Written by Daz Burns

It is mighty lucky that in 2020 mood rings were no longer in fashion!

Can you imagine it? 

Feeling the feels

Glennon Doyle said that “being fully human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything”. 

And Lord knows, we have all felt a plethora of feels over the last couple of years. 

Many babies were made in the lockdowns, so their parents’ rings would have been green with passion. 

Those of us whose anxiety was out the gate would have radiated various shades of yellow from worry, stress and uncertainty.

Those of us feeling overwhelmed or hopeless would have been black feeling deep sorrow.

As announcements kept rolling out on the regular from the government, our frustrations and sometimes anger would have had our rings emit strong red vibes.

Then hope was sprinkled around the place, like this might end soon, so there would have been flashes of blues from our feelings of excitement, confidence and relaxation.

Mood rings, can they help us?

If we’re honest, I think mood rings would have self combusted simultaneously all around the world, not being able to manage the range of emotions and the speed at which they were changing! 

That may have caused another international crisis of its own, who knows?!

But if we take Glennon’s words a step further, imagine if when we were feeling ‘everything’, the ring could identify the 87 emotions that Brené Brown’s Atlas of the Heart details! 

How amazing would that be, if when we struggle to name or identify our emotions, the mood ring could help us?!

It could not only tell us, but help others understand where we are at, if communication fails us.

AND it could also help with connection to others who are managing feelings similar to us. 

…I wonder what colour foreboding joy would be? 

I wonder because an educated guess would be that most of us when having joyful emotions over the last two years have also had sneaky thoughts creep into our minds of ‘what if something bad happens?!’

Feelings and spirals

I find it interesting when people say they need to ‘fix their mood’, I think it is more important to feel the feelings that are happening, recognise why they are happening and ensure you have strategies that work for you to move through the feelings the best you can. A strategy example is activating an upward spiral while the negative feelings are happening to soften the downward spiral and find joy along the way (check out Dr. Galia Barhava-Monteith’s interview to understand more on this). 

Idea to invent

Maybe this ‘mood ring’ feature could be the future for apple, garmin or fitbit to include in their next release of watches? Screens that change colour with our moods? 

Brené’s voice could step you through what you’re feeling and make suggestions of what to do next. 

There is a lot of science that would need to be worked through with thermochromic elements and autonomic nervous system modulation, but I think these tech giants will work it out!

(That is a multi million dollar idea right there whānau… you’re welcome).  

What moods and feelings have you been feeling lately?