Essential Oils

Change Your Environment, Change Your Emotions—Three Simple Ways to Support Positive Moods

September 01, 2017



Acoustic guitar music plays low in the background. The ceiling fan spins, the coffee is hot, the paper and pen just right…on a good day, this is how I set the mood when I write. My office walls are painted a certain color, the window blinds are always open during the day, there are shelves filled with books, a glider rocker. I’ve done everything in my power to make this room a happy place.

To energize, calm, inspire, comfort—whatever the emotion we want to feel, there likely is a way to nudge ourselves in that direction by manipulating our surroundings. Whether it’s the music we listen to or the motivational quotes we tack up on our refrigerator, we create the atmosphere in which our moods grow. As Sam Gosling, author of Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, wrote, “Much of the stuff we gather about us and the environments we create are there not to send messages about our identities but specifically to manage our emotions and thoughts.” 

Here are three simple environmental factors that can boost—or lower—your mood:

Tidiness

I don’t aspire to Marie Kondo levels of organization, but it does make me feel lighter and happier when I look around at tidy surroundings. I like knowing that if I open the hall closet door, nothing will fall on my head. I’m in an ongoing battle with paper in my office, and books everywhere else, but I make an effort to keep my kitchen cleaned up and I make the bed most days because it makes me happy to see it like that.

I’m also prone to taking on a cleaning or organizing project when I’m frustrated or blocked in my creative pursuits. Some would say I’m avoiding my work, but I choose to think of it as a way to distract the inner critic long enough to sneak some ideas by her. Making progress in one area (a cleaned out hall closet) often leads to progress in another (a completed blog post). 

(Just don’t look in my office right now—eesh!)

Light

The presence or lack of light, especially natural light, makes a huge difference to me. If we have a run of a few days with no sunshine, I feel my mood lowering just like the clouds. Light is essential to the human body, helping to regulate hormones that affect mood and sleep. You’ll almost always find “step outside” on lists of ways to feel happier, and getting some natural light is one of the reasons that’s so effective.  

Scent

Essential Oils are Having a Moment. Everywhere you turn, they’re touted as the cure for some malady. So far, my main use for them has been scent. I diffuse oils in the bedroom, kitchen, and my car. I like when things smell good! It’s a bonus when those scents have beneficial effects on my mood, which some research suggests that they do.

According to Christopher Alexander in The Timeless Way of Building: “There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that a person need only do inner work…that a man is entirely responsible for his own problems; and that to cure himself, he need only change himself…The fact it, a person is so formed by his surroundings, that his state of harmony depends entirely on his harmony with his surroundings.” To be truly happy, we still need to do the inner work, but we can support that work with simple pleasures that make our surroundings more to our taste. So if you find yourself battling sadness, fear, anxiety, stress or other negatively-charged emotions (and who doesn’t?), take a look at your surroundings. Maybe there’s something you can change that will help you feel better.

What is your favorite way to influence your mood by manipulating your environment? Please share in the comments!

Birds

The Beat of Ordinary Hours

August 30, 2017

Photo by Gary Bendig on Unsplash

Introduction by Ted Kooser: In our busy times, the briefest pause to express a little interest in the natural world is praiseworthy. Most of us spend our time thinking about other people, and scarcely any time thinking about other creatures. I recently co-edited an anthology of poems about birds, and we looked through lots of books and magazines, but here is a fine poem we missed, by Tara Bray, who lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Once

I climbed the roll of hay to watch the heron
in the pond. He waded a few steps out,
then back, thrusting his beak under water,
pulling it up empty, but only once.
Later I walked the roads for miles, certain
he’d be there when I returned. How is it for him,
day after day, his brittle legs rising
from warm green scum, his graceful neck curled,
damp in the bright heat? It’s a dull world.
Every day, the same roads, the sky,
the dust, the barn caving into itself,
the tin roof twisted and scattered in the yard.
Again, the bank covered with oxeye daisy
that turns to spiderwort, to chicory,
and at last to goldenrod. Each year, the birds—
thick in the air and darting in wild numbers—
grow quiet, the grasses thin, the light leaves
earlier each day. The heron stood
stone-still on my spot when I returned.
And then, his wings burst open, lifting the steel-
blue rhythm of his body into flight.
I touched the warm hay. Hoping for a trace
of his wild smell, I cupped my hands over
my face: nothing but the heat of fields
and skin. It wasn’t long before the world
began to breathe the beat of ordinary hours,
stretching out again beneath the sky.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2006 by Tara Bray, and reprinted from her most recent book of poems, “Mistaken for Song,” Persea Books, Inc., 2009, by permission of the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2010 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Adversity

Feeling the Heat

August 25, 2017

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

August has been nothing but “feels like” temperatures over 100 degrees, twice-a-day trips to the barn to doctor a horse who is getting a little fed up with the routine*, buckets of sweat, changing my clothes two and three times a day, and trying to muster enough energy to keep up with the rest of my life. When I think about the past few weeks, I think of the word “heat”—both physical heat, and the “heat” of adversity.

Caring for an injured horse in August in Florida qualifies as adversity in that it’s physically grueling, expensive, worrisome, and the time and energy I’m expending taking care of him is being drawn from other areas of my life. It’s not a devastating situation, but it is challenging.

Life has turned up the heat—and while I may complain about it, heat is not all bad. We cook with it and create beautiful and useful things with it. Heat both softens and hardens. It strengthens and refines.

Heat—adversity—in our lives does the same for us. It distills and purifies our best qualities. It both softens our hearts and hardens our resolve. Sometimes it brings to light our worst qualities so we can acknowledge and work on them. If we never face even the smallest amount of adversity, we’ll be ill-equipped to cope when one of life’s inevitable traumas occurs.

Richelle E. Goodrich wrote in Making Wishes, “If you couldn’t sense heat, you’d not be alive. And if that heat never grew uncomfortable, you would never move. And if you were stagnant—unchallenged by unpredictable flares—you would never grow capable of shielding yourself from harsher flames. So yes, life was meant to drag you straight through the fire.”  

Coping with Tank’s minor injury has forced me to overcome laziness, become more creative, and plan more carefully so I can keep up with other responsibilities. I’ve had to pare away some inessentials because I simply do not have time or energy for them. I’ve had to push myself when I wanted to quit, and I’ve had to lie down and take a nap because I was too tired to do one more thing.

I like adversity about as much as I like August (not much, in case I’ve been unclear). I don’t wish for it, but I also try not to wish it away because I know there’s value in it. I learn, I grow, I become a more refined version of me. One better able to handle whatever adversity life chooses to throw at me next.

What has adversity taught you?

*Turns out, Tank has an abscessed tooth. The facial wound he presented three weeks ago was probably made by rubbing his face to relieve the pressure. The vet lanced the abscess, put him on antibiotics, and I continue to flush the wound twice a day. It’s just as much fun as it sounds.

2017 solar eclipse

Light Returns to the World

August 23, 2017

Photo by laura skinner on Unsplash

Unfortunately, I had to confine my solar eclipse viewing on Monday to NASA live-streaming since I procrastinated on getting eclipse glasses until it was too late. Even so, what an amazing event! I got goosebumps watching the sun reappear after being hidden by the moon.

In honor of Monday’s eclipse, here is a passage from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves that beautifully describes the reappearance of light:

“How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet.”

We can choose to use an event like an eclipse as a marker between one time and another if we’d like to make a new start or shake things up. Or it can simply be an awe-inspiring natural event that adds a little excitement to our ordinary days. One more everyday adventure for the remembering self.

Did you watch the eclipse?

One more thing—at the post office yesterday, I bought these cool stamps. They use heat-sensitive ink to mimic an eclipse:





Isn’t that cool?

Announcement

The Happy Little Thoughts Newsletter is Coming Soon!

August 18, 2017

Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash

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