I have plagiarised the series of excellent blogs by Lex, offered to our Moodscope community quite a while ago (September to November 2013) looking at the Moodscope cards and their meaning. Today I'd like to take another look at the Active and Ashamed cards.

Active

A Moodscope red card meaning a good thing. Lex put himself into the 'Activist' preference (the four preferences being Activist, Pragmatist, Theorist and Reflector). He pointed us towards his favoured variant - proactivity - as being a deliberate application of action and energy towards a desired goal.

I think of Active in a slightly different way. We are all guilty of doing what that Simon and Garfunkel song said, "hearing without listening". It's important for ourselves and our loved ones that we use Active listening: really paying attention.

Very often today we are told that Mindfulness is what we need – well that's really a state of paying Active attention on the present. For me Active is often concerned with being physical. Physical activity is what often helps me personally to pull through periods of despair.

Bear in mind that you may be a morning person or a night person – we all pretty well know which type we are. So how we score ourselves on the Active card may well be different depending upon our body clock and when we do our Moodscope test.

Being Active becomes really positive when we do something because we WANT to do it rather than because of fear or to prove our capability to ourselves or others. You can do things that can help you towards a better Active score: for me that's mostly exercise or doing something that helps others.

Afraid

Feeling frightened, having fear... Lex told us that fear needs to be faced, never ignored. By facing fear we test its validity. If, having been faced, the fear reveals a true danger then the danger can be tackled.

Being afraid – having fear – is a powerful and primitive human emotion. It has two stages, biochemical and emotional. The biochemical stage is universal whilst the emotional response depends very much on the individual. Some of us are of course very afraid, it may be an exaggerated feeling of fear but that doesn't make the fear less real. Lex suggested that if we drag our fear into the light of full inspection we can have confidence that it will pass.

Personally I always seem to use "a little" as my score on this card. I always am a little afraid, often totally unable to rationalise why that is the case which in turn makes it hard for me to do the Lex thing of dragging it into the light of full inspection. Maybe your Afraid is greater than mine, maybe if you really closely examine your fear you will find that you are even a little addicted to fear, in the way that the "adrenaline junkies" often are.

There's nothing wrong with being afraid, it's what sometimes helps to keep us alive. Choose your score with thought: face your fear.

Do you have any tips, insights ideas or advice to share on these two first cards?

David

A Moodscope member