The Mood Elevator

by Larry Senn

  I must admit I was alarmed at first because all the drama went out of our relationship. I now see that the practice has led to the special loving, supportive relationship we have without the all-too-common arguing and bickering many couples get caught up in.

  Low Mood State: Drive with Caution!

  As I mentioned earlier, our teenage son, Logan, somehow understands this concept best of all. He has a leg up because he naturally tends to have a quiet mind, but like all of us he has an occasional meltdown—a time when he is overwhelmed with homework or just having a bad day. When he does, he tells us, “Just leave me alone. Don’t try to talk to me now because I won’t hear you anyway and I may say something I really don’t mean. Just let me go to my room until I’m back to the real me. Then I’ll come out again.” Many adults could benefit from a similar approach to their moods.

  One of our consultants at Senn Delaney came up with a great analogy for doing down well. Suppose you must drive somewhere on a very dark, cold, snowy night with an icy road. You’ll do it—but with great caution. You’ll drive slowly, take turns gently, and leave plenty of space between you and any other drivers or objects on the road.

  Apply the same kind of caution to your communications with others when you’re stuck in a low mood. Remember that your instincts are not right. This is not a good time to tell someone what you really think of them, or to make an important life decision, or to tackle a major problem. Wait until your healthy normal reemerges among the upper floors on the Mood Elevator; then you will find that you can deal with issues much more easily, quickly, and painlessly.

  Using the Mood Elevator as your guide and not acting on low-level thoughts and impulses when you are feeling down is one of the key principles to doing less damage to yourself—and to others.

  15

  Relationships and the Mood Elevator

  Things turn out best for people who make the best of the way things turn out.

  —ANONYMOUS

  As you’ve seen, many of the concepts described in this book—from mild preference to separate realities to seeing innocence—can be used to foster better relationships at work and more-loving relationships at home. And when it comes to building relationships, nowhere is the Mood Elevator more helpful. That’s because our connection to others and to the world depends on how well we manage the up-and-down ride.

  When we are down, we feel alone. We feel disconnected. We tend not to reach out to others or be supportive of them. When we are in the lower mood states, people bother us more easily. We are more judgmental of others and tend to assume ulterior motives behind what they do and say. Irritation, bother, judgment, and anger are not good places to be in when you are trying to foster supportive, collaborative relationships.

  But it’s a different story altogether in the higher mood states because a healthy state of mind and healthy relationships are related.

  There is a notion in Eastern philosophy of keeping your karma clean. My simple interpretation of that: go out of your way to make more friends and no enemies, and life will somehow go better.

  In the business world, we often talk about the importance of collaboration and teamwork. But all too many organizations have an us-versus-them mentality, trust issues, a lack of cooperation between different departments, strained relationships between the corporate office and the field organizations, and other social dysfunctions.

  Relationship issues also exist in families, of course. While there are countless loving and supportive couples and families, there are also myriad dysfunctional ones. There are siblings who don’t forgive one another for years or even decades for minor slights, in-laws who are considered outlaws, and couples who constantly bicker.

  It is easy to see how relationships are tied to the Mood Elevator. Who wants to be around someone who spends too much time on the lower levels, feeling and behaving depressed, self-righteous, judgmental, bothered, or angry?

  On the other hand, isn’t it energizing to be with people who are more often on the higher mood levels, feeling and behaving hopeful, appreciative, optimistic, and understanding? Wouldn’t you rather be with someone who has a sense of humor than someone who is mostly just irritable?

  In the upper mood states, people are willing and able to commit to a higher purpose, such as family, community, or service; in the lower states, it is “all about me.” It is easy to see how concern for the greater good builds healthy, sustainable relationships at work and at home.

  When we are concerned about and interested in others and are willing to play win-win in a more unselfish way, we develop those strong relationships. But if it is “all about me” and we view the world through a win/lose lens, our relationships suffer.

  The Luck Factor

  Relationship skills are a foundation for a more successful and fulfilling life. Years ago I read a little book by Richard Wiseman called The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles. It describes a series of theories about the concept of luck. The theory that most resonated with me was that “lucky” people have a much wider and stronger network of supportive relationships.

  The example I recall is a woman who got the dream job she never expected would be offered. When researchers traced the job offer back, they found that the woman had built a network of very supportive people who “showed up” as she sought the job. Thanks to this network, her references were glowing, her letters of recommendation were strong, and (unbeknownst to her) there were people she knew who knew people within the organization who came forward in her support.

  “Luck,” then, is not a random factor that lands on some people for no apparent reason. It’s an outgrowth of healthy relationships. People who better manage their Mood Elevators have far more connections and support systems than those who don’t. That is why their lives seem to work out better—and why they even seem to be “luckier” than others.

  To foster good relationships, let your feelings be your guide: look for and cultivate feelings of understanding, compassion, love, and warmth toward others. This is often hardest to do with those closest to us because they are often the ones who can most easily push our buttons.

  It takes conscious awareness to assume good intentions (not self-centered motives) in loved ones, to see their innocence, and to be willing to forgive the times they’ve hurt or disappointed us. Accepting the idiosyncrasies of others, particularly loved ones, and honoring their right to a separate, different reality is one key to healthy, loving relationships.

  Most of us spend the majority of our lives in relationships with parents, our children, other loved ones, and co-workers. Understanding how to spend more time among the upper floors on the relationship Mood Elevator greatly improves our quality of life and that of those around us.

  16

  Pointers for Riding the Mood Elevator

  The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts.

  —MARCUS AURELIUS

  Living life up the Mood Elevator and at your best is based on a few fundamental premises.

  Life happens, and it’s not always pretty, but we have the choice to make of life what we will through our thinking. The first premise of living life up the Mood Elevator is to understand that our thinking creates our experience of life—and we have the power to direct it as we will.

  The second premise is that we came into this world with what could be called innate health. That includes the whole system that gives us the ability to experience life through our thoughts and feelings. It also represents a set of built-in, inborn, God-given traits, including the fact that we are naturally loving, curious, and wise. Our innate health represents all the higher levels on the Mood Elevator.

  Over time we all develop thought habits and unhealthy-normal thinking that takes us away from our natural state. This is inevitable because our thinking triggers our feelings, and our thinking varies from moment to moment and can be influenced by many things.

  The teachings I have shared in this book are designed to help connect you to your in
nate health—the best of who you already are at your core. In some sense, you don’t have to learn anything other than how to access that innate health, but to do that requires an understanding of the role of thought and the feelings that it generates. Only you can learn to ride the Mood Elevator in your own unique way, just as only you could learn to walk, beginning with those first few wobbly steps as a baby.

  The pointers in this book will help you do just that:

  Know that at your core you have innate health and the ability to be at your best. This is a very reassuring idea—one you can turn to in times of doubt and anxiety.

  Know that to be human means you will ride the Mood Elevator and visit each and every floor.

  Look to your feelings as your guide to tell you when you are down the Mood Elevator. Carry a Mood Elevator pocket card as a daily reminder.

  Learn to recognize the feelings that accompany any unhealthy-normal thinking or thought patterns, and make them a loud bell.

  Use pattern interrupts to change your thinking and your feelings.

  Feed the thoughts you favor, not those that drop you to the lower floors on the Mood Elevator.

  Live in the world of mild preference—not a world of “have-to’s” and “my ways.”

  Take better care of yourself and remember to stretch and recover with exercise, sleep, and time off.

  Use breathing and self-awareness exercises to be here now and quiet your mind.

  Maintain a gratitude perspective; count your blessings daily and be grateful for life itself.

  Recognize and honor the separate realities we all live in. Be quick to understand others’ perspectives and slow to blame or criticize.

  Remember that your thinking is unreliable in the lower mood states, so delay important conversations and decisions; don’t act on your unreliable thinking, and don’t take your lower mood state out on other people.

  Have faith that when you are down the Mood Elevator, this too shall pass—just like the weather. The sun is always up there; the clouds can obscure it, but they will pass, as will your low mood.

  The greatest gift I received as a child was the message from my mother that my natural state was to be loving, wise, and capable—that I was born whole and complete and that anytime I doubted that, it was just an error in my thinking. My goal is to “pay it forward.”

  My hope is that the concepts in this book can put you on a path to finding that key and creating more love, joy, peace, inspiration, fulfillment, and success in your life.

  How This Book Came to Be

  The acknowledgments page gives credit to those who have had an impact on this book, but it doesn’t tell the story of where the concepts came from and the roles that different people played. This section is for anyone who has an interest in that story.

  Many of the notions in this book came to me through the school of life; that is, I learned them by reflecting on my own personal experiences and through the work that Senn Delaney has done to enable thriving organizational cultures for clients around the world. Other notions are my personal interpretation of concepts I’ve learned from some very progressive teachers in the field of mental health who first discovered and translated these principles.

  Almost 20 years ago, my friend Paul Nakai asked my wife and me to attend a lecture by a gentleman named Sydney Banks (whom you may recall I mentioned in chapter 4). Syd is the person I consider the originator of the core principles underlying the concepts in this book. He was a simple tradesman who one day had an epiphany—a flash of insight about the fact that his entire experience of life was the result of his thinking. He was touched by the notion that human beings were given the power of thought through which to experience life—and that we experience it largely through our feelings or consciousness.

  Syd had a simple but very touching way of communicating these profound notions, and he began to attract a following. My wife and I attended his one-day presentation on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. It was just two 2-hour segments, with ample breaks, during which Syd sat in a chair and talked about three principles: mind, consciousness, and thought. Though we didn’t fully grasp his ideas (in fact, we didn’t even understand many of them!), we did come away from the lecture seeing life a little differently. We also felt noticeably different. We had an improved experience of life for many weeks afterward: we were more patient, tolerant, peaceful, and loving. Life somehow just looked better.

  We were struck by the fact that people who were understanding these principles on a deeper level were reporting better relationships with family and loved ones, increased creativity, improved peace of mind, new resourcefulness, greater career effectiveness, and more gratitude for life.

  Bernadette, who at the time was head of Human Resources, including training and development, for Senn Delaney, concluded that there might be some concepts in Syd’s message that could help us in our work with clients. Senn Delaney’s goal has always been to foster healthy, high-performing teams and organizational cultures. An important aspect of that work is the seminars we conduct to connect our clients with a set of essential values and principles for life effectiveness. Bernadette reasoned that this might be another avenue to connect people to the best of who they really are.

  At about the same time, we were introduced to another healthcare professional—George S. Pransky, PhD—who had also become intrigued with Syd Banks’s message. George decided to give up his traditional practice as a psychologist in the San Francisco Bay Area and move to a small town north of Seattle to start a mental health practice to help individuals understand Syd’s concepts.

  If Bernadette and I were ever going to teach those principles, we had to learn to use them ourselves, so we decided to spend a week with George to see what we could learn. What was interesting was that he had developed a wellness practice rather than a mental illness practice. Most psychotherapy is about “fixing people.” The goal of George’s practice—and our goal, as well—was to take people who were already successful by the world’s standards and help them be even more effective and lead more fulfilling lives.

  I began thinking about what might make me even more effective. What would enhance my experience of life? At the time things were going quite well. Senn Delaney was successful. My kids were doing fine. My relationship with Bernadette, while not perfect, was very good and improving with every year.

  Upon reflection there were definitely things that detracted from my effectiveness and my quality of life. One I was aware of was the fact that I was wound pretty tight. I took my work and most everything else too seriously. I had a very busy mind and lived at a level of impatience and intensity on what I know today as the Mood Elevator.

  Occasionally, when I would take a vacation that lasted more than a week and allow my mind the time to quiet down, I would catch a glimpse of a very different kind of life—one where I was more appreciative of nature and people, where I lived in the present moment more often, where I was a better listener, where I experienced greater peace. But those moments were fleeting and exceptional. As a result, I wasn’t always the best listener—and in my haste to move forward, I would often finish other people’s sentences. That was definitely something I could work on.

  Another aspect of my life I realized I could work on, which was even more compelling (and more draining), was what I now understand to be my worry habit. Even though my life was going quite well, I had a tendency to fill my mind too often with anxious thoughts.

  Worry became the perfect topic because it is the ideal example of how we live through our thinking. When we worry about something and start spinning all of our scenarios, it’s as if the event actually happened. We have all the physical, psychological, and emotional consequences of the event—even though it hasn’t actually occurred.

  In reality, most of what we worry about never happens, and the things that do occur are rarely as significant as we make them out to be in our own minds. That got me thinking about how much better my quality of life would have
been if I’d merely not worried about those things that ended up never happening. I urge you to ponder that same thought.

  My time with George Pransky proved invaluable; it showed me that feelings of worry and intensity were so much a part of my habit that they were a blind spot for me. Because I didn’t notice them, I couldn’t do much about them. As a result of my newfound understanding, I began to value a quieter mind and more peaceful feelings. Feelings of excessive intensity and worry became more like loud bells—and those unhealthy thought habits diminished greatly.

  As a result of continuing to deepen my understanding of the role of thought and incorporating the principles that I learned from George into my life, I’m happy to report that today I have a far more peaceful life with far less intensity and worry. I’ve become acutely aware of the feelings that go along with worry, so I recognize them when I go there on the Mood Elevator. Sometimes all it takes to snap me out of worry is a simple, gentle admonition to myself, such as There you go again. This reminds me to be accountable for possible outcomes but not to create a soap opera in my head about it.

  That early work with George, coupled with what I have learned since, has led me to the kind of relationship with my wife that is beyond what I could have imagined. It is continually fresh, loving, supportive, forgiving, stress-free, and passionate—yet amazingly peaceful.

  The impact these concepts have had on our five children, however, may be the most powerful gift I have received. That gift—and a desire to help others live life at their best—led to my developing the Mood Elevator as a tool and discovering the secrets of riding it consciously.

  This positive personal experience set me on the path to better understand how to use these principles in my own life and to incorporate them into the work Senn Delaney does with business leaders around the world. It took years of trial and error in coaching executives and leading seminars to find easy ways to help people understand the Mood Elevator and how to ride it better. It took additional years to explore the research and science governing our moods and to write this book. Today the Mood Elevator has become a foundational aspect of our corporate seminars. It is an integral part of the sessions we conduct to support personal change, which is one aspect of shaping an organization’s culture.