrophe. One little sign of event, you think that's another part of this, like, polarizing thinking. It's either one way or the other, which rarely is true. Egocentric thinking, trying to control the uncontrollable. Sounds like a philosophy from the stoics. You value being on time, and then people are late. Mental filters. When you believe something, your brain will scan the environment for any signs that the belief is true.

Oh boy. Kurt, man, have I experienced that. Yeah, like when you're driving down the road and traffic is bad and it just seems like everybody's in your way, purposefully in your way, and you can figure out ways that, that no matter what you do, somebody is purposefully getting in your way, right? Yes, that's so true, man. When you believe something, your brain will scan the environment for signs because it's going to support that belief for sure. Oh, that's frightening.

I analyze this all the time. We're in the political season and it fascinates me how people just grab onto one side or the other and they, they really have difficulty seeing the other side. They just get polarized. So we got these biased. Joe, what can we do? 1st 1st thing is do just recognize them that we all have these bias and just analyze them a little bit more. Don't feed into them as hard.

Yeah.

Don't get into this downward spiral. Spiral.

Know that they're there. I agree with that. Recognize and know that you have this thing going on.

Look for a more balanced, fair and compassionate way and take into account more information if it's available.

I don't know where this fits into, into the strategies here, but one thing that's always worked for me, and I taught it to my kids, and they bring this up a lot when things aren't going well and they're feeling really bad, stop and feel that. Just stop and let yourself feel it. Let yourself feel it for the moment. Now, if you're not in a place where you can do that right now in your mind, set aside a time that you're going to do it, but just stop and let yourself feel it for a particular period of time, but long enough for you to experience the feeling, right. Because they're real, these feelings of low mood or the world's against you, just let yourself feel it for a moment.

She talks about this very much throughout this book. Don't avoid feelings. It's very prominent throughout because some, you'll see a lot of things out there to say, hey, just pick yourself up or be positive. That doesn't solve the problem. Journaling talk to a trusted friend that can call out your bias and mind and also mindfulness practices that we've talked about. I think we're doing this right now. I'm talking to a trusted friend because we're so tough on each other. Would you talk to yourself or would your friend talk to you the way you talk to yourself?

Wow. That is a great insight, Kurt, and we've heard that a lot. Would you talk to your closest friends or one of your closest friends in the way that you're talking to yourself right now, the way you're putting yourself down, the way you're coming down on yourself, the way you're criticizing yourself? I would say, no. There's no way.

No, you'd be supportive.

So why am I doing it? Why am I doing it?

One of the strategies is be as supportive to yourself as you would supporting another friend. Things that help. You already just talked about this. You can't control those thoughts that pop into your mind, but you can control the spotlight of attention that you give to it. It's called metacognition. That's something that us humans have. It's a fancy name for thoughts. Boy, that's a ten dollar word, metacognition. First time I heard it. Fancy name for thoughts about your thoughts.

That's an interesting. That's an ancient principle. The Bible talks about taking your thoughts captive and and thinking on things that are good and positive and praiseworthy. So this is a. This is an ancient process, this metacognition, taking power of those thoughts and taking us. Maybe taking a step back, like it says here, getting some distance, recognizing that they're there and understanding them for what they really are. I like the word metacognition. I know that stuck, but it's been around. This idea has been around for a long time that our thoughts are our thoughts, and we can't necessarily control when they come, but we can control what we do with them. And I know it's in here somewhere. Maybe you've already talked about it, but it's got to be in here somewhere because it's such a. Such an important role on emotional regulation is mindfulness meditation at some level. Right? Because I don't want to discount mindfulness medication. I met medication. Did I say medication? Every time.

Just that one time.

I don't want to discount mindfulness meditation, even though I do sometimes. The importance of it. We live in a world with a lot of mental stresses and taking time to. To be quiet in your mind and let your thoughts do their thing. There's lots of ways to practice mindfulness meditation. We won't go into them here. I just invite you to listen back to some of our episodes or pick up a good book about mindful meditation. And so I don't want to discount mindfulness meditation because it's a really important. It's a really important tool that we can use for these mood issues.

You must be reading ahead to my next bullet. And this is one you talked about. Stop rumination. Joe, how can you stop rumination? One of them is you can learn this skill of mindfulness and gratitude practice. Turn your attention to something else. But, yeah, that practice of mindfulness will remind you that you need to stop ruminating on this thing that's causing the low mood. What would I do if I was at my best? I love that question. We had that in a whole book.

Me too.

Am I acting in my best self right now?

One question that I like is, yeah, what would I do if I was at my best? I see it here on your list. I also. The question is, what would I do if I were brave? Or what would I do if I were just fill in the blanken.

Yeah.

For whatever you want to experience. Not that you are brave, but what would I do? Because that's action oriented, right? What would I do if I was.

At my best to stop ruminating? Do something that you enjoy that absorbs your attention. Oh, that's so true. If you can get absorbed in some kind of project, something that's fun, that'll stop that rumination. Talk with friends. And then we talked about mindfulness and gratitude. So those are some things you can do to start pulling yourself out of that low mood. I love this sentence that was in this chapter. Joe, I thought of you. This is a quote from the book. Now, I'm not about to tell you that you can manifest things in your life just by focusing on them, but we have to look where we are going if we want to stay on course. Your attention is valuable and helps you create your experiences of life. Learning to control where you direct it can have a powerful impact on your life and your mood.

I love this sentence, this paragraph, because of how it starts off, I'm not about to tell you can manifest things in your life just by focusing on them. But, man, we do have to look forward, right? We do have to look forward to know where we want to go, where we're going, and tell our minds what to look for to help us get there.

All right, now, how to turn bad days into better days. Just focus on making good decisions, not perfect ones. Good enough steers you towards the real change. Perfectionism causes decision making paralysis, whereas improving your mood demands that you make decisions and take action. She talks about doing just little things, anything that moves you in the right direction. Boy, do we talk about that a lot. And it's so true. We've talked about being successful in that way. But what if you're just. You don't feel like doing anything? That same strategy works for pulling yourself out of a low mood.

I have a weird strategy that I use often. I would say often when I had, when I'm having a really bad day, I've been known to, at 02:00 in the afternoon, to completely start my day over, to go upstairs, take a shower, brush my teeth, put on a different outfit, do a little bit of my morning routine, and start the day over. Completely. Just start the day over. And now I may have not. I may have done nothing to require a shower, right. I may have done nothing to require me brushing my teeth. Other than that it's good to brush your teeth a couple times a day, right? A few times a day. But it's more about just hitting reset.

Yeah.

Taking a breath, taking a shower, put on different clothes, change your underwear and your t shirt, change everything. Right. And start. Just start your day strategy. And dude, I'm telling you, that works wonders sometimes. Now, sometimes there's other things going on that you can't avoid, right. Just by taking a shower and putting on the blue shirt instead of the red shirt. But this does something to just help reset my day. And I've. I would say this happens once a month with me, that I do this maybe more often, that I just. Yep. I'm just gonna go.

I like that one. I talked about my definition of Mondays. They're either horrible or fine or good. But that's a. I was thinking about this. That's not really a great way. I like your strategy better. Hey, three or four things might have gone wrong before it's even 08:00 in the morning. But that doesn't mean the whole day is shot, right?

Right.

I gotta get out of that way of thinking.

Gosh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna just take a little bit of a side because it's similar. Okay. Healthy eating, losing weight, being on a diet has been a subject that we've talked about significantly. I've always had this thing with my weight. At any given moment, I'm either gaining 30 pounds or losing 30 pounds. But I have this thing that if I have blown it early in the day, Katie, bar the door. Because I have it in my head that we've blown it today, might as well just eat that whole large pepperoni pizza and throw a bucket of cookies and cream ice cream on top of it. And you think, man, that's really going to make things better. Joe and we talked last episode about sunrises, and I used sunrises as my resource. It was an interesting conversation about that. But you can start your day over at any moment. If you can, at any moment, you can just say, okay, this is a brand new day right now. I may have blown it yesterday. I've made. I've may have blown it between 08:00 and 09:00 because somebody brought in a box of dunkin donuts. Right? But I can start over right now.

And don't eat the rest of the day or limit your calories the rest of the day.

Or even, you know, I hear what you're saying, but not even that. Just wherever you would have been that day, on a good day, be that right? If you did eat the whole box of donuts and it's noon. Don't force yourself, by the way. I've done that. Whoever brought the donuts in, thank you. Whoever ate all the donuts, please make yourself known.

Oh, my gosh.

But you can start your day over at the moment that you want to be.

When someone is down, we show them kindness because we know it is what they need. So if we are so committed to managing our mood and overall mental health, why don't we commit to practicing self compassion? Don't kick yourself when you're down. I wrote down to ask myself, how would Joe talk to me about this? Because I know you would always be supportive. You might. You're not going to be. You're not. If I'm doing something really destructive, you're not going to be supportive and encourage it.

Yeah, I'll be truthful. Right? We're true.

Trust in our relationship, too.

And we need to be that with those closest to us. Truthful but not mean be more supportive than anything else.

You know, she did emphasize belief, too, man. Beliefs are strong. And if you believe something, it's hard to change that pattern. If it's a negative belief, it's hard.

Especially about yourself and especially if you've had decades of support for that belief. How we talk to ourselves and sometimes we joke about self deprecating humor. And I believe in not taking yourself too seriously, but I also believe in being nice to yourself. And that's where I genuinely, and I think you're going down. You've alluded to this many times. We fail in that mindset.

Here's a little strategy. Take a moment to imagine that when you close the book, a miracle happens and the problems you have been struggling with, they all disappear. What would be the first signs that the problem's gone? What would you do differently? What would you say yes to what would you say no to? What would you focus your energy and attention on? What would you do more or less of? How would you interact with people differently? That's important to me. I say I shut down, but if it was all gone, how would I act? How would you structure your life differently? How would you speak to yourself differently? What would you be free to let go of? Great journaling prompts.

Yeah, I do like this question. It's very similar to the question that you asked before when I piggyback on it to say, what would you do if you were brave? I don't. I can't remember that question. But it feels the same, right? What happened? What would. How would my life be if all these problems that are in my head, all these feelings were just gone? How would I act differently? And when, again, when I'm listening to these questions that you're asking, they're all action oriented. What would you do differently? What would you say? What would you focus your energy? So much of what we need to do to pull ourselves out of these funks is about mindset. Yeah, right. And part of this is, who would you talk to?

Love it. The last chapter on this is not nearly as profound. But aren't the basics so important, Joe? And you and I have talked about this all the time. There was a couple things in here that, you know, when I read something, if I could just pull a couple nuggets out that I can apply. And there's one in here that maybe you wouldn't even recognize. But I'm trying to start doing better. All of your mental health. There's some foundations that are going to pay great benefits back with interest for you. And she really focused on, if you could do one thing, make it exercise. And I think that's. I love going out for a walk. That's one of my favorite exercises. If I'm in a funk, boy. Getting some fresh air. You talked about sunrises. I totally related to that. I do this as a practice at work. It's always. It's like I protect that noontime walk, especially when I'm in the office. Don't schedule no meetings. I've worked for. I put my head down and worked for 4 hours. I'm getting out and I'm getting a walk. Get some exercise, boy. You forget everything when you're sweating and breathing. And yeah, it's great. There's so people talk about how it's good for your physical body, but, boy, I think it's even more important for your mental health.

When I'm having my best day at work. Are the days that I get up every 50 minutes or. Yeah, every 50 minutes and take a quick walk around the building. It's about five minutes. Five to five to ten minute walk. About 900 steps. But when I'm having my most productive days, Kurt, are the days that I do just that. And somebody might look at that and say, that freaking Taylor man gets up.

In the same way. We share this. I walk by the same people who've been anchored in their chairs the whole freaking day. I don't know how they do it. I don't have the patience for it, for one thing. But I have an inter. My brain is going, I don't know what it is. I can't do it. I got to get up and walk around, Kurt.

I love this strategy right here, or this little tip. If you do one thing today, if you do one thing, exercise.

And she follows up that with choose something you enjoy, and you increase your chances of keeping it going. Yeah, it's basics, right? We know this stuff. The relationship between sleep and mental health works both ways. Prioritizing sleep with your mental health and I making changes to your day will affect your sleep. Oh, my gosh. I was thinking of this recently. Some days where I wasn't sleeping well, and the next day I'm in a bad mood, I wake up in a bad mood. We did a whole episode on the importance of sleep.

Importance of sleep and the importance of eating right when you eat. I find that when I eat light in the evening, sometimes not at all. I feel better the next day, for sure. I go to sleep easier. I wake up easier. I wake up hungry, but I wake up easier. And I feel better when I eat heavy at night.

Okay.

I feel too.

You're always reading ahead, or you just have this intuition because the way you feed your brain influences how you feel. She talks about traditional mediterranean, japanese, and norwegian diets show benefits for mental health.

No kidding. I've heard of the mediterranean diet. I don't know anything about it.

You just recently were there in Portugal.

Yeah, but I ate like I was on vacation. I ate like I was going to the electric chair, quite honestly.

This was when I said there was something that really stuck to me from reading. This was this right here, especially the Mediterranean. I started looking up, what are those foods? Because I had an idea what they were. I was like, I like those foods. A lot of fruits and vegetables, fish. Chicken is still there, reducing red meat and getting rid of sugar. And all the things that we know about that are tough. But this is what I'm researching, the Mediterranean. But as I was just reading this japanese and norwegian, I'd like to, hey, I could mix it up. It doesn't have to be that strict. This is the mediterranean diet. For the next 30 days, you can mix it up with some of these other, which are very similar, very healthy, whole foods, grains.

Right. We know what works, dude. Yeah, we know what works, right. Most people, I would venture to say in the information age that we've been in for the past 50 years or however long, most people, when you're in.

A bad mood, you get off this track.

What works? Yeah, I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be honest with you about something. When I'm off track, there's something in me and I, this is something that I need to explore, that I know what's going to work. I know that when I get up early in the morning and follow morning routine and walk and do all the stuff that I know that works, including one of the things that I put in as my resource for the day, there's some kind of mental block that happens that stops me, that knows I'll feel better, but I'm. I don't know if I want to feel better.

You don't want to feel better when you're in a bad mood.

I just want to wallow in this misery.

That's true. Recognize that.

So how do you get beyond that mindset? And I think many of these strategies we have here maybe a text to a pal that says, hey, man, I just, I'm miserable and I just, and I want to stay miserable and let them help pull you out.

Like we've always said, do something small. Start with something small that you know will start pulling you out of it and snowball that.

That's so true. When, if you recognize that, hey, listen, I'm miserable and I want to stay miserable. I want to be miserable. I don't want to help myself right now. You need to say, okay, I don't want to help myself. I don't want to do this, but I'm, I'm going to take, I'm just going to go outside and take ten steps. That's it. I'm just going to take ten steps outside and then take another step, ten steps back inside and be miserable. My guess is once you get those ten steps outside, yeah, you might take twelve.

And I'll just say that the last one of the basics, human connection, is a powerful tool for stress, resilience. Your relationships change, your biology and psychology. There's another thing you could do. Have a conversation with a friend.

Well, I certainly appreciate this conversation, dude. This has really helped me, man. This is. This has been a. This has been a tremendous conversation. I don't know if you're wrapping up or not, but I'm wrapped.

That was it. That was my summary.

This is a. This has been a tremendous, very vulnerable and an open conversation. We all go through this, right? And I like how we're. You didn't talk about depression, right? Because that's a whole different world. That's a whole different level, right? That. That. This is something that we deal with day to day. This low mood, these. These funks that we get in and these strategies of how to get out of the. Out of that funk or make your way through it. This has been a helpful conversation. And quite honestly, Kurt, timely for me as well.

Yeah. To wrap up my example, I should have recognized that this was a problem that I was dealing with and had some compassion about it, talked to you about it, not let it get to an unhealthy place with my wife about it. I probably. I wonder if I could have gotten her attention. I was having difficulty expressing it in a way that would. You know, we could have put a deposit down on a trip a year from now. Like you said, ever since she's booked that trip for me and I started planning it with all my friends, I have a guy from my community who's going to share a room with me, and I'm meeting up. The trip is in two weeks now. I'm a little depressed that it's going to be over so fast. I'm having so much fun planning this. I got to do it quickly. But a lot of the plans are already in place, and it's fine. But, yeah, I should have recognized this when I was going through it and.

Dealt with it at some point, Kurt, one of our. One of our resources or tips or hacks is going to be. And this is going to be mine. So don't steal it from me in the future. It's not today's, but it's going to be. Plan your vacation early, and we'll talk about that, because if you can now there's some excitement to showing up at home and saying to your wife, hey, honey, pack a light bag. We're going to Chicago for the weekend. There's something cool about that.

Spontaneity of it.

Yeah, the spontaneity of it. But, man, there's nothing like having a. Knowing a vacation is coming up in September or October or whatever it is and planning for it and in your head, experiencing that vacation that whole time. But well done on this one, man. This was a good conversation. Very transparent, vulnerable, and to be quite honest with you, Kurt, like I said before, very timely for me as well.

Thank you, my friend. Thanks for helping me work through it. What's your win for the week?

This is a really big win for me. I just got back from vacation. We talked about vacation last episode. But when I think back to my vacation, and this was intentional at some level, I've rarely had a vacation where I didn't open up my laptop at least every other day. At least every other day, even when I was in Portugal. I think I did somewhat, I have to think back because I don't want to make myself out a liar. But I know, and I know on this one, I didn't open up my laptop one time. Not once while I was on vacation, not once. When I came back, everything was just fine.

Hooray. I had some influence on you. I think. I was on your shoulder, whispering in your ear, I love this. I got to take my own advice also. But that is a big win. I love that. My win. This started with Joe telling me about one of his resources, the book influence by Robert Cialdini.

I think it's Cialdini. I think there's a ch, when I.

Looked that book up on Amazon, Joe, it was part of the Amazon Unlimited program that you, I was on, and I had canceled it. It was ending August 1. I had, if you remember, I bought the Amazon fire that had a three month subscription to it that was included, and I wasn't going to renew it. But my win for the week is I renewed my Amazon Unlimited subscription influenced by Joe. But now that helped me find this book that we've been talking about, too. And then I started looking into the mediterranean diet. There's all kinds of cookbooks when you're part of that program. So that's going to be helpful to my research. So, yeah, I'll be doing lots of reading on my Amazon Unlimited fire.

It's interesting that you bring up the book influence by Robert Cialdini, because a listener reached out and sent a text about this book and said that they've been listening to it and it's awesome. I'm not going to name them because I just, I'd like their permission to name them to say that. But, uh, I, I'll just say his name's Tommy. All right. And he reached out and said, man, I love this book. It's really cool.

We'll have to review it.

It's a good book, man. Like I said, it's dangerous, right. Because it can, you can use these strategies and this, these ideas for nefarious purposes and people do.

You got me intrigued.

Yeah. So have you read through and.

No, I have it on my kindle though. So it's on my meaty.

It's meaty. It's a, it's not for the faint.

Do what I'm doing with this book. I'm going to bring some topics. I'm not going to go chapter by chapter like the book that I'm reading right now, but there's some topics that really resonate with me and I'll bring in as content for our podcast. I would do the same thing with that book. Alright, what's your resource tip or hack this week?

This is an interesting one and not easy to do. I do it as consistently as I do it, which is a loaded phrase, I know, but when I do it, it really is a boost of energy. It helps me mentally and I like it when I'm done doing it. I don't like it when I start doing it and I don't like it when I'm doing it. But when I'm done doing it, I love that I've done it. A cold shower in the morning after, after I've exercised, after I've done my morning routine, when I'm getting ready for work. A cold shower, not lukewarm, not tepid. Crank that sucker all the way over to whatever, the left or the right.

How long do you do that for?

As long as I can. Sometimes it's 10 seconds, sometimes it's a couple minutes. Sometimes I can really, I can just feel it. The interesting thing about a cold shower in the house now there's all kinds of things that you can do for this experience. There's ice baths and there's, there's whole things that you can purchase for this experience. But a cold shower feels so good once it's over.

Perks you up.

It perks you up. It energizes me. It even helps with my mind. I'm like, man, I'm clear of thought. I'm not tired. It really is. It's something that I need to do every day that I don't. But when I do it, it feels so good when I'm done. But boy, my gosh, the truth is when you start doing it right before you do it and as you're doing it, yeah, it's, it's tough, but it feels so good when it's, when you're done.

I've heard you say this before and it has influenced me in one way, and that is to wash my hair in cold water.

Oh yeah. That's a good strategy. Yeah, that's a good way.

That's why I asked how long do you go?

At least it's something, however long it.

Takes me to wash my hair and give me that cold on the head, I don't like it too much on my belly. Too long. Must be from trauma in my childhood, I think from going to swimming lessons in the early morning in a pond.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I remember that.

I did not like that.

But if you can, if that's what you got, wash your hair in cold water. But if you can let that cold water just cascade over your entire body in the shower or maybe you want to take a cold bath, whatever it takes, and really let it, let your whole body feel it again. I never want to do it. I don't particularly like it in the middle of it. But when I'm done, it feels so good. And there's a lot of, theres a lot of clinical evidence that cold showers and ice baths and those types of things have a dramatic impact, not only physiologically, but on your mental and your mental condition and your moods.

My resource, you may have guessed already, is the book weve been talking about. Just to remind you, why has nobody told me this before? By Julie Smith. I got it on Kindle Unlimited. And some of the other topics I'm looking at, Joe, coming up is talking about motivation, understanding it, how to nurture motive, being motivated, self doubt. This is a chapter I'm on right now. I think that is something I'm going to get into. That is something I resonate with. Self doubt, how to deal with that criticism, how to deal with criticism and being disapproved of by others, building confidence. You are not your mistakes. There's also topics on some other things like stress and how to build a meaningful life.

But I really need to check this book out because it's not just about moods, right? It's about whole life strategies, it seems.

Yeah, it's like I said, those are some of the topics. There's other things on dealing with grief and fears, that kind of stuff. So clinical psychology kind of stuff. The things that you would go to.

Your, check this out.

Things that you go to your psychologist about, Joe.

I'll definitely check this one out.

I like her perspective on it. Okay, we're ready to finish up with our quotes for the week.

How appropriate is this quote? Especially when we talked about reaching out to a trusted friend for support, being vulnerable, opening up to a trusted friend. And this quote from Mark Twain is addresses that in a way that only Mark Twain can. Right. He says, the best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

Amen to that. Why is it we can cheer other, even if we're in a bad mood? Like if I was in a bad mood and you came to me and you needed some help, I would do everything I could to cheer you up. That's so right. That's so true.

And it does something for us. Absolutely.

You get back what you give to others.

Yep. So the best way to cheer yourself up is to cheer somebody else up.

I was just thinking before I came up to record, usually, Sawyer, my dog, sleeps in the morning. He sleeps late. He was up and happy and cheering me up this morning. Joe. He was very cool. Cheering me up like he does. He's such a good guy. My quote is, you don't have to control your thoughts. You just have to stop letting them control you. Dan Millman, I don't know who Dan is, but that is some insightful thinking, wise advice.

Right? Under that whole idea of, you don't, you can't control that. You can't control your thoughts. Right. And in trying to control your thoughts, you're just going to. You're going to fail. But you can control what you do with that thought once it comes in.

Yeah. You can observe them more, analyze them more.

Once that. And this is not. I have no, nothing necessarily to support this other than it feels true from my own experience. But once you. If a thought comes in and you don't let it control you, those thoughts, they're almost like entities of themselves, right? They're almost an entity in and of itself. They stop coming where they're not invited. They stop coming where they're not nurtured. They stop showing up where they're not, where they don't get to be the life of the party when they're not helpful.

Love you. All right, take us home.

Good stuff. Our website, of course, is dudesinprogress.com. dudesinprogress.com. Our email address is dudesudesinprogress.com dot. That's the best way to reach us if you want to talk about the show, if you want to give us comments about the show, if you want to give us ideas for the show, if you want to reach out to us about any of our coaching services, dudesudesinprogress.com is the best way to do that. Kurt, this was a good one, man. This was a good one. This will. This episode will help me make progress today. This will. It will make my day better. It won't be perfect because we know that progress is definitely better than perfection. We just got to keep moving forward.

Yeah. The research I did on this, Joe, I had a great example to work through. Thank you for working that through with me. I failed on it when I was going through the problem, but it's really helped me, and I'm gonna do better. If you're in a bad mood right now, I hope you can try some of these things and feel better. Coming up this next week, here's, here's.

My invitation to anybody out there right now. If you find yourself in a funk, email us dudesinprogress.com. we'll get back to you right away. We'll talk through it. I promise you. Either Kurt or me or both of us, we'll talk through it with you because we love you. Mandev.