The Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Emotions 🤔

I found this one of the most difficult prompts to respond to because I am not sure I have ever fully understood happiness myself. Why is it that sometimes I just need a quiet word or a favourite sight to make me feel happy even if I am fed up? Other times, with the same mood, as far as I can tell, nothing lifts my unhappy mood. There appears to be no rhyme or reason.

The best I can do is to think of it as an interplay that has significant hidden depths. If you can be lifted out of unhappiness very easily by an extrinsic motivator, I would guess that the original feeling of unhappiness was very weak so the intrinsic element is easily overcome. If the opposite happens then the intrinsic emotion had far more too it than you realised. Obviously, the longer you feel unhappy, the harder it is to escape that feeling. My secondary school years bear testament to that. There were odd moments of happiness due to extrinsic factors but in general my unhappy mood just became deeper or shallower. If I think of my unhappiness then it as a body of water, it would be as deep as an ocean. Now, it’s more like a swimming pool. These days I can much more easily touch the bottom to steady myself.

You may be reading this in a good mood or a bad mood, but remember that it’s possible that the true depth of that mood may only become apparent to you when external factors act upon it. Just be kind to yourself as you work through moods that may have depths you have never seen.