Basic set up:
You wake up, go about your routine. Wait longer than usual for a bus to come. Bus is full when you get on. Get to work right on time. Work your normal shift. Go home.
Basic set up with added good mood:
You wake up with a smile, go about your routine. Wait longer than usual for the bus to come, but you don't overly think about this as your good mood has you thinking of other things. Bus is full and you just move to the back, you'll be sitting most of the day at work so standing will be good for you. Get to work right on time and have a couple quick chats with coworkers, thereby infecting them with a good mood. Go home feeling like you had a good day.
Basic set up with added bad mood:
You wake up with a frown, go about your routine slower than normal. Wait for the bus as you become more and more irritated. You check the time once every seventeen seconds and scoff in a "I can't believe this is taking so long" kind of way. The bus finally comes and, of course, it is full. You give some passengers smirks as you pass by thinking to yourself that this day is off to a terrible start. Get to work right on time, but you like to be early and you wont be able to get settled. Rush by your coworkers who try to strike up a conversation and get to your desk. "What is the problem?", others think and your mood is passed on. Pout through the day and leave for home at the end of the day.
I have always found it strange how the everyday events are transformed by your mind. Nothing unusual happened in the above example. Nothing different actually happens in the bad mood. It is a matter of framing. In a good mood, you are more likely to let little things pass you by. In a bad mood, everything is magnified and becomes focused on you.
One of the problems I have found personally, is that a bad mood shifts my focus inward. I become the center of the universe. Things which happen around me are happening to me. It is as if someone is arranging my world around me in an attempt at tragic humor. We have all had those days when we get to a point of cynical laughter as we proclaim "Of course (so and so) happened. That is just my luck today!". In today's younger culture, we have glorified this emotion. (Check out fmylife.com for what I mean by this).
To be able to control your emotions is something that we all strive for. No one consciously lets their emotions take the wheel. Instead, we all fall somewhere on a continuum of out of control and near full control. I have never known anyone who was completely in control with their inner battles. The more I read on the subject, I feel if this is not a human possibility. The closest we may get is to control the outward interpretation of emotion; never, however, will we be able to silence the immediate emotional effects of say a tragic event, a confession of love or a deep longing. These emotions are beyond our understanding.
Alas, I regress. These are ideas to be pondered by the masters of the universe. Not for me.
