To Change how you feel

1. Relax
This one is easy but just remembering that you can relax when you feel all tensed up can work wonders. You might realise that much of that tension was something you just built up in your own mind.

2. Ask different questions
We are always asking ourselves questions, but they might be questions that aren’t really that good. Instead of asking yourself: “why must I do this?”, ask yourself “how can I make this more fun for me?” or “how can this help me?”. Don’t ask yourself “will I be able to do this?”, instead ask “how will I do this?”.

Ask better questions that empowers you.

Questions that presupposes that you have the power over your own life.
Questions that directs your focus to solutions and opens your mind to new possibilities instead of questions that just makes you feel trapped and lousy.

3. Smile
Smiling gives you a boost of happiness. Try forcing yourself to smile for thirty seconds right now. The great feelings that make you smile works in reverse too. By making yourself smile, no matter how you feel, your body will start releasing all those wonderful chemicals that makes you feel happy. Try it right now and feel the difference.

4. Appreciate things
This is one of the most simple and effective ways to just feel so much better. Just look around yourself. Appreciate the good food you’re eating, the hot woman or man walking past you, the kids playing and just having fun in the mud puddles, all the possibilities in your life, all the great things about your friends and your family, the birds singing… Ok, so perhaps it sounds a bit corny.
But it really works. And it’s great to try to change your mindset to one where you appreciate the things in your everyday life instead of taking them for granted.

5. Interrupt your thought pattern
You might be feeling down or you are procrastinating. Maybe nothing is working out for you today. You just want to go home and go to bed. Here’s where you might want to interrupt your thought pattern. And you do that simply by doing something unexpected and totally different from what you are doing now.

Some suggestions; take a glass of water, throw it in own your face. Or jump up and down ten times singing the chorus from “We are the champions” by Queen at the top of you lungs. Or imagine your negative inner voice sounding like Goofy. Do something that totally breaks your thought pattern. Something humours is nice because it’s often the opposite to a depressed or anxious state that you would like to break out of. And laughter and smiles breaks tension too.

6. Use an external stateboost
This is a great idea and you probably already using it to some degree. Anyways, here are some suggestions. Change and boost your emotional state with some of your favourite music, maybe a couple of YouTube-clips, an episode of the Simpsons (or your favourite sitcom), personal development-cds, -books or –websites. Or perhaps Eddie Murphy’s “Delirious” or “Raw”. That’s some side-splittingly funny stand-up.

7. Eat. But not too much. Or too little
If you feel tired and frustrated maybe you just need to eat to get your energy back and your blood sugar up to a more healthy level. But don’t eat too much or you’ll feel tired and lazy. Don’t eat to little either or pretty soon you’ll feel just as bad as you did before you ate. Also, it you’re sitting most of the day, take it a bit easy on the carbs and the size of your portions. You may have been raised to eat large and healthy meals, but maybe your father and mother had more physical jobs…

8. Create a physical anchor
Ok, this one might take a while but it seems to work for many people. Basically you stand up, close your eyes and imagine an emotional state that you want to able to snap into on command. As an example I imagined a time when I felt really powerful and confident. I stood, I breathed and I moved the way I did that one time. Then while I was back in that state both physically and mentally I snapped the fingers of my right hand. Over and over. Over and over and over again. The theory is that you link up that emotion with the physical act of snapping your fingers.

9. Open yourself up to other possibilities that are more beneficial to you
Have some faith that the way you view work, relationships, money, exercise, life and those other things are not the only way to see them. Having the feeling that you are right about something and “know how things work” can feel really good. It’s instant gratification and gives you security and comfort.

But it also limits you by closing your mind to other avenues of thought and personal development. Seek out a couple of experts’ advice in the area that you are having problems with. Use google and amazon, just dive in to the subject for a while to get a basic understanding. Most likely there are things you can do both to remedy the problem and to change you perspective on this trouble area. There are often more solutions than one or two to a problem.

10. Recall your positive experiences and memories