Hey there you. How was you a week? I've been concentrating on the lines for a play I'm in.

It's quite a big part, so lots of lines to learn and I'm doing okay. I'm quite confident that it'll be

all right on the night, as they say. The psychology of theatre work fascinates me. Any acting really,

because you have to literally change who

you are. You have to jump into the mind and body of someone else and see everything differently.

Instead of reacting how you would react, you have to react as if you're someone else with a different

personality, in a different state of mind.

And that's what today's episode is all about, changing our state, changing our mood.

And you've probably experienced it yourself.

You could be in the middle of a massive row with your partner, properly fired up.

And then the phone rings. And it's a mate who wants to confirm your plans for going out for a meal tomorrow night. So you answer and your

tone changes. You calm down. And then when you hang up, it's hard to go straight back into being

fired up all over again. Your brain has shifted

state. So when somebody recently said to me that they needed to snap out of their bad mood, my first

thought as a therapist was, well, there's usually a reason for the mood. Let's look at that.

But actually, there are times when a quick shift is possible and appropriate. Not always,

obviously, and snap out of it can sound a bit dismissive, but we can learn to move into a better

state of mind. And I use the word state, because that's what we're using therapy, quite a lot.

And you can think of your state as the combination of what your body is doing,

what you're focusing on, and what you're saying to yourself.

It's like wearing tinted glasses.

Blue tinted glasses make the world feel cold, orange tinted lenses make it warmer. The world hasn't changed. Your state has.

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