Want To Be Happier? Start Tracking Your Mood Daily

A step-by-step process to help you stop feeling drained and start smiling again

The past year has been a rollercoaster, and I’ve started to notice significant fluctuations in my mood. I noticed there were days when I needed to push myself when the simplest tasks seemed like mountains I needed to climb when I felt drained and tired. There were also days when I got stuff done, without catching myself sweat the small things. And scattered in between, were some bright days when the superhero in me was in charge, and nothing could stand in the way between me and my goals. I felt positive, energetic, and happy.

I want to feel energetic, positive, motivated, and mentally strong a lot of the time, and not only occasionally. The question that popped in my head was. Why? What happened to make me feel this way or the other? I had no answer. I hadn’t been paying attention.

According to science, awareness of our mood patterns is the first step. Once we identify what contributes positively and negatively to our happiness, we can set up a plan to have more of the good stuff and less of the bad. This new knowledge can serve as a map to manage stress and lead a healthier, happier life.

Start Tracking Your Mood

What was going on on the days that I was feeling out of sorts, and what was different on the days that I felt better?

One way to find out is to start tracking your mood. While there are many ways to do this, from taking notes on a notebook, to bullet journaling to using one of the apps designed for mood tracking, the idea is simple. Ask yourself, how you are feeling today on a scale of 1 to 10. Log the number next to the date. Repeat daily.

A couple more things you can start tracking are the hours of sleep you are getting daily and your stress levels. What you’re doing, as a first step, is essentially collecting data to better understand your energy levels.

The mere act of tracking your mood, thinking about your day and how you’ve felt is a powerful tool in itself, in that it allows you to start thinking about ways to turn a bad day around. According to this article, by monitoring and learning about your own emotions, you feel more in control of your mood.

When I started tracking my daily habits, my goal was to find out if there was any link between what I ate and how I felt. So I decided to track my water and coffee intake, fruit and veggies, as well as sugar and alcohol, to see whether what I ate in a day had any influence on my mood.

Track Daily Stressors and Energizers

Once you have recorded your daily mood, stress, and sleep, you’ll be able to start seeing some patterns. Perhaps you will notice some spikes in your mood. To gain a better understanding of your data, you need to introduce some qualitative data to the mix.

Your next question will be what happened during the day. Did you miss a deadline? Did you catch up with a good friend? Did your partner cook your favorite dish for dinner? Or you managed to complete a project that was on your to-do list for a while?

Start adding those to your journal. This can be a one-sentence entry per day. The idea is not to overwhelm yourself but to gain awareness. By collecting this sort of data, you will paint a more complete picture. Awareness is the first step in your journey to a better mood, control of your mood, and effectively a more fulfilling life.

Identify Your Energy Bleeders and Feeders

Based on the qualitative data I gathered, I came up with a long list of items that energize me and others that deplete my energy.

Here is an example of things I found help me recharge my energy batteries. Deep conversations. We read a lot about the benefits of connection to our mood. What I found however based on my tracking, was that there is a type of connection that energizes me and a type of connection that depletes my energy level. A good conversation can be a great pick-me-up but small talk doesn’t do it for me.

This list will be unique to you, depending on your daily logs. Mine looked something like this. Energy feeders: Cuddles with my dog. Eating high-energy foods. Walks next to the river. Self-love in any shape or form. Taking care of my plants. Discovering new music. Journaling. Learning new phrases in French. Trying out new recipes. Energy bleeders: Mindless scrolling on social media. Engaging in negative self-talk. Saying yes, when I mean no. Small talk. Being late for an appointment. Getting lost. A bad hair day.

At this stage, it doesn’t matter so much what is on your list. What matters is that now you know. For example, you identified that binge-watching Netflix did not contribute to your mood positively on day X while watching one film on the same streaming platform with your partner was a fun activity that added to the overall good score you assigned to your mood on day Y.

While identifying our drainers and energizers, we want to maintain a neutral, non-judgmental approach. The goal here is not to feel guilty about certain habits, but to learn what changes we can make to feel better.

Avoid labeling your habits good or bad. Eating a bucket of ice cream on the sofa while watching your favorite rom-com may be an energizer to you, and a drainer to someone else, despite what any nutritionist may tell you.

These new insights can be the blueprint for a happier, more energetic version of you. Write down your energizers and energy drainers and decide what to do about them.

Recognize patterns and triggers

Now that you have your list, you know what it is that energizes you and what drains you, and to what extent each factor may influence your overall mood and stress levels. You are now in a place of control, where you can make decisions. Remember what they say; knowledge is power!

These influences can be circumstances, environments, tasks, or people. If this exercise has helped you spot toxic people that drain your energy, it’s time to decide what to do about them. If your tracking suggested that connecting with your old college friend helped uplift your mood, you’ll want to look into scheduling more time together. You can work to eliminate or avoid certain triggers or focus your energy on how best to respond next time. Or to adopt more of the things that lift your spirits.

To summarise the step-by-step process:

1. track your mood daily
2. track events that affect your mood
3. analyze results
4. decide which changes are needed
5. make those changes
6. continue tracking

Remember we’re not tracking for the sake of tracking, but to gain clarity on how certain elements in our lives impact our energy, and to be able to spot areas where we can make changes for the better. The last and very important step in the process is to take action. For situations, you can change, make an action plan. Continue journaling and adapting your action plan to find what works best for you.