I have written before about managing moods. The problem with NOT managing your mood is that you usually pay a penalty in the future for paying a price in the past. Really, when something bad happens, at that instant you have already paid a price. Now, by being in a bad mood about it, you are paying a penalty for paying the price.

Please read: Stop punishing yourself un-necessarily

Recently, a close friend and I had a discussion about a meeting last week. The meeting unfortunately had not gone well even after a lot of preparation. One of the participants in the meeting was clearly not interested. More than anything, he was not respectful of our time. The other participant in the meeting was our contact and he couldn’t do much. The discussion was about whether our contact could have done something more. My take was that he probably could have but we don’t know his circumstances, so we should just move on. My friend said that I am trying to defend our contact and he was not buying it. After about sixty seconds, I told my friend that he might be right and deep down even if I believed his theory, it wouldn’t help much as the meeting was water under the bridge for me. I had paid the price and I was not going to pay a surcharge for paying the price. I was not going to be in a bad mood because the ONLY person who will pay an optional price would be me. We settled the issue and moved on to other fun things.

There was a time in my life where I used to carry a lot of weight on my shoulders because of all the extra baggage in the mind. I never realized that extra baggage was optional. I could have shed that baggage anytime but I chose NOT to. In the end, it was MY personal choice to carry the baggage as I had the power to reframe any past experience and give it a positive spin. What made it complicated is that since this extra baggage was deep inside my mind, nobody else knew that I was carrying this baggage so there was no offer of help. Why would there be such an offer if on the outside I am always portraying and projecting an image as if everything was just right?

Think about your own extra baggage and see what can you leave behind so that you can get lighter and move faster in the future. The cleanup that will result in a positive spin for the past is well worth the effort.

Photo Courtesy: sheridanlee on Flickr