Mind Optimization Part 12: Tracking Mood States

We are terrible historians, and even worse with remembering how we’ve felt more than a week ago. Part of good science is keeping good records, journaling is an essential part of this work.

This video is part twelve of twenty-six excerpts from a presentation hosted by SOUL Food Salon in March 2019.

You may check out the full playlist of this video series on The Art and Science on Mind Optimization here. Alternatively, you can also click here to watch the previous video and here for the next one.

Video Transcript

The other very important thing I wanted to tell you when we’re looking at this wobble rule here, I’m a big believer in what I call the yoga principle. What the yoga principle says is … I made this up. You can’t find this. I’m a believer that if a yoga teacher pushes on your back and you learn that you can touch your toes, that’s an important lesson that you’ve learned. But sure, in the back of your mind, you’re saying, “Wow. Yes. I can touch my toes. But, gosh. The yoga teacher is the one that’s helping me do this. The Zoloft is what’s making me be cool in these circumstances.”

And that’s okay. It’s great that people have attained that stability. People will oftentimes want to come off of medication. And the answer there becomes, do so very slowly. As a matter of fact, do it so slowly that don’t know where the medication ended, and where you began. Because my belief is that if indeed you’ve learned that you can touch your toes, it’s great. Now you have that image in your head. The trick is, can the pressure be released off your back slowly enough that you won’t know where you begin and the yoga teacher ended? And that to me is a very important principle in guiding a lot of things we do. Phase-out slowly. Don’t be in a hurry to say, “I’m better. I’m off. I’m done,” because that always leads to trouble.