5 Ways To Get Out Of The Bad Mood That's Ruining Your Day

There are plenty of post-divorce times when your mood threatens to ruin the day.

I've got some ideas for you from my last YourTango piece. There's a little partner advice and you can apply it to anyone.

It starts like this:

My ballet career ended abruptly after a performance as Tinker Bell in Peter Pan. 

Remember when Tinker Bell is dying and the audience has to clap to bring her back to life? Instead of gracefully floating down facing the audience, I flopped down with my butt toward the crowd. 

I must have been about six. 

I can still hear the barely stifled snickers, probably from siblings forced to attend.

While there were many positive events in my childhood, the memories of them tend to be less elaborate and persistent than the Peter Pan incident, as it became known in my family. 

There were recitals in which I did not blunder. Why don't I remember them?

The psychological reason is simple: the bad outweighs the good. 

Read more here...

Post-Divorce Holiday Tips

If I do say so myself, my tips from last year on managing post-divorce holiday stress are pretty good: Do what you do to de-stress; create new rituals; look good; accept the new; remember why you made the choices you made.


I have a few more for this year.

Acceptance is golden. It wasn’t perfect before the divorce and it won’t be perfect now. Accept that truth. It’s okay to do the best you can. It’s quite good enough because it has to be. If you and your brother didn’t get along well before, you’re not going to get along better now just because you’re divorced and want things to be peaceful and pleasant. If the kids argue normally, they’re going to argue even though it’s the holidays.

Be social. Although we don’t always get along with our loved ones, even for the most diehard introverts, holidays are tough alone. If need be, invite yourself someplace. Friends are usually more than happy to make room for one more.

Money can’t buy you love. Coming into the Chanukah and Christmas spending seasons, post-divorce most of us just don’t have as much as before. The kids can do with less. Either they’re old enough to understand or too young to care about exactly how much money you spent. Your friends will understand if you don’t have as much to give as you did before.

Volunteer. Serving Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner to people in need is a fulfilling experience and one that can make even the most depressing post-divorce holiday warmer and more upbeat. If you can’t serve, considering giving food or money.

Be thankful. It’s Thanksgiving, so be thankful for what you do have. What a great time to start a gratitude journal or a gratitude book for the whole family. And speaking of gifts, gratitude letters are great gifts. So are personalized cards expressing thanks to friends and family for specific things. And so are photo books and other handmade or made-to-order personalized gifts that are not too expensive.

Happy holidays! And thanks for reading my blog.

Say you don't need no diamond ring and I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want the kind of thing that money just can't buy
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love.  Can’t Buy Me Love. The Beatles.

Post-Divorce Gratitude

People who are more grateful are happier. It’s simply a fact. So I’m thinking that in the post-divorce unhappy period, why not practice gratitude in the hopes of being happier?

But how to be more grateful? Sonja Lyubormirsky gives the how-tos in her book the How of Happiness. I wanted to highlight a few ideas here and you can also see another blog and newsletter I’ve written about the subject.

I like five of the ways Lyubormirsky shows that gratitude is thought to actually increase happiness. These include savoring the positives in your life, feeling better about yourself as a result, feeling more connected with others who contribute to the positives in your life, reducing the envy and jealousy which are incompatible with gratitude and actually starting to feel more positive about the good things we have. Not only are these good things for everyone, but post-divorce they’re particularly useful. They counter the natural self-esteem drops (I must be inadequate for not making the marriage work) and envy increases (look at that happy family, and that one, and that one) which many experience.

The typical way to practice gratitude is the gratitude journal written daily, a few times a week or weekly, depending on your personal needs. Thinking about gratitude without writing about it is another way to practice. And an interesting twist is to think about something for which you are not grateful, e.g., the ungrateful thought that your kids never spontaneously tell you they love you. Then counter it with a grateful thought about how they do spontaneously hug you or call you.

Another really potent approach is to tell someone the reasons you are grateful to them, by letter or in person. Even just writing a gratitude letter without giving it seems to increase happiness.

Finding a gratitude buddy is helpful to some. Being accountable to someone else may increase your chances of sticking to a gratitude plan. Sharing something you’re grateful for with another person is also a way of enhancing our own experience of gratitude.

Earlier this evening I mentioned to my son how much I love the smell of dusk at this time of year; he enthusiastically said he felt the same which was very pleasing to me. Okay, I choose to think he was being serious though I recognize he may have been slightly sarcastic (yeah mom, I smell another one of your hokey positive psychology interventions).