Do you ever find yourself cranky and wish you weren’t? I do. People who know me personally wouldn’t describe me as a cranky person, but even though I try my hardest not to show it that doesn’t mean I don’t feel it sometimes. We’re not talking depression here, just the normal low points of frustration with everyday life. Recently I was feeling grumpy and thought, “I don’t have to feel this way. I’m going to research tips on how to not be cranky.” Below you will find what I discovered.

1. Self-check

When you recognize that you are feeling cranky or grumpy, stop and take assessment of the moment. Check in with how you feel physically and emotionally. Often ignored physical and emotional discomforts lead to a cranky disposition. Taking a moment to be self-aware can make the real problem come to light and the solution process begin.

2. Eat Healthy & Eat Chocolate

We all know we need to eat a balanced nutritional diet not just for physical well-being but for emotional stability. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t have your treats. In fact, studies have found that eating chocolate can improve your mood (PDF). However, it’s all about balance since too much sugar and caffeine can actually contribute to mood swings.

3. Rank Your Irritation

Label what you’re dealing with and rank it as a small frustration, a medium frustration, or a big frustration. Sometimes taking the time to realize something is just a small problem helps put it in perspective so you can let it go easier. Even if it is a big frustration you may realize it’s not worth getting upset over anyway.

4. Give Yourself Permission to Feel

Sometimes it is necessary to give yourself permission to feel the extent of your crankiness. This may sound counter-intuitive, but the truth is that ongoing crankiness can actually be evidence of not dealing with negative feelings such as hurt, vulnerability, insecurity, and disappointment. Take some alone time and allow yourself to really feel your emotions, but with a time limit. Let it all come to you for 15 minutes (set a timer) and then afterwards it’s time to either find a solution or let it go. Often just feeling your emotions will cause them to even out and get back in order. Emotions get unbalanced when they are ignored.

5. Exercise

Endorphins are great mood boosters. Even just a short walk each day will help with general crankiness. While exercising, try not to think about the things in your life that make you cranky. Instead, focus on the beautiful trees as you jog or listen to energetic dance music while lifting weights. However, if your crankiness is founded in anger, a punching bag with your problems envisioned upon it can turn out to be quite the mood booster.

6. Happy Thoughts

Negativity creeps up on you like an infestation of cockroaches. It’s disgusting and difficult to kill. So you’ve got to take control, and every time you have a “cockroach” of negativity creep up you need to kill it with a positive thought. It takes a lot of self-control to do this but eventually it will be become a habit.

7. Smile

Fake it ‘till you make it, since it’s true that smiling will trigger the happy response in your brain and boost your mood.

8. Grateful List

Too often crankiness comes from focusing too much on the problems in one’s life. Making a list of everything in your life that you are grateful for can help counteract the negativity and replace it with a positive outlook. When you realize how much you do have going for you, and how much in your life does make you happy, you might just find yourself looking on the bright side without much effort.

9. Sunlight

Getting outside, breathing fresh air, and especially getting a little exposure to sunlight is proven to improve the mood, alleviate crankiness, and even ward off depression. But don’t forget your sunscreen and sunglasses!

10. Reality Check

It’s easy to get cranky. It’s human nature. It takes effort to stay positive and to keep a pleasant demeanor. When you find yourself getting annoyed or feeling irritated remind yourself that annoyances are inevitable, but is this one worth getting cranky over? Everyone gets stuck in long check-out lines or gets a bill larger than expected or has their kid embarrass them. The immediate emotion of frustration is normal, but to have ongoing crankiness really only punishes yourself. No matter how cranky you feel, you certainly don’t want to punish yourself with a bad mood, do you?

Obviously, there are many more ways to over-come crankiness out there. What do you do that puts you in a better mood when you are cranky?

(Original photo by Laura / Ko_An, used under Creative Commons license.)