5 Ways To Lift Your Mood When you’re Feeling down

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I’m Harsh Agrawal

Blog Scientist & a passionate blogger. Love minimalist life & talk about things that matter. Adventure from heart & doer by action.

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Each one of us experiences a low-phase at some point of time. We place the blame on our circumstances, health or emotional proclivities.

The truth is that there is only one person accountable for such bouts of grief, boredom, or depression: YOU!

Whenever I ask depressed acquaintances about their low-phase, I receive mixed responses such as:

  • They are sad/bored/depressed because that’s the natural response they should display to the particular situation.
  • They feel low because nothing remarkable is happening in their lives.
  • They are feeling down because their feelings are hurt, and feeling hurt is the obvious reaction after getting hurt, isn’t it?
  • They just want to be left alone in their misery. The only logical conclusion being that they somehow want to feel low.
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Melodramatic television, depressing music, unhealthy eating habits, and minimal exercise are directly linked to a person’s mood. The effects of these habits may not be clear immediately, but let them run for a course of time, and they will begin to affect your emotional stability.

Most of the readers of Harsh’s blog (or as he likes to call them – Shouters) are people looking for online marketing guides, blog development ideas, and motivation to do those tasks. I am here to offer a little motivation –

motivation to the folks trapped in emotions which directly affect their productivity and working attitude.

Without further introduction, let us go over the five primary and necessary tips you can use in your low moments. They are simple and executable. I will not boast about their effectiveness, you can experience the results yourself.

How to Uplift your mood when you are Depressed:

1. Be Sad

Now that might have come as a surprise. The task of emotions is to display what you feel.

If you are feeling happy, display it. If you are feeling low, display it. What you need to understand is that the more you suppress your emotional energy, the more different ways it will find to escape through your body. In order to prevent sudden fits of emotions, you should allow yourself to feel your feelings.

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So what’s the point of finding a solution to this issue?

The point of this first tip is to bring to your attention that you should always time your sadness, like timing your daily routine or timing your morning jog. Allow yourself to feel sad, but only for a few minutes. That’s it. No more.

When you give control to your mind, it will automatically start throwing positive thoughts into your conscience.

For the first two or three times, it will not occur naturally, but soon, you will begin to see that the moment you tell yourself: “I’ve been low for too long. It’s time to kick ass”, your brain will push you into optimism. This will positively affect your productivity!

2. Movement

This is another simple trick to get you out of that horribly depressing state. This might also be the easiest trick for some of you. Movement or motion distracts the brain from trivial moodiness.

Whenever you are feeling lethargic, bored, sad, or low – simply start walking. This is especially beneficial for those who are at a stationary job or in a stationary home environment. Sitting in one place for too long can cause a hindrance in blood and oxygen circulation, which, in turn, disturbs hormonal chemistry in the brain leading to bad moods and irritability.

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Start walking.

If you’re up to it, go for a run or do a few quick exercises which will increase your heart rate.

Soon, you will feel a positive difference in your situation.

3. Activity

When you feel low, distract yourself. This trick will be tougher to implement because when you are down, that is where you are: down.

You don’t want to do anything.

Do something anyway.

Just force yourself into an activity that you know will uplift you. Watch television, play a game, call a friend, read a book, listen to music, take a walk, do those damned crunches.

DO something!

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However, indulge in uplifting activities. Most of us misunderstand this step. I will talk more about the misunderstandings in the last two tips.

Just remember to push yourself against the lethargy to break free from your state. This is an important trick to gain control of your raucous emotions.

4. Watch a Funny Episode

You may have heard that depressed people use television as a distraction. Well, we are not talking exclusively about depression, but television can aid in boosting your happy hormones all the same.

Sadly, some of the most loved programmes on television (Indian Tele) are often melodramatic. Melodrama is pumped and pressed without restriction – right from soap operas to popular reality shows.

The key here is to uplift your mood, which can only be done by switching to a comic episode. Pick out your favourite series. Watch it for some time.

Allow Indravadan Sarabhai, Barney Stinson, Sheldon Cooper, and Joey Tribbiani to dilute your bitter thoughts. Laugh with them. Laughter will ease your tension. You will attain clarity!

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5. Listen to Upbeat Music

There is nothing worse than listening to depressing music during low moments.

According to a study published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, sad music is emotionally damaging in depressing conditions. Remember, our aim is to get OUT of the low phase, not sucked into one. That is what sad songs do – they keep us ruminating about our sadness without offering a way out.

Yes, you might feel lonely and use sad music as a harmonious buddy. But it’s a trap. Literally!

Instead, listen to upbeat music. Listen to tunes that make you want to dance, that make you want to move around. Such songs will immediately transport you into a trance (doing the TV’s work), they will make your brain shoot more happy hormones, and they will boost your morale.

Everything is well when the morale is well.

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Closing Thoughts: How to improve mood

It all boils down to what you want: do you want to take charge of your occasional storms, or do you want to be like the ones who indirectly say that they “like” to be sad?

I hope these mood uplifting tips come in handy in your situation. You don’t have to follow them all. If you can, at the least, follow only one method and I can guarantee the results.

For further reading:

What do you have to say about these tips? Do you follow any of them? Do you think these methods will be any good for you? I am waiting for you in the comments. Let’s share!

29 comments on “5 Ways To Lift Your Mood When you’re Feeling down

  1. Nice article after reading this article i have many option to make me feel good when i am really down 😀

  2. feeling sad in a sad moment is not a surprise its an obvious response, good points told in the post exercising specially which helps to energies and gain back the momentum..

  3. Nice one .. will it really help my mood get on . because am a very lazy guy can you suggest more options for a lazy guy like me who don’t wants do any work .

    1. Tip No. 2 and 3 should suffice. Whenever I feel lethargic, I take a walk or do some small activity like writing or organising.

  4. Thank you for giving such type of idea many time I goes down and feel sad but next time I will implement this ideas and trying to make my self happy

    Thank you

  5. These are very good tips to managing the low points in our life. We all, at experience felling down at one time or another and the impiortant thing is to handle these lows well to be able to recover and get out of the rut.

  6. These are great ways to help lift a bad mood! I have tried to teach my kids to do this as much as possible. Life is not always a happy place, but if you do not learn to get past it, it never will be.

    1. Thank you, Suzanne. We can always choose to be happy even when sadness is all around us. Thanks for sharing!

  7. I always experience this sudden sadness inside. And whenever it attacks me, I always divert things so that it won’t affect me. Getting down always lead me to being unproductive so whenever sadness strikes, I always see to it to come up with an interested activity that will divert my mind. The ones you shared are what I mostly do too to keep myself busy instead of getting into detailed of what makes me sad.

  8. I was just searching for things to do to uplift my spirit last week. Too much stress was bothering me and good thing my sister gave me Korean series to watch. I need to keep my mind entertained away from work. Listening to upbeat music would also help.

    1. It’s not enough to follow the above methods, we also have to declutter sad songs, depressing movies, and most importantly, dramatic people from our life.

  9. There are so many ways to boost your mood when you’re feeling down, but I do agree with number one. You have to feel sad so that you can let the bad feelings out, that’s one way to express yourself. But be careful not to dwell on it so much that you forget to empower yourself.

  10. I think when you are sad, you should allow a bit of the emotion in and let it go. It helps to run, exercise and it’s also therapeutic to watch something funny or something feel good.

  11. I like watching funny episodes and stand up comedies. Nothing more relaxing than that in stressed times.

  12. A good cry is catharsis and I totally agree. We need to let go of this emotion and let it take its course. Holding it in is not good for your health.

  13. I really needed to see this right now as I am going through my finals! Need a shot of optimism right now 😀

  14. The tips mentioned in this post are indeed uplifting. Especially I liked the one – Be sad and express your emotions. Venting them out will make you feel lighter.

  15. All the above helped! Because I’ve done all of them whenever I’m feeling down… And it definitely help me with my mood after completing one or more of them~

  16. I definitely agree with movement and activity. I never thought allowing your self to be sad could be a good way to lift your spirits but your right. thankyou for sharing.

  17. Yeah this ideas will work, though i must point out that not the same ideas will work for everybody, like for the part where you suggested upbeat music, on the contrary, when i am in a foul mood, listening to RnB helps drown the mood away and soon i get caught up in the singing will forgetting my worries, All the same, these ideas are great.

    Keep up the good work!

  18. Everyone is in stress and not enjoying their life because of lots of work and no time for himself/herself. The kind inside us has been killed by yourself…. try to alive naughty kid inside you and do whatever you want because if you’ll do things that you like most the you’ll be the happiest person in the world. Great going George….

  19. I am feeling down, just loose the interest in life.feeling dull. No spark in life,,,,, how to overcome from this situation,?

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