How to Use a Mood Tracker to Enhance Your Life

We will be covering our newly released mood tracker. I will cover some simple and discrete features that will help you get the most out of our Mood Tracker (it may include information useful for other mood trackers and other tracker products from us, but no guarantees).  If you are curious you can check it out here.

Our Mood Tracker

@mentalhealthwellnessmhw Mood tracking is a great tool to help with emotional regulation, behavioral patterns, and managing mental health. I created this to help those that want to have a better understanding of their moof fluxuations. Mood tracker linked in bio. ❤️ #mood #tracker #mentalhealth #licensedtherapist ♬ love song (hesitations) (sped up) - Lofuu & Shiloh Dynasty & dprk

To start: Our mood tracker comes as a PDF in sizes 4A and US letter. You will need an internet browser or your favorite PDF reading application such as Adobe Acrobat or LightPDF. Alternatively of course you can go analog and print the mood tracker to have with you. It's a fantastic thing to keep in with your notes if you’re doing some journaling. The mood tracker itself is on page three of the PDF you received  (or pages 3-103) if you’re using the 100-day version.

The Mood Tracker has been built to be fillable, meaning that you can click bubbles in the various sections, and when you save, these selections will be saved along with whatever text you include.

I encourage you not to overthink using the Mood Tracker. Use it however, feels most natural for you but please do make use of each section to try and give yourself a chance to explore your feelings and offer as much information as you can to yourself in the future if you review these.

Today I Felt

In the ‘Today I Felt’  section, select a relevant quality that most broadly explains how you were feeling today. Were you happy because you got congratulated at work for your performance? Or maybe were proud? How about productive? If you don’t see an option that correlates with what you’re feeling, you can fill in the empty box next to Sad and click it.

Did I Have Enough

The “Did I Have Enough” section details what you may or may not have gotten enough of today to feel satisfied. Did a lack of exercise keep you from feeling your best? Forget to take your vitamins? Did you stay up too late binging that new show? Maybe you just were around a lot of chatty people today when you would’ve preferred quiet. Your mental well-being can at times be quite mechanical - and depriving yourself of a few key things can leave you feeling less than your best, or it can exacerbate underlying symptoms of a problem you otherwise manage. I highly advise you not to overlook these.

Today's Mood

Today’s Moods, both AM and PM, give you a chance to reflect on how you felt at various hours today. Our moods can fluctuate greatly from high to low and low to high based on innumerable factors from life events to hormones.

Energy and Stress Levels

Energy and Stress Levels are important to note as they add good context to your life today. Did you get enough sleep but your energy level is still low? Did you have enough quiet time but still feel stressed? These are important aspects to consider. And remember, exercise is a good tool to combat stress as it metabolizes cortisol which is the hormone responsible for stress.

The written sections are a chance for you to give more detail and explore your feelings and details about your life today. Again, I encourage you not to overthink them if it doesn’t help you to do so.

Why Do I Feel This Way

The ‘Why Do I Feel This Way’ section gives you a chance to pin down why you think you feel a certain way. When I use it, I use it to give context. I feel well-rested because I slept in. I didn’t exercise because it was cold outside. 

Goals

In ‘Goals’ you can write down the goals you worked toward today, whether they be short or long-term, financial or personal, career, or anything! Your goals affect you every day because they drive you forward. I prefer to focus on short-term goals in our Mood Tracker but put down whatever you find most helpful.

Gratitudes

With ‘Gratitudes’ it's very important that you write down things that you feel grateful to have in your life. It is scientifically proven that acknowledging that you have things in your life that you are grateful for will increase your overall happiness. These don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Hopefully, you had a meal today, that's something to be grateful for. Be thankful for the things that support you, and for the opportunities you have to better yourself.

Today's Schedule and To-Do List

The ‘Today’s schedule’ and ‘To-Do List’ portions give you a chance to go over your day more granularly. Rather than focusing on feelings they focus on the structure of your day. I prefer to focus on things I did, rather than what I was planning on doing to see how I spent my time, but I also like to acknowledge when there were things I wanted to do but didn’t find time for here.

The last section is for Notes or Reflections. This can be anything you want really. It can be reminders for tomorrow, or even further than that. Or it can be a quote or something uplifting like a song. 

And that's it! Our Mood Tracker gives you a simple place to keep notes on your mood and things that might be affecting it. We hope that you find it, and this blog helpful in the endeavor of making the most out of our products.

More Resources

If you are interested in learning more, click here. For more information on this topic, we recommend the following:

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About the Author

James Jenkins is a writer, coach, and Mental Health Wellness contributor.