The Good Mood Challenge™️
Try it! You might like it!
This week’s episode is brought to you by Jennifer Coolidge’s commencement address. She’s the drunk aunt you get trapped with at a party and hers is the only take we need.
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Hi friends!
I have been doing the Good Mood Challenge™️ — a little mind game of my own invention that we will get to in just a moment — and as a result, I am only up for discussing two news items this week:
The orcas have returned.
After a hiatus, during which I assume they hammered out the hashtag for their upcoming TikTok movement, the bad girls of Gibraltar sunk a 50-foot yacht this past week. Takes me right back to earlier unhinged times, when radicalism (or the idea of it) wasn’t making everyone lose their fucking minds. It was simply what we projected on the chicest of sea creatures.
I got bangs.
Two Thursdays ago, I was having a leisurely breakfast taco moment when it dawned on me that I was in a very good mood. It was the kind of good mood that makes you smile at the world, and the world smiles back. The kind of good mood that is hard to come by these days while social media makes us nuts and everything is horrible and bizarre.
And I knew what it was from: The night before, I was rounding the corner on my sanity walk when I ran into an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a while. We had the usual catch-up convo, and they seemed so impressed when I shared what I’ve been up to. It was an unexpected delight. That run-in gave me the perspective I needed to stop feeling weird about my life, and I floated home feeling great.
I had this good mood going, and I wanted to see how far I could take it. And so the Good Mood Challenge™️ was born.
Is it a bit of a catty vibe to have a good mood epiphany based on how someone else views the news of your latest accomplishments? Yes. I am a catty little bitch, guilty as charged. I am also an ambitious lunatic and a recovering workaholic who once dreamed of the great work-life balance I have, even though it feels itchy to me. I am a well-compensated freelance meme auteur who has yearned to stop making social content for at least half a decade, and I occasionally wonder if the wrong kind of witch has my soul trapped in a jar with a sepia-toned photo of Mark Zuckerberg.
These are not real problems. Constantly striving towards the next career goal is an addiction and a reliable way to never be satisfied with what you’ve already achieved.
The Good Mood Challenge™️ is not about creating good moods from bad. Rather, it is about capturing a good mood — like a beautiful, fragile butterfly in a silk net — and attempting to sustain it. I can’t tell you how to find the good mood, that’s personal and getting harder by the day. All I know is that once I decided to see how long I could keep mine, it decided to stay.
We all know at least one person who lives to marinate in their own misery (bet you just thought of them), and this is not the challenge for them. This is a challenge for those of us who enjoy a nice spiral up, and who see the value in not being a miserable sack of shit, though recent social norms may suggest we behave otherwise.
The challenge is rooted in perspective because things could always be worse and our attitudes could always be better. Positive perspective is like gratitude with a hypothesis. It’s something we lack in our online funhouse of consuming the curated parts of other people’s lives. There will always be a reason to feel bad about yourself if that’s what you’re digging for. And there are infinite opportunities to look outwards and ruminate on the tragic state of the world instead.
I don’t suggest we turn away from activism, or ignore the many horrors of our melting planet, but consuming this amount of devastating content and then sharing it to the same group of people (who will receive it how they have been all along) is not doing much to seed change. It is, however, making us all sad and mean.
When you try and maintain a good mood it’s easy to see what puts you in a bad one which is why I have been leaving my phone in another room. Obviously you can’t control all the annoying things that continue to happen, so the challenge is to release the annoyance before it wins, or to balance it out with treats.
Doing this has quickly turned me into that Kim Cattrall headline. I’ve become a vibes diva, but I acknowledge and accept it as part of my journey. I will protect this mood at all costs.
I share this challenge with you all not only to brag about how I’ve been in a good mood for over a week, but to selfishly implore as many people as possible to try and join me. Let’s all do our part to make this hellscape a more pleasant place to live.
One more thing before I go, from now on I am sending this newsletter on Sundays. I know we will all miss the slight element of chaos, but I’m sure it will remain in some other way.
I’m going to Esalen this week to woo it up with some new age characters, be by the sea, and get great material. Then I’m going to see my people in SF for a few days. I will write to you all again in a fortnight once I’ve been extremely Californian and galavanted to my heart’s content.
Let me know if you try the challenge — together, we can make a difference!
Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️
Liz
Geez, your newsletter always just hits and this one hit me right in the gut. Trying it!!! Like…why the eff not, right?!? I need this! Lol
Ok I will try. Also CAN'T WAIT TO HEAR ABOUT ESALEN