Why Your Bad Moods Are Never Random

A listener noticed their kid gets dissatisfied after too much screen time and asked Dr. Lisle a deeper question: when your mood feels off, is it always worth analyzing, or are some bad moods just random? Dr. Lisle's answer is blunt. Moods are never random. Every one is your brain running a cost-benefit calculus on your relationship to your environment, and the cause is always there, even when it is buried under complexity or driven by something purely chemical like hunger, sleep, or hormones.

0:00 Intro clips

0:42 Why your kid melts down when screen time ends

3:34 Supernormal stimuli creeping in

8:00 The potato chip trap of one more video

12:38 Why nobody finishes an hour long show anymore

21:12 How your feelings actually work

31:37 Can you get better at reading your moods?

49:12 Can you become more introspective as you age?

57:00 When the cause is chemical, not circumstantial

1:07:36 Final thoughts

Beat Your Genes is co-hosted by evolutionary psychologist Dr. Doug Lisle, PhD and Dr. Nathan Gershfeld, DC.

New episodes every other week.

YouTube: youtube.com/@BeatYourGenes

beatyourgenes.org

Doug Lisle: esteemdynamics.com

Nathan Gershfeld: fastingescape.com

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Intro and outro: City of Happy Ones. Ferenc Hegedus. Licensed for use. Copyright Beat Your Genes Podcast