Elias

I always assumed that my mood is simply influenced by what I experience and that my mood in turn influences my behaviour. But is that really all?

What if my mood changes to the better and suddenly something unexpected and good happens? If there is a causality rather than a mere coincidence, either the unexpected event must have affected my mood in a retrocausal fashion – backwards in time – or my change in mood must have affected the unexpected positive event, through an influence that was invisible to me.

Of course there's also a third possible explanation which is that through my improved mood, an unexpected event that I would otherwise have perceived neutral or negative, was interpreted as good by me in a positive mood.

Supplement, Sunday, 21.02.2021:

The influences that affect my mood are still quite unclear to me, but it seems in general to be connected to my overall self-image, to how I see my place in the world, how I see the meaning of my life.

It is indeed rather not the other way around that my mood influences my thoughts but also that my thoughts strongly influence my mood.

A very interesting observation is that two weeks ago when I was in a pretty bad mood my 75-year-old co-worker was in a pretty bad mood as well.

While I felt a bit bad for imprinting my bad mood on him, my other colleague told me that he thinks of it rather the other way around – that as the older person he should know better and if at all he has responsibility for our moods as well.

I found that thought rather weird. Nobody is really responsible for my mood except myself. But what I found interesting is that this week both my co-worker and I were in a pretty good mood and instead of blaming each other for minor mistakes just had a very good time.

At the same time, my other colleague, who is of the same age as me, was suddenly in a pretty bad mood.