Swinging From Positive To Negative State All The Time

[krazzer]

I'm into serious self-development for about 5 years now, and for over a year I track my progress in terms of daily happiness levels and how well I stick to my habits. Lately i've been noticing a trend.

I tend to have a bunch of good days with a good state, followed by a bunch of bad days with a bad state, roughly 1 week good, 1 week bad.

When I have a good week:

• I stick to all my habits, like meditating, eating well, exercise, getting enough sleep, not spending too much time looking at screens etc.
• I am super productive and produce more results than I planned
• I am super social with everyone and have no problem talking to anyone
• I am super positive all the time and I see the good in everything
• Generally I enjoy everything and my life is awesome

When I have a bad week:

• I ignore my habits, skip meditating, eat junkfood, not exercising, gaming too much, too much tv etc.
• No motivation to do any work at all, I produce a lot less than planned
• I avoid people and I am anxious all the time
• I see problems everywhere
• Generally my life sucks at that time and I'm just waiting to get back to my positive state.

The weird thing is, I am totally aware of both states, I even know when a bad state or a good state are coming, but I can't prevent the bad state from happening.

I wish I could be in the good state all the time and somehow prevent myself from getting into the bad state. I do however tend to be in the good state longer than the bad state, and this seems to have increased over the last few years. So I should be grateful for that.

Is there anyone else who experiences this? And if so have any advice? 

Edited May 18, 2017 by krazzer

[Nahm]

@krazzer Sound like food is the catalyst. Bear the withdrawal, refrain from eating poorly.  Break the cycle.  Great self awareness and assessment. 

[krazzer]

@Nahm Tnx! That might just be it 

[heisenburger]

@krazzer ohh I just read a book on this! The big leap by gay Hendricks talks about this you have periods where everything feels amazing but a part of you brings you down. 

 

Highly recommend you read this seeing as it's a book written on the exact problem you asked about in this forum.

[pluto]

Its a combination of both too much external stimuli and lack of proper internal care imo

We need nature, grounding, sunlight, real food, ect.. to sustain a balanced state all the time and in the world we live in currently it is extremely challenging so we must go back to our roots and always get our fair share of nature both internal and external to harmonize ourselves properly.

Edited May 18, 2017 by pluto

[LowPlanetary]

It might be to do with motivations. Lets say your motivations are based on external circumstances, then it won't be consistent since your external circumstances are always changing, therefore if your motivations are based on those volatile and constantly changing external circumstances, your motivations will become the same. 

So let's say your motivations for living a good life is for helping other people. One week everything is going smoothly. Then the next week the people around you in your life start to reject you and you start seeing them as evil, wrong, etc. Then your motivation for helping people is suddenly gone. Then the next week you meet a nice person which makes you believe that people are nice again, now you're motivation has become back again. 

[tyy]

@krazzer I can relate to these patterns too. I agree, as time has gone on the bad times have gotten shorter in duration, but still pop up. The good and bad weeks aren't too different regarding the habits I have in place, it's the mental chatter that contributes to these lower times for myself. I think this comes from too much focus on the past or future. @pluto That sounds great to halt a runaway mind and get back to the now.

[krazzer]

7 hours ago, heisenburger said:

@krazzer ohh I just read a book on this! The big leap by gay Hendricks talks about this you have periods where everything feels amazing but a part of you brings you down. 

 

Highly recommend you read this seeing as it's a book written on the exact problem you asked about in this forum.

@heisenburger thnx! I'm gonna check it out!

 

6 hours ago, pluto said:

Its a combination of both too much external stimuli and lack of proper internal care imo

We need nature, grounding, sunlight, real food, ect.. to sustain a balanced state all the time and in the world we live in currently it is extremely challenging so we must go back to our roots and always get our fair share of nature both internal and external to harmonize ourselves properly.

@pluto I agree, I try to properly care for myself internally with my habits. 

 

6 hours ago, LowPlanetary said:

It might be to do with motivations. Lets say your motivations are based on external circumstances, then it won't be consistent since your external circumstances are always changing, therefore if your motivations are based on those volatile and constantly changing external circumstances, your motivations will become the same. 

So let's say your motivations for living a good life is for helping other people. One week everything is going smoothly. Then the next week the people around you in your life start to reject you and you start seeing them as evil, wrong, etc. Then your motivation for helping people is suddenly gone. Then the next week you meet a nice person which makes you believe that people are nice again, now you're motivation has become back again. 

@LowPlanetary It's definitely not an external problem. When I'm in the positive state, all seemingly external problems are just minor inconveniences that I can easily handle, but when I'm in the negative state, small problems look huge. And I am even aware that this is happening when I'm in the negative state! But even with total awareness I can't change my state. 

 

5 hours ago, tyy said:

@krazzer I can relate to these patterns too. I agree, as time has gone on the bad times have gotten shorter in duration, but still pop up. The good and bad weeks aren't too different regarding the habits I have in place, it's the mental chatter that contributes to these lower times for myself. I think this comes from too much focus on the past or future. @pluto That sounds great to halt a runaway mind and get back to the now.

@tyy yes the mental chatter is a huge problem when I'm in the negative state.

Maybe those down times are actually required to make one grow, as Leo talks about in this video:

 

[Raphael]

Hey ! I know what you are feeling, I have the same problem, but my states are more irregular and not so black and white. I'm currently not in my best state from a little long period (maybe one month), but my bad states are not so bad compared to yours.

I don't have a lot of motivations, but I don't think that my life sucks, and I'm still meditating every day. I've had periods in the past where I didn't meditate for several consecutive days. Currently it's a little hard for me, I'm stress and under pressure because I'm going to quit college in one month and I don't have any job, but my still meditating, eating well, doing sport five times per week. It's very difficult for me to sleep, I'm a little sad and anxious

My advice for you is simply to not give up your goods habits, you need to break the loop, you will have to do another big effort to reduce the bullshit. Good luck man !

[SOUL]

If I could just make a suggesting that how you are framing it all may be contributing to the pattern, labeling with good and bad could be creating the swinging. That doesn't mean I'm suggesting removing all morality, but that in our inner work by labeling one group of habits with good and another groups with bad the strength of the associations is triggering increased instances of them.

When we create a mental construct around groups of habits our subconscious mind will label and link them together to help orient it self and if that construct involves the notion you swing between period of one group of them and another group of them, the subconscious will oblige in prompting the impulses to behave in accordance with the way we view them.

So disconnecting all these individual habits from label groups and viewing them as instances of them on their own removes the powerful associations that can bond them in the subconscious mind. Even if you have one instance of individual habit they won't empower others cascading them into these periods you swing between.

There are many methods to redirect yourself away from old habits and into new ones but you can find them easy enough without me talking on all of them. What I was hoping to illuminate is how we can subconsciously create the experiences we are going through by how we view them and altering our view of them can often be the most effective way to influencing the associations.

Edited May 18, 2017 by SOUL