Bad moods are unnecessary, I shouldn't have them, and wish I didn't --- and that wish might be why I keep having them

There's a line early in Pema Chödron's Living Beautifully that stuck out to me where she says (citing a neuroscientist) that emotions naturally last only a few seconds — that (as I understood it) we prolong emotions by our own choice. That rings true to me. There are times I go dancing and have a great time despite making lots of mistakes. There are times I go dancing and have an overall good but mixed time because I'm focusing on the mistakes and not on the successes. I focus on getting off beat instead of the dances where, for example, I improvised with the follow or where I lead a new pattern successfully, or successfully recognized and responded to something the follow initiated. It sure seems like I'm prolonging the anxiety of "well that didn't go right" well beyond the moment something went wrong.

This kind of bad mood seems totally unnecessary. I can imagine experiencing life without such bad moods, because sometimes (as I just mentioned) I have. It seems like it's all in the attitude. I seem to be slipping unconsciously into bad attitudes (maybe one of these). But if I can slip into a bad attitude, then surely I can adopt a good attitude and so a bad attitude is unnecessary. Right?

Bad moods being unnecessary, I wish I didn't have them. I don't enjoy them and they aren't useful either.

Unfortunately, I don't understand how to get rid of them. In principle it seems like a fix would be to:

1. Notice when I am in a bad mood.
2. Guess or identify what kind of bad mood it is.
3. Apply the appropriate counter-thought (examples of counter-thoughts for a particular list of stances that might match bad moods).
4. If that didn't work, GOTO (2).

But what I've found is that when I am in a bad mood, (1) gets really tricky. I tend to notice, on some level, that I am in a bad mood, and to resist doing anything that might address or resolve it. It's like when I am in a bad mood, I want to keep being in a bad mood.

This whole idea of bad moods is a bit funny that way — to call them bad moods, although it feels accurate, means rejecting them in favor of something 'better.' Rejecting the mood doesn't tend to work and actually makes the mood stick around. Instead, the mood tends to dissolve when it is accepted.

But also I can't make it dissolve by accepting it, because that would just be a subtler way of rejecting it.

I think the whole reason I keep having bad moods is because I reject them when they arise.

It's crazy how circular this is. If only I could give up on getting rid of bad moods, then I would succeed at it — but if I succeeded in giving up, there would no longer be a "me" who cares about getting rid of bad moods. To succeed, I have to stop caring if I succeed. This feels cruel and nonsensical but true.