Inside: 5 practices to help you lift your mood. You are worthy of love and acceptance in spite of your struggle and that you are worth fighting for!
Sometimes you find yourself in the valley or feeling low (again) and not only do you wonder if you’re the only one who struggles (you’re not) but you need a reminder that you can practice imperfect action to lift your mood again.
Other times, it’s more about just holding on and remembering that spring always comes again.
And it’s always helpful to remember that struggle is only part of your story – not the fullness of it.
Whether your low mood is due to painful life circumstances, depression, anxiety, or a seasonal dip (here are 10 science-based tips to care for yourself through the darker season), it is so important to remember that you are worthy of love and acceptance right now, in all your strength and struggle. You are worth fighting for.
RELATED: 5 Habits To Help You Show up Strong When You Must Begin Again
With time you can build habits and strategies to improve and sustain mood balance. You get stronger with practice. Shifting from automatic self-judgment to a new instinct of self-compassion happens with many repetitions. When energetic or emotional capacity are low, keep things simple and stay out of all or nothing thinking. Just do all or something.
Use the following inventories to gather information about your current mood or mental state and consider taking them to your doctor/functional or integrative practitioner/naturopath to ask for support if you’re feeling chronically sad or low or things are worsening.
5 ways to lift your mood up when you’re feeling low
When you’re feeling low, don’t panic. Low times can feel scary especially if you’ve been here before. But fighting them often increases fear. Take care of yourself and know that low times are part of being human in a messy world. Remind yourself that this valley is likely temporary. And if all or some of these ideas don’t feel accessible to you right now, start where you can or ask for professional help. You matter.
1. be kinder to yourself
We don’t control all our thoughts – they show up and we need to choose our response. But a pattern of negative self-talk or bullying yourself is something you can consciously work on. You can replace self-judgment or shame with a kinder possibility. You can learn to challenge the stories that play out in your head – cut them off. You can practice pausing between impulse and response – or between thought and action – to build a sense of agency.
You can build a kinder and more trusting friendship with yourself by asking yourself what you need in the moment and responding with compassion. If you are in crisis you can learn to be loving to yourself amid the fear and uncertainty. And in easier seasons you can practice choosing where your attention goes, focusing on gratitude and the life you do want rather than on the parts of life you don’t like. This takes consistent practice but every time you practice you sow a new hopeful and even joyful possibility for your life.
Free: The Befriend Yourself Workshop
In this workshop, you’ll learn why fixing, forcing, and self-criticism never create the change you long for, and how befriending yourself helps you feel calmer and more capable of bringing to life what you truly want. And you’ll learn tried-and-true ways to be kind to yourself each step of the way.
2. Nourish Yourself
Nourish yourself. This can include remembering to eat and drink water, or eating more foods that support mood balance, or releasing shame and judgment around food. But it can also mean doing the things you know help you feel steadier in other ways. This varies so much person to person and season to season but some ideas could include: time in nature, journaling, connection with your inner circle people or your cat, extra sleep, laughter/watching something that makes you laugh, or forms of healthy touch.
This might also be the time to shore up leaky boundaries and put your own needs first for a while. Many of us know how to pour out and care for others and we’re not great at tending to ourselves. You don’t earn your value through self-sacrifice. Your value simply is.
Seasonal Mindfulness Journals – spring, summer, autumn, winter sessions.
3. Slow Down and Simplify
Life doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful and neither do you. Learn to embrace imperfection to improve your mood long-term. This list of simple living tips for the stressed out or the recovering perfectionist is one place to begin. Slow down, offer yourself permission to rest or lower the bar where you’re able until you come back up for air. Can you outsource some tasks or share the work load? Consider letting your own wants and needs rise up your priority list, guilt-free? Can you release all the “shoulds” that you carry?
Western culture celebrates hustle and habits that lead to burnout. Chronic stress and running on empty depletes us and it’s pretty hard to feel good in our body and life living this way. Consider that it may be time for a more sustainable and soul-honouring way of being.
4. make a bid for connection
Introvert or extrovert, you might want to isolate when you’re feeling low and need to be aware of this tendency; isolation can lead to spiraling downward. To lift your mood up, reach out for support in times of stress. We need each other so give yourself permission to ask for and receive help.
Social support (ex. a therapist or grief circle) and social connection (ex. healthy friends, family, intentional community) matter to our wellbeing. If relational stress is impacting your mood, it may be time to update your Circle of Impact. And if you need growth-minded and compassionate community, I invite you to join my Brave + Beautiful Membership Community.
The Brave + Beautiful Community for midlife women. Build a friendship with yourself. And be in community with others who are learning to value themselves and live with more joy.
5. organize your thinking
The Brain Download Worksheet below will help you get all your swirling thoughts and to-dos out of your head and heart and onto paper where you can see them and then triage. Not everything is for today, not everything is yours to carry, and not everything shiny idea needs to be followed.
Also, deepening self-awareness – including understanding your triggers, what lights you up, the script that runs through your brain – helps boost life happiness. While it can take time to deepen understanding of who you are and why you tick the way you do, you can start in fairly easy ways like keeping a ‘happy list’ to acknowledge the things, big and small, that make you feel happy, or by learning what shifts you into fight or flight or into shut down. Awareness is the first step in creating healthier patterns.
Remember that there are always things you can do to pick your mood up when you feel low. Change doesn’t always come quickly (although sometimes it does!) but baby steps with consistency lead to powerful results. And remember, you are worth fighting for.
Krista xo
Updated Jan 2024
Simple Living Tips for the Stressed Out or Recovering Perfectionist
I completely agree that we need to reach out to people when we find ourselves struggling with low mood. The instinct is to curl up in bed and not see anyone but social connection is crucial to our happiness and health. Another effective mood booster is cardio exercise. Whenever I’m feeling low I push myself to go for a walk or go to the gym. It’s a miracle what 20 minutes of cardio can do for your mood!
Thank you xox
Happy it helps, Fiona:)
Hello Krista,
Thank you for this post.
Your words/posts are always very comforting and have got me through a lot of low phases.
I’m going through a particularly low phase at the moment which feels like treacle mix with mud and tar. I have survived a lot of dips which are mostly externally stimulated before but this time its to do with reconnecting with my innerself which is alien and causing me a lot of anxiety, sadness and frustration.
I have downloaded and printed the worksheets but struggling with the Letting Go. As the things I’ve listed on there are my stress triggers and I don’t know the HOW to let them go.
Hi Juita – love your bravery and determination to do the messy inner work. The worksheets are primarily designed to help you get clear, for instance, on what you want or need. The HOW is individual, of course, and dependant upon what a person is working to release. Enlisting help (ex. from myself, a psychologist, a spiritual advisor as the case may be) can be beneficial. Awareness is the first step and these worksheets are designed mostly with that in mind. The Shift Your thoughts worksheets included are one powerful way of releasing something by challenging (frequently!) the old thoughts or stories that arise with new possibilities which leads to different behavior/outcome.
It’s so wonderful Krista that you make these resources so freely available. It’s hard enough making the time for yourself to face your shadows let alone part with money to get started so it’s a great gift you give to us all, thank you. I like the tend and befriend suggestion which is exactly opposite to what I feel like doing when I’m on a low ebb.
Hi Nic, you are very welcome! Yes – the tend & befriend goes against my introverted nature but I’ve learned it is essential to keep me from spiraling downward. Also, it opens me to up deeper relationships where I allow others to love and help me vs. me only being “the strong one.”
So grateful for this timely post. I was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis a couple weeks ago and also have endometriosis. I have been fighting some awful anxiety over the past few months as I have waited for some answers and haven’t been feeling well. The PDF in #3 is really helpful. I just began an anti-inflammatory/IC diet that I am hoping will help heal the inflammation in my body, but am realizing how whole-body wellness is what is going to ultimately allow me to experience relief from these conditions. Next up: learning to manage my thought life. 🙂
Robyn, sorry to hear about your diagnosis and pain/anxiety… but happy to know you are advocating for yourself and taking action to care for yourself well. I’m glad that PDF is helpful for you and I’d love to hear back about your journey and progress. xo
Robin, you may want to look up Montreal Healthy Girl on YouTube. She’s a Naturopathic Dr. who struggled with IC and other health issues for many years. She’s got a lot of encouraging videos that can be super helpful!
Thank you for another great post and these useful tips! Your words are nourishment/encouragment to me and an instant pick me up. I loved “Don’t fall to prey to discouragement or overwhelm” because it is something that is easy to do at times and that’s why I appreciate your advice on positive effective ways to battle it.
Yes, remembering that we can do something is so important and that small steps over time can lead to powerful results over time. I appreciate your feedback, DJ:)