A mood is an emotional state that may last anywhere from a few minutes to several weeks. Mood affects the way people respond to stimuli. ("What is Mood?", 2012) In contrast to other emotional phenomena, the mood has no obvious subject matter. Its sources often consist in unconscious or physiological processes of the body, the subliminal stimuli of which indicate the biological significance of certain irregularities in their work.
In my humble opinion, your emotional state at the moment when you are trying to remember plays almost an important role. Studies have shown that we are good to digest information that matches our mood at a particular moment.
Mood can have differential effects on cognition. Mood states have been found to either advantage, disable or of have no impact on various parts of cognition. This is reflected in two (similar but subtly different) effects:
Mood congruence: whereby we remember events that match our current mood.
Mood dependence: this refers to the fact that remembering is easier when your mood at retrieval matches your mood at encoding. ("The role of emotion in memory | About memory", 2011)
Thus, when we are depressed in memory will be postponed only negative thoughts. The same applies to the reverse process: it is easier to remember a particular moment when we are experiencing the emotion with which it was remembered.
People often make decisions under influence of emotion or mood. However, I believe that it is better to foresee the consequences of your actions. I consider myself as a calm personality as mood does not influence my life a lot. Nevertheless, I prefer to be in a good mood while making some decisions.
References
The role of emotion in memory | About memory. (2011). Memory-key.com. Retrieved 10 June 2016, from http://www.memory-key.com/memory/emotion
What is Mood?. (2012). GoodTherapy.org Therapy Blog. Retrieved 10 June 2016, from http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/mood
