Emotion: How does your mood affect your perception of things?

Perception can be defined as the ability to become aware through the five senses. Moreover, emotions are feelings that make us highly-intelligent as well as different from all the other animals. It is utterly impossible to find a person with a constant mood as everything is changing. For instance, a person maybe happy when he wakes up but, he might get soaked during the day, leading to annoyance. For me, my mood totally affects my perception of things. When I am in a jolly mood, I see everything from a good point of view. For example, IB diploma program is a very tough course. However, I feel like I can ace it without a struggle when I am happy. On the other hand, if any teacher scolds me in class, I think the whole world is against me and I cannot handle the course anymore. At that time, all I have to do is listen to slow songs to calm myself down and I am on the run again. A couple of weeks ago, a classmate of mine draws a figure on the smartboard and asks the whole class to guess what the figure is. Most of us says rabbit, some states it is a peace sign, another utters it is a cactus and a monster. In my opinion, these perceptions are slightly affected by their mood. The one who suggests that the shape is a monster might be imagining things according to her feeling, which is fear. Another good example will be the way a person interpret things in different moods. Suppose a situation where three people hear the same pop song. The happy person will start singing along. The one who is upset will find it melancholy. Moreover, the person in a furious mood will find it very annoying and if he cannot control himself, he might throw the sound system out of the house. In fact, this is an extreme condition. These three cases are just a few emotions of peoples ever-changing emotions. There can be many more mental states of people; fear, empathy, sympathy and whatnot. Sometimes, it is very important not to let the mood affect your perception because it can drive you into doing things that you will regret later. Out of anger, you might say things that you do not mean and this can lead to an unpleasant situation between two people. If you let emotions form a very big part of your life, the work you do can be time consuming as well as inefficient. This is because you will put so little effort into it. Those I have mentioned above explicitly describe how much our mood affects our perception of things. The way a person sees things depends on their character and the atmosphere. As a result, it is better to control the feelings and be in a good mood because as the saying goes, Smile and the whole world smiles with you. Khaing Thu Thu Grade - 11