Feeling depressed first thing in the morning is the worst. What works to feel better right away? Will you read this post or watch the vlog from YouTube below to see what I do when I wake up feeling awful despite having an amazing life today?
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has illustrations!
In other words, let me tell you about my morning today.
Thank you very much for reading the writing version of day 138 of my "Happier People Podcast."
I woke up on the wrong side of the bed
I can tell you just simply about my morning today. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed in a gloomy mood and I didn't do anything to deserve that. I just woke up that way. I went to bed happy and thinking about opportunities.
Now, I woke up this morning and was just feeling awful. Feeling like there is something wrong with me. Feeling like I was the bad person, you know?
The feeling that in the past drove me to drink alcohol to numb the pain, it drove me to act out a bad day where everyone had to be wrong, and point everything out that was horrible with the world, and argue with people and make some drama.
Because then, I could explain why I felt that way. When I woke up this morning, I knew there was no reason I felt that way, I just felt bad and that was a fact. It wasn't me making something up or trying to have some story. I felt disgusting inside, this morning. Sometimes we just have dreams, it's not our fault when we wake up feeling disgusting. We didn't do anything to bring that on ourselves or deserve it.
Now, what do you do about that?
I'm grateful today that I was motivated to try some new morning routines.because I realized that my normal morning routines are not going to help me through this bad mood.
I wake up and often I feel pretty good in the morning, and this morning I just felt disgusting. I also, not coincidentally, read in Tim Ferriss' "Tools of Titans" book, the section he did with Tony Robbins.
Going through morning routines
Tony Robbins has a very strict morning routine he does. He has three different exercises he does in the morning. Tim Ferriss commented on those, and talks about what he does in the morning.
And here I am to the point of crying, I can hardly take the pain of it anymore, and then I realize what I need to do. I need to try these suggestions because that's my key to turning this around. I see that Tim Ferriss and Tony Robbins don't say that they are some magical person who just wakes up the right side of the bed every morning.
Tony Robbins especially, makes the point that he primes himself, he goes through a morning routine to set himself up to succeed that day. He doesn't say he wakes up on the right side of the bed and feels good every morning.
He does specific things that help him have the best and most contributing day possible. "Contributing" is not a word, well, maybe it's not, I'm just going to make it up because that is how it came out of my mouth.
Tony Robbins has a few different things he does. One of the things is what you might call a meditation. He calls it a state or priming. He thinks about three things he's really grateful for, for three minutes, and then he thinks about God, and feels the presence of God for three minutes, or whatever you want to call the higher power.
Then he has his three to thrive things. He thinks about three things he wants to accomplish and he plays those things all the way through. He also has some cryochamber, that he enters into which blows really cold air on his whole body for a couple of minutes. I believe that was in there too, and it might have been something else.
Tim Ferriss has a similar routine that he does in the morning, one of which includes making his bed. There is a guy in AA who at every meeting practically says something about the importance of making his bed first thing in the morning.
I used to make my bed when my dad told me to, but since I've moved out I didn't put much effort or care into making my bed. I'll tell you what I did this morning with these things in mind. I got up and I felt awful. I prayed, I got down on my knees and prayed to stay sober and instead of asking to be a good husband, I simply asked to be a loving husband, father, friend and family member.
Do you want to feel bad or not?
By then, I felt so bad I was about to tears because the conflict of feeling bad and actually trying to do something about it by feeling better through prayer, the brain is like, "What are you doing? Do you want to feel bad or not? You do feel bad, why are you trying to feel better?"
My mind actually wants to feel bad, it takes all of the will power I have got to do the things in the face of feeling bad. After that, I went to the bathroom and I realized one thing that consistently helps me feel better in the morning, is being useful, being of service, spending time with my daughter first thing in the morning, so that my wife has time to get ready because she's with our daughter most of the rest of the day. So I went in and spent more time than usual with my daughter this morning.
I changed her, I played with her, I sat and looked at her. A lot of parents have this feeling that we need to put on this show of strength for our children. I don't. I like to be vulnerable.
I just broke right down and cried for half the time, probably fifteen minutes that I spent with my daughter this morning because I felt that bad, and because she loves to comfort, make me feel better, just as she loves to be comforted when she is feeling bad.
I just laid down and cried, and she was standing over me with her blanket and her pacifier, and she patted my face, looked at me and patted my face again.
It was wonderful, and that was a good bonding time, it was nice.
My parents didn't like to make a show of being vulnerable in front of me and my brother, although they would then break down after loud and crazy arguments. They would often break down and cry, or have a hard time after that.
But I like just to be vulnerable, I like to get to the crying and the hurting before there's some big argument or nasty thing going on. So that's what I did, I let the pain come out of me, I felt so bad I just needed to cry it out and I avoided labeling a reason for it.
I avoided saying, "Well, it's because this happened."
Don't let possible fears of the future cause pain today
My mind tries to wrap things up in things like financial insecurity. But the fact is, I have enough money today. I have enough money today! There is no reason I should have plenty of money the rest of my life. If there's a famine, so what? I'll figure something out, it might even be more interesting than things are now.
There's no reason to let possible fears of the future cause pain today.
When my mind tried to wrap things up in financial insecurity, I said, "No, that's a lie. I do not have financial insecurity. I have plenty of money today. I have plenty of money more than likely for tomorrow and the whole rest of the year, and probably the rest of my life."
The thing is, when it comes to all these things like money or love, your mind can always tell you that you don't have enough. If you look at the core of it, it's really just pain because no matter how much money you have, you could have more.
No matter how much money you have, you could have less. Even if you had zero dollars you could have more debt. No matter how much love you have, whether you have a partner or two or three partners, no matter how much love you have, you could always have more, and you could always have less, there could always be less people that care about you.
So one key thing, I point this out because if you get stuck as I've done so many times in all the mind's rationalizations as to why you feel bad, it eliminates the motivation to try anything new.
As I'm sitting there crying with my daughter, I realized that I've got the perfect motivation to try something new because I have a loose set of morning routines I do, I read a couple of AA books in the morning, I get down on my knees and pray to stay sober, and to be what I was calling "a good person," now, "a loving person;" and I feed the dogs. These are kind of my loose morning routines and I try to make them a little bit better too.
When it doesn't work, try something new
Well, this morning I tried some new ones. I thought of it as a video game. For example, in Call of duty: Zombies, I used to love doing the Easter eggs. To do the Easter eggs, you have to go through all these little different steps in all these different orders.
Now, it's clear, if something doesn't work, it's either the game programming or you didn't do it right. In no scenario you are a bad person because you can't get the Easter egg to work in the game. Either you're not doing it right or the game is not programmed right. There's no room to be a bad person when you're doing something like this.
What did I do if the Easter egg didn't go it very well in the game?
I would watch tutorial videos, I would follow the suggestions other people gave me.
Now, why is it so much harder when we wake up and have a bad day?
Why do we wake up and have a bad day and feel like we're a bad person?
Or we focus completely on the game?
Well, the game's just "f'd" up. Life did this to me.
Why don't we focus on doing things a little bit differently?
I'm grateful I did that this morning because I have not done that so many other mornings. I've had days where I got into suicidal thoughts, off and on, throughout the day, with no more of a difference start to the day than I had today.
Everything was perfect this morning, externally. Internally, it wasn't.
It's not that I'm a bad person. It's just that if I want to feel differently, I need to do some different actions. Just like in a video game, if I want to finish the Easter egg, there's a certain way I need to do it. If other people have already shown exactly how to do it and I do what they do, then, I haven't accomplished anything. I've simply taken suggestions from others.
When I feel bad, I'm motivated to change.
I took some suggestions from Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss this morning.
When I feel bad is the perfect opportunity to have a breakthrough, because when I feel good, I'm not motivated to change anything.
When I feel bad, I'm motivated to change. When I'm in pain, I'm motivated to think of a different way to do things. What did I do this morning after my wife and daughter left and went across the street to have breakfast with her family?
That's my work time then. Which is why I'm doing this podcast after they left.
Now, it's easy for my mind to say, "Okay, they're out of the house, you have to immediately start filming. You can't waste any time." But I realized that my filming, my podcast is based on me being in a good state. I've come on here several different days and I've not been in a good state. I've created drama and I've felt bad afterwards.
This morning I realized that all I could create would be utter crap if I didn't change my state. So, I took the suggestions. I made my bed. Now, I didn't perfectly tuck the covers in like you see in a hotel, I picked the covers up and roughly threw them so the bed looked more or less made. Functionally, it was made. I made my bed.
Also, while I was in the room with my daughter, I did some push ups, which she thought was entertaining. 10 push ups is not a lot of push ups, but a lot more than zero. I did 10 push ups because it seems that my body likes when my blood circulates a bit. So, I did 10 push ups.
Taking a cold shower
I read my two AA books. Then I tried something new that seemed quite unpleasant and actually I thoroughly enjoyed. Tim Ferriss says that he takes a 30-60 second cold shower first thing in the morning.
That's what I did.
Tony Robbins does some cryotherapy, where he's got some fancy, expensive machine and he steps in it and it blows a bunch of cold air on him. It's kind of like a cold shower, but not something most people can afford. A cold shower almost everyone anywhere in the world can afford. Well, obviously not everyone, yes, but a lot of people in the world can afford a cold shower.
After I was dressed, I took all my clothes off, got in the shower and just cranked it up right on low and blasted it out. And, wow, it was cold, but not that cold because it's floored. The water was probably 60°F, which is maybe, 10 or 15 Celsius. It was not that cold, but compared to what I'm used to, it was cold.
At first, it was a bit unpleasant, and the most unpleasant part was right when I was turning the water on. The anticipation of the cold water was more unpleasant than the cold water itself.
An amazing thing happened.
I thought, "Okay, there is no way I can't do at least 30 seconds of a cold shower this morning."
Tim Ferriss said he does 30-60 seconds. There's no reason I can't do at least 30 seconds. So, I turned it on and I actually started to enjoy it. Once the initial shock, I mean, hey, I shouted out a bit, "Holy shit, that's cold. Oh, my God."
It was cold at first, but then my body adapted to it and after just 60 seconds, it wasn't that cold anymore. My body adjusted to the temperature, and all of a sudden it was nice and relaxing. I took longer, probably two or three minutes of a cold shower, and I got out and I felt really good. My whole body felt energized and awake.
And guess what?
That's the same effect that Tony Robbins and Tim Ferriss were talking about in the book I just read last night, the exact same effect. Now, I'm so grateful that when I get in a gloomy bad mood, I am more open to taking suggestions.
Hoping to feel worse
The most ridiculous thing we tend to encounter in life, both in ourselves and others is being in a bad mood and an honest desire to not make it any better. I bet you've judged this a thousand times by other people, someone who comes to you, they're all in a bad mood and you want to help them.
And guess what?
They don't want to feel any better.
Then you're just, "Why even bother talking to you?" The only result is, you end up feeling bad with them. Here you want them to feel better and all of a sudden, now you feel bad and they've done this and that, lots of drama. How often is it that I notice this desire in myself?
This is what helped me to stop thinking that alcohol was the solution to my problems. I noticed that when I got in a bad mood, I honestly wanted it to get worse and stay worse.
By taking a drink, I wasn't actually trying to feel better, but I was actually hoping to feel worse. That was shocking to me because for most of my adult life, I had believed the lie that taking a drink makes me feel better. But really, I noticed when I looked at it honestly, that I was taking that drink in an effort to feel worse.
Not perhaps immediately, although now, it probably would be immediate after three years of filling my head with AA stuff. It probably would feel instantly, horribly worse. But for most of my past at first, it felt a little bit better, but overall it always felt worse. If you consider the whole thing, if you don't consider just the first drink or two, but all the things that came after it.
How many times do we do this in the rest of our lives?
We wake up in a bad mood and we think, "This is so unfair, I hate this bad mood," but our actions say that we don't actually want to feel better.
We go about arguing, screaming at people, saying they're resentful, silent, pissed off, plotting to kill people, whatever it is, we go through our whole day, and if we honestly look back through our day we see that all we did was to try to make it worse. We tried to throw our suffering out on everyone else around us.
We kept thinking that we wanted to make it better, but what action did we take to make it better?
Did we pray to make it better?
Did we take suggestions from other people?
Because often other people have a good idea what will actually make you feel better. Often it comes from just changing your approach.
I'm grateful today.
I'm so grateful to have this to share with you instead of another rant, or instead of being in a bad mood, giving a friend, a family member, or a viewer, a hard time online.
I'm grateful today that I tried these new routines this morning, and I feel really good. I'm excited to give them a try again.
Be a superhuman!
Imagine the breakthrough to have a set of routines where you don't ever start the day off bad. Or your routines in the morning are so powerful that they eliminate any bad mood you woke up with.
That would make you nearly superhuman. That's the same feedback that Tony Robbins gets. People think, "He's superhuman."
It's not superhuman to simply follow directions.
When you follow directions, it's like cooking, if you want to make a delicious dish, you follow the directions, and then you get delicious food. It's so ordinary and yet, the results, if you just see them, might look superhuman if you don't look in and see how you can do the same thing for yourself.
I hope that in sharing this with you for free that you have this ability, without buying a book or having to read or learn all the things, I have to just immediately see what's made a big difference for me in my life today.
Summary
In summary, I woke up in a filthy mood this morning.
Horrible.
The exact kind of mood that many days in my life I was suicidal, either halfway through or by the end of the day. Or I drank and caused a bunch of trouble. Or I just was a jerk and played a bunch of video games and screamed to people online all day.
I woke up that way and what did I do?
I got down on my knees and prayed several times. I think three times I prayed, and I did some push ups. I spent time with my daughter. I loved another person. I gave my wife a hug and I shared my love with her verbally, saying things like, "I love you."
I remembered the tools I'd been given by reading in Tony Robbins' account in Tim Ferriss' book, and I tried those this morning. I made my bed. I made some tea here and started drinking that. I fed my dogs. I got in the shower and tried something new and took a cold shower this morning for about two or three minutes, although I said at least 30 seconds minimum.
And here I am now, feeling outstanding, feeling wonderful.
That is the miracle and that's a little miracle.
A little miracle, but can miracles really be little?
Than I could have felt so horrible just 30 minutes ago and I feel wonderful now.
Thank you very much for reading this. I'm very grateful to have this to share with you today.
My exercise for today is to continue to be open to suggestions. Often when I'm feeling good I close up for suggestions, and the one benefit of feeling bad is I open up. So to be open to suggestions today.
Thank you. I hope you have a wonderful day today.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield