How to Improve Your Mood With These Writing Exercises

What I do to change my emotional state whenever I’m down

I have a smile on my face almost all of the time. Those that have met me know saying that I’m always smiling is a gross understatement!

Smiling exudes confidence. It says “I’m happy to meet you” and “I’m happy enough to show it.”

I’m a very social person, at least when I want to be. And I’m a firm believer that happiness is a choice no one is deprived of — unless they choose not to embrace themselves in it.

But the reality is that no matter how much we try, we can’t be happy all of the time. We feel sad, rejected, empty, and dejected. Most of the time these feelings have no valid reason to be there — yet we feel them.

There are days when the most tedious task isn’t clearing the files on our desks but putting on a happy face and acting like everything is fine, even if it is not.

It took me a while to realize that happiness is both a choice and a responsibility. I learned the hard way that to stay happy, one has to make a deliberate effort to do so. It’s not as easy as someone telling you to cheer up. No, we all know it’s far deeper.

We’re not vampires, so we can’t turn off our humanity switch to become void of feelings or emotions. And even if we can, it wouldn’t be wise to do that.

Feelings make us humans, and each feeling is there to be felt and necessary to teach a lesson. It doesn’t matter how long it takes for us to learn that particular lesson — it has served its purpose either way.

We have to feel angry to appreciate calmness, we have to experience noise to appreciate the serenity of silence, and, accordingly, we have to feel sad to appreciate just how amazing it is to be happy.

The Land of the Living

Three years ago, the easiest solution to my sadness was to react with anger and shut people out. I didn’t know what caused my sadness. It’s an empty feeling that detaches me from the world.

I used to have this weight in my throat — so heavy and inconvenient that I could feel it blocking my airways.

Now, I hardly experience it. I mean I still do, but it has no effect on me or how I treat others. It doesn’t affect how my days go and how productive I am because I can manage it.

I began testing exercises that, to my surprise, are the little things I needed to come back to the land of the living. They’ve made me a better person.

It worked. And if you’re in my shoes, I hope these exercises will help you too. Prepare to unleash rainbows.

Writing

You must have read a thousand times that writing out what you feel helps you stay put. I have no problem with that but have a different approach to it.

Instead of writing what you feel, which, in my case, is mostly empty and bored, write what you want to feel.

That’s it. Simple and precise.

“Don’t write a life story that you, yourself, wouldn’t read. I beg of you. That’s just silly. “ — Emily Wilcox

I hardly experience writer’s block. So when I pick up my pen or open my laptop, the white page is never scary to me.

I can be very descriptive, so I call to mind the exact scenario I want to be in and begin painting the picture. I include dialogues and witty responses from the characters in my story.

I get so passionate that I’m, in most cases, eager to finish a sentence to begin another.

I write about how it’d feel like to be a speaker at a TEDx event. I imagine the lighting, the crowd, the theater, the stage, and everything in-between.

I include a date and even the topic I am to speak on. I consider the type of people I’ll be meeting and the reception of the audience (they loved it). Now, I’m pretending the day’s over, and I’m sitting in a street café, sipping my coffee and breathing life to words on a paper detailing how awesome that day was.

Other days I write about a lovely vacation in Colombia or Valencia (Spain), experiencing their impressive culture, spending the night by a bar just beside a beach, enjoying their astounding music, and dancing with strangers — beautiful girls, in case that wasn’t obvious.

Often, I’m the CEO of my dream company (which I’m working on, by the way), flying to New York for a conference.

You get the point.

I hardly finish this without a smile on my face. I don’t know how, but I often burst out laughing.

My mind is taken off of the boredom and emptiness in the process, and while imagining, I’m perfecting the art of writing — win-win.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting laid, or making friends .… It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, OK? Getting happy.”

— Stephen King

This has to be one of the truest statements of all time, at least in regards to writing.

The writing process doesn’t take much time, yet once you become addicted, it’s such a beautiful thing. It’s so peaceful.

I’ve never experienced something more peaceful than writing in my entire life.

What If It Doesn’t Work?

But as brilliant as this process is, it’s not always effective. I can sometimes create all of the alternate universes I can manage to imagine but, yet, surprisingly remain unhappy.

In the first scenario, it probably worked because it was all in my head. This, however, involves someone else.

Everyone I’ve ever met in my life — the ones I care about enough to give a crap about whatever they did to make me unhappy — also did something (or a lot of things) which, at the moment, was good enough to at least make me smile.

No, not to me. I don’t focus on myself in this case. I try to remember what they did … even for others, reminding myself that they’re humans, too, and aren’t always excellent. They deserve to be forgiven.

There’s always something, either helping an elderly to cross the street or even being nice to a waitress — with no element of flirting, just because she deserves to be treated right.

The thing is the human mind is so powerful at sticking to negativity. Dale Carnegie will tell you the first instinct for everyone is to criticize. And so I know trying to remember what someone did right won’t always be easy, especially if you’re upset with them.

Hence, I took out my pen and paper.

Again, I wrote.

I guess Stephen King is right, again.

This has made me more open-minded. I’ve sometimes even realized the problem in place isn’t their fault in its entirety — but mine too. Heck, I sometimes even realized it was more of a fault of mine than theirs.

“Remember, even in your darkest days, a light is always trying to reach you! All you have to do is open your eyes wide and find that light!” — Mehmet Murat

Turns out my light is tied to the ink of my pen! You should try it too — it probably is tied to yours.