We've all been there before: Life is good, everything seems alright, but somehow we're just not feeling it. There are days in our lives where we feel outright depressed, days where we can't quite grasp what to do to feel better or why we even feel disheartened to begin with.
Other times we are facing great challenges in our lives and we see the concrete connection to our inner state clearly - something gnaws at our inner peace and rages through our minds relentlessly with no end in sight.
No matter the reason, feeling down can negatively affect all other parts of our lives. And while we may learn to appreciate the downsides of life to fully enjoy the eventual upsides, there are some helpful hints to get yourself out of the hole if you feel you don't want to continue feeling this way any longer.
I've got great news:
You are a human, you have a brain, and you can take control of your inner processes by using something that psychologists call "cognitive reframing" - A willful decision to see your situation in a different light.
This can be done purely by will and does not need anything else to be effective other than your choice to make it happen. It might sound cheesy at first, but I propose:
Being happy is a choice.
Not quite sure I see your point yet, care to elaborate?
The problem of the vicious cycle of depression is that we get further demotivated and depressed by catching ourselves being depressed and judging it endlessly. We might start feeling sorry for ourselves, we might get thin skin and start taking criticism of others way too far. We feel generally ungrounded - and at the total mercy of our environment - one could say we feel like wearing doom-goggles against our better judgment.
What's the hack then?
I have always appreciated quotes that could help me re-assess my situation through the eyes of someone else who felt himself in a similar circumstance. Someone who would have the eloquence to put the issue I faced into simple terms, and offer some way out of the dilemma that I could put to the test myself.
The champion of reframes that I still use to this day is a quote by `Abdu'l-Bahá, an influential leader of the Bahá'í Faith - a religious group from Iran.
The concept goes like this:
Hmm I guess, but how does that help me? I still feel terrible.
You see, we often get bamboozled by our own perceptions and judgments, because we tend to see them as part of reality when they might just be an obsessive and biased focussing on unproductive aspects of our own experience.
Why should I feel grateful when I actually feel bad?
Because it will get you into a different state of mind automatically. And this different state of mind is a prerequisite for ending the depressive cycle, and eventually emerging with a more objective outlook on your situation without your mind constantly getting in the way. See it as a "reset" button of perception that you can push any time, all by yourself, whenever you need to.
It is also empowering because you realize how much power and influence you can actually have upon your inner world. The suspicion of being a mere victim of your circumstances will fade quickly.
By choosing to be grateful you are cultivating the opposite of a vicious circle, you are actively putting yourself in an upward spiral of joy and fulfillment, until your focus on gratefulness turns into actual abundance.
Thankful in adversity
Here's an example:
You get a letter from the utility company jacking up prices at a time when you don't have many funds for this sort of increase. You feel angry and disturbed because you don't see the point of this increase, and you might be totally right about resenting this decision on the utility company's part. Maybe you are behind on other bills at the moment or you feel cheated because of the expectations you've had that clashed with actuality in this harsh way.
But if we get down to it, what does all that sort of thinking actually do with you? It makes you invest.
As we will explore in a later post, "energy flows where attention goes". By overly focussing on your pain and your thoughts about the pain, you are basically feeding the cycle that you originally wanted to overcome.
These negative perspectives on your situation will make you invest energetically - with your attention and your focus - concentrating on something that will not make the problem go away, but instead further increase the perceived urgency of your problem, which will lead to more resentment of the situation when you can't figure out how to solve the issue.
Instead of that, you could simply try being thankful for the fact that you have a roof over your head to begin with. Or you could take a moment to remember that you have power-hungry utilities at all that help you make food and wash your clothes. You could decide to be thankful that the price hike was not larger than it was. You could use this new situation to finally make a move towards producing your own power at home in a self-sustainable way. Or you could finally write that letter of contract termination you have been putting off for a while...
There are endless ways of looking at the situation, ways that are resourceful and constructive rather than depressing and paralyzing.
Once you start choosing to see it in a constructive manner, your depression will quickly fade - which is an amazing process to observe! You might even start to cherish the experience you initially thought was nothing but an obstacle. And suddenly you find yourself in an energetic uptrend that seems to have come out of nowhere.
As a famous Zen quote goes:
Be thankful in the face of adversity and see the challenge in a different light.
Your situation might just be what you need to grow stronger.
And if you feel you have made an error, no need to fret and dwell on that idea. As John F. Kennedy famously said:
"An error doesn't become a mistake until we refuse to correct it."
Learn from your errors, adapt your future responses accordingly and cherish these challenges as the great teachers they can be if we are integrating them, rather than run from them.
Generous in prosperity
There will be other times in your life where you feel amazing. Everything seems to be going for you, you may have met someone new you are really stoked about, or you find yourself with - say - an unexpected surge of income in your bank account.
Whatever the reason - when you feel good it's a great idea to give. And give abundantly.
Let others partake in your situation of abundance, let others enjoy the benefits of your prosperity whenever and as much as you can.
As hippies on psychedelic dancefloors will often tell you: "Sharing is caring".
This will keep your mind in a happy state and you will attract further abundance into your life by not holding on too tightly to what you have, but by trusting the universe and letting your abundance go to others around you. Have faith that it will come back in all the ways you would ever need, and that your giving will change the lives of others tremendously!
A good image for this is water - we all need water to survive and thrive. But water has this way of finding its own path, always reacting to its surroundings in the proper and immediate way. You could say water is the perfect role model for having no hang-ups.
Imagine you held your open hand out and someone poured water into it. You could drink it, you could splash your face with it - it's basically yours. That is, until you decide to harbor it, own it, possess it, or to hide it from others out of fear of not having any in the future. If that was your motivation you might be tempted to close your hand into a fist in an attempt to secure it... and see all the water escape your grasp through your clenched fingers.
What you thought you were protecting you effectively wasted by not sharing it openly with others, and by letting fear and scarcity mindsets take the reigns of your behavior, which ultimately resulted in you not having any and nobody else having benefitted from it when you had it.
This sort of situation can be a prime hangup to dive back into a depressive mindset-spiral once more. No need! Rather, try to learn from it, and consider giving even more the next time you find yourself in abundance again.
Generosity as a human artform
In the longterm the practice of generosity will prevent you from growing too attached to your prosperity. It will stop you from falling down hard, once that prosperity turns into adversity again. If you keep on giving when you can, you have set yourself up for a soft landing when these times come to an end, because you will know that you have spread your abundance around and have affected the lives of others in a positive way.
You have cultivated an abundance mindset.
And it will get easier to get there again after your next down-phase, simply because your mind will have proof of your earlier experience where giving was the solution rather than a hindrance to your own abundance.
The rise of steemit
I feel this same philosophy is also what ultimately drives steemit, the intention of giving and sharing for the multiplication of everyone's success and happiness. Giving makes people happy - but contrary to popular belief, giving does not only make the ones happy who are getting the gift, but especially those who are giving it.
To make someone else feel happy can be the greatest feeling we humans are capable of experiencing and it's literally as easy to get obsessed with this constructive mindset as it is to get obsessed with protecting your possessions from everyone and everything.
While moderation is always paramount to meeting your own needs, I find this strategy easy to memorize and exceptionally helpful to apply in everyday-life.
It will come back to you, fear not.
In the meantime, give give give and don't be fooled by your mind on the day when it wants to portray everything as depressive and hopeless again. It's just trying for the only method that worked on you in the past because these psychological reframes are not taught in school and our scarcity mindsets have had decades to sink into our subconscious.
Most likely, it's just your conditioned ways of seeing the world before you started acting outside of the general strategies to deal with bad days in your life. And the unmerciful attitude of your own mind is not your fault, you have been taught it long before you could see it as an issue.
As they say: "Old habits die hard."
Look for other people and help them achieve their goal when you don't know how to achieve yours - and you will quickly find yourself on top of your own game again. Be thankful for what you have especially when you feel you don't have much, and be certain that soon you will live in abundance again where you can give to others abundantly and break the age-old fear-patterns of scarcity and lack.
It's your life! Nobody can make the most out of it for you - only you can do that. But we can all give each other a hand to reach the top of our individual potential. I think that's what we really have each other for on this Earth - to achieve mutual greatness.
And after my first month on Steemit I can whole-heartedly say:
It seems the perfect place to make it a reality.
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- Read part one of this series -
Lifehacks for the Mind | Part 1: "Permission Slips"
Thanks for stopping by <3