What responsibility do we have to manage our own moods and put ourselves in the best situation for happiness and joy? As human beings, most of us (myself included) would greatly admit that a great deal of our enjoyment in life is outside of our hands. We desire love and romance, and we also desire close bonds with friends and family members, all things that depend partly on ourselves and partly on others whose love and respect we ultimately cannot coerce. To some extent we all are strongly influenced by that which is outside of our control. Some people attempt to deal with this by cutting off their hearts from others and becoming cold and inhumane. Others attempt to micromanage or control others as a way of covering their own insecurity. But if we desire to do neither of these wicked things, we must find a way to overcome our insecurities and decrease our vulnerabilities without making us less decent human beings. And how do we do this?

One of the ways in which our moods are negatively affected is by both internal and external messages that are often repeated. Often our internal messages, especially negative ones, are based on that which we intuit rather than that which is explicitly or openly stated. And sometimes these messages are not true understandings of the intents of others, while at other times they may be, but are irrelevant because they are not true. When we base our happiness and contentment on subjective opinion rather than objective truth, we leave ourselves open to great suffering that is often largely avoidable. Generally speaking, we all need people who are able to encourage us to be better (and not merely beat up on us), and we also need to be the kind of people who can look for what we can do to make our own lives, and the lives of others, more enjoyable.

I’m a person who is no stranger to gloominess, even if I’ve been feeling great recently. For me, I find it hardest to keep my spirits up when I am around people who are intensely negative and critical and when I see no ways to fulfill responsibilities or achieve my goals or progress (however slowly) towards the places where I desire to be in life. Being the sort of person who tends to encourage by nature, and the sort of person who tends to be fairly picky about reciprocity, I find it offensive when I am patient and longsuffering with others who are intensely critical towards me and demand a higher standard of me than they demand from themselves. At any rate, I do my best to find and create and maintain situations of mutual encouragement and support, to the best of my modest abilities.

In this world we all have to deal with enough discouragement in our lives without beating ourselves up about things that are over and done with or without being around people who try to drag us down. Obviously if people are in the mindset where they are harshly critical toward themselves (and I must admit I am this way by nature myself), then our job is to help encourage and provide a counterpoint, in the hope that they will eventually be able to build up the dignity and self-respect to be able to defend themselves without it being necessary for us to do so. After all, our goal in any kind of relationship ought to be mutual relations with people who can provide something (good conversation, insight, different perspectives, humor, and so on) even as we do the same, with the goal of encouraging others to be the best even as we work on being the best we can be ourselves. And quite honestly, we need all the help that we can get. So does everyone else.