3 Stupid Ways to Try to Cheer Yourself Up – and 3 Ways Which Work
When I’ve got a case of the blues, I sometimes cheer myself up by buying a new book or two on Amazon. Perhaps you have some similar habits: you know what cheers you up, whether it’s going shopping, eating a giant bag of chips, opening a bottle of wine, lighting up…
The problem is, a lot of these little habits don’t really cheer us up, and, over time, they can have a very negative effect on our health, our wallet, or both.
These are some perennially popular ones – and reasons why they’re not a good idea: Read the Rest of This Article »
6 Motivation Tips When You’re Feeling Depressed
Depression is a difficult illness for even the most iron-willed of individuals. Whether you’re clinically depressed or just in a rut, depression can make basic tasks like cleaning the house, taking a shower and even getting out of bed incredibly difficult and physically and mentally draining. It is important to stay motivated to continue to live your life and work towards feeling better, even when you’re at your lowest point. Here are some simple ways that you can motivate yourself on a daily basis:
• Don’t be too harsh with yourself. It’s going to take time to get things done like you used to and to feel like your old self. Changes are not going to happen overnight, so don’t be overly critical of yourself if you make mistakes or don’t get as much done as you’d like. You’re having a hard enough time without getting on your own case.
• Be realistic. Making a laundry list of things to do is a surefire way to set yourself up for failure. Start with small positive changes and work from there. If you’re not realistic you’ll just end up frustrated and more depressed.
• Surround yourself with people. While you may just want to curl up and be alone, this isn’t the best or easiest route for you when you’re depressed. Having others around you to give you a helping hand, talk to you and provide you with inspiration is important to feeling better and getting back into the swing of things, even if you feel like you just want to shut everyone out.
• Move around. Lying in bed all day or hunkering down on the couch isn’t going to do much but give you more time to feel bad about things. When you force yourself to get up, even if only for a short walk or to tend to some plants outside, you’ll be helping yourself feel better physically and mentally.
• Start a project. For many, this may seem like that last thing they want to do but an enjoyable project can give you something to concentrate on that will bring your thoughts away from depression and give you something to feel proud of when you’re done.
• Make a plan. If even the smallest tasks seem like a chore, start small with planning out what you’re going to do each day. In the morning, write down the things you’d like to accomplish and in the evening, go back and check off what you did. This can help you regain your sense of control over your life at a time when it seems the most chaotic.
Recovering from depression is a hard road, but with some planning and slow but steady progress you may be able to start feeling optimistic about your life again. For a list of more great depression resources, click here.
Meredith Walker is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain.com. She writes about online nursing programs and welcomes your feedback.
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When Talking Doesn’t Work: How To Navigate a Slump
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One tenet you’ll often hear in personal development circles is that “it’s good to talk” or “a burden shared is a burden halved”. Sometimes, though, when feeling down, you’ll talk to a spouse, parent or friend about how you feel … and you’ll find that you’re just dragging yourself into a deeper and blacker mood.
So why is it that talking doesn’t always help? And how can you help someone who wants to talk to you about their woes?
Talking Often Focuses on the Problem
Perhaps you’ve been feeling a bit down recently. Maybe you have bleak days when it seems like you’ve lost your direction in life. You might talk to a friend about it, detailing all the things you wish you could do (if only you had the money, or the time, or the skills), and endlessly dissecting everything that’s wrong in your life.
Talking about everything that’s wrong just reinforces your focus on things that aren’t currently working. If you’re already in a bad mood, it’ll send you spiralling further and further down. Have you ever had the experience of “working yourself into a state” – feeling a bit anxious or angry about something, and dwelling on it until the molehill becomes a mountain?
Tip for Helping: If someone wants to talk to you about everything that’s wrong in their life, encourage them to find something that’s good. Ask “what’s been better recently?” This is a technique that the coach Mark Forster uses and explains in his book How to Make Your Dreams Come True.
Talking May Mean Saying Something You Regret
When you’re in a bad mood, or feeling very fed up about something, it’s easy to think that your state of mind represents your real feelings about a job, relationship, or life situation. The truth is, how you feel when in a bad mood is no more “real” or objective than the way you feel when everything’s going swimmingly.
One danger of trying to talk through your bad moods is that you’ll end up saying something you’ll regret. Perhaps you’ll think, at the time, that you’re telling your friend a few home truths … but later you’ll realise that you don’t really think that of them at all. Maybe you’ll tell colleagues that you hate your job, despite finding it perfectly pleasant most of the time: do you want your words making their way through the office grapevine to your boss?
Tip for Helping: Try to treat anything that someone says in anger, or while upset, as something that they don’t really mean. If you do end up saying something that you regret, don’t be too hesitant to apologize once you’ve calmed down.
Talking Only Works if Someone Listens
Unfortunately, most people in the world are not good listeners – and I include myself here. When listening to someone, it’s easy to let your mind wander, or to stop concentrating on their words in order to think about what you’re going to say next. We often don’t even hear the actual words that are said – let alone the intention behind them, and the wealth of stuff that is implied.
You may get frustrated when you talk about your problems because people just don’t seem to understand. Perhaps they brush off the major issues as unimportant, and attend to the minor ones; perhaps they offer advice when all you wanted was someone to listen patiently. Maybe they’ve completely missed the point.
Tip for Helping: Learn how to listen actively. If you’re seeking help, try going to a life coach, counsellor or someone else who has been trained to listen and to help you work through problems.
Do you find that talking to someone when you’re in a bad mood helps you to feel better – or does it tend to make things worse? Have you been able to help people by listening to them when they’re going through a bleak spell?
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Backwards Smiling: The Physiology of Happy
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Everyone smiles. From industrialized nations to remote tribes, studies have shown that smiling is universal. Even more stunning is that people from all over the world smile the same way. Even blind children begin to smile without seeing others smile. It’s ingrained in the very code that makes us human.
Although smiling comes in many forms, most are actually fake. In fact, there is only one smile that is genuine. When the corners of the mouth go up, the eyes narrow slightly creating crow’s feet, and the upper half of the cheeks rise, you are experiencing the Duchenne Smile, named by Paul Ekman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at San Francisco after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, the French physiologist who first studied the muscle that surrounds the eye in 1862.
The Duchenne smile is the one true smile that is a direct result of feeling happy. But, how do we FEEL happy? When we receive or give a gift, or see our children smile and laugh, physiological changes take place. Our hearts beat faster and the flow of blood increases. Skin temperature rises, which makes the skin slightly damper and our fingers tremble. The experience of a compliment or gift is a trigger. The trigger sets off changes in the body, which signal the brain to feel happy.
Although this may sound odd at first, try forcing yourself to feeling happy when your muscles are tense, your face is frowned and your brow furrowed. The involuntary emotions cause our body reaction to signal our brain, which means that happiness arises as much from our body as it does from our thoughts.
The emotions associated with feeling happy are involuntarily controlled by our automatic nervous system. This is why we cannot simply decide to be happy by influencing involuntary body function. It is impossible for us to command our blood to flow faster. We do, however, have the ability to bypass the automatic nervous system. We have the ability to smile, even without a trigger.
Ekman’s work corroborated that if feelings can come from the body, then happiness can come from a genuine Duchenne smile. Ekman trained his subjects to control the movement of the muscles that surround the eye to achieve the Duchenne smile. The result was a signal of happiness without a trigger sent to the brain thereby proving that happiness doesn’t flow in just one direction, and smiling alone can make us happy.
I suggest that we take the work of Ekman to the next level. If the bodily movement of smiling can make our brains experience feelings of happiness, then why not use the smile as a trigger for others. What you put out into the world comes back to you. The next time you are introduced to someone, just give your first name and watch what happens. More likely than not, they will return the introduction with their first name. Offer your first and last name, and you will receive the same. Try it with a smile. I’m sure you will find a smile in return. This effect can influence your happiness and the feelings of everyone you come into contact with throughout your day. By smiling more and passing it along, you truly put the Duchenne smile effect into action.
Tommy Galan is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. He is the author of HappyUniverse.com, a blog dedicated to designing happy lives through exciting goals and healthy lifestyle. A few of his many adventures include performing on Broadway, earning a Juris Doctorate, finishing marathons, and traveling the world. He lives in New York City with his wife and son.
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- Life is a drag.
- What’s the point of anything?
- I’ll never be happy.
Do any of these gloomy thoughts sound familiar? It’s likely they do. The occasional case of the blues is perfectly normal, but that doesn’t make dealing with it any easier. If you allow them to, negative thoughts can fester and lead to serious depression. That’s why it’s important to take action early to bust yourself out of a slump.
While these suggestions won’t eliminate your problems, they can help you break a negative thought pattern and stop feeling depressed. Read the Rest of This Article »
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