We watched Alfie (2004) last night, it was fairly boring, and none of us had any (or much) sympathy for him, so when he was like "oh man my life sucks" we were like "oh man who cares?" which was a bit harsh but he seemed to get things sorted out so he didn't really need our sympathy. I have a feeling that the original is a much more interesting film. He lacked "peace of mind" in his words, which is one of the things that God promises to give to people, and he was wondering what life was really about, so it sounded like he was pondering the existance of God so it may all work out for him in the end, but again, he's just a fictional character so none of this really matters.

Anyway, onto cause and effect, Alfie was going about bonking birds, and thinking he was having the time of his life, until "effect" started, naff consequences started to happen. In life, regarding mood, if you're currently at "average", and something bad happens, the effect of that being your average mood becomes -1 (bad), if you're wanting a better than average mood, then you need 2* good things to get to +1 (good). Despite your current mood whether you're at -2 or +2 we still need to be the same people, doing things that will enable us to get back to a positive mood, or doing things that will maintain a positive mood. I think we have the ability to do things that will increase our mood despite our current mood - we can be friendly to other people whether we feel like it or not, we can make other people drinks, etc. Not that we are doing these things for selfish reasons, but that when we do them, we are putting some "goodness" back into the day, effecting other people (in a positive way), and effecting ourself in a positive way from the reactions and interactions with other people. Doing these things grudgingly and whilst complaining may have the opposite effect and effect you and other people in a negative way.

* Unfortunately as I'm just making this stuff up as I go along, mood and happiness are more complicated than just "2 good things will make you happy", so it may actually take you a large number of good things to counter the 1 bad thing that happened this morning. So this week, starting this morning I'm going to try to put into effect good things into myself and other people... I'll let you know how it goes.