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Show So You Think You Have Moods A young navy lieutenant, not too long out of the service, told me over the luncheon table the other day that he became very much discouraged discour-aged over himself. I pointed out he hadn't any reason to be. He has a good job. He's doing it well. "That's just the trouble," he said. "I'm not doing it well. I know I'm not. One day I feel sure that I have everything a man needs to be successful suc-cessful and happy. Then the next day I'm clear down In the dumps. It's my moods. Isn't there anything a person can do about moods?" I told him, as I am presently going to tell you, that of course there is something anyone can do about his moods. I told him furthermore further-more something he never heard of before, that having moods is perfectly per-fectly normal, perfectly natural, and a good rather than a bad thing. We know a good deal more about moods now than we did a few years ago, for now we know that at certain cer-tain times we are going to be happy, regardless of how things break for us, while at others we are going to feel depressed, also regardless regard-less of how things break. Largely responsible for this Information In-formation is Dr. Rexford Hershey of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the first scientists to study our emotional curves. By his researches Dr. Hershey proved that we all have our ups and downs and these occur with regularity. regu-larity. We are elated, cheerful, pleasant, unpleasant, peevish, grouchy. That is one cycle. Then we become elated, cheerful, pleasant, and so forth, again. Our lives are a series of cycles emotional cycles. These cycles, moreover, appear with almost exact regularity. With some persons they appear every . month; with others every two or three months. Highly emotional people go through their emotional cycles often in less than two-weeks' time, then start all over again; they are always in a dither. But long or short, each of us has his emotional curve. Maybe you are wondering what you can do to control this curve. You can't control it, but you can disguise it, so that regardless of how you really feel, you put your best foot forward where the rest of the world is concerned. And how do you do that? It's simple. sim-ple. Just remember that we take our emotions from our actions, not our actions from our emotions. In other words, to feel cheerful, just act cheerful. The next time you reach the low point of your emotional emo-tional curve, try that. Act cheerful, talk cheerful, and you will be cheerful. |