How To Stop Feeling Depressed Step By Step
How To Stop Feeling Depressed Step By Step – Mental Wellness
Wake up before 6 am.
Set your alarm clock to go off between at 5:00 and 5:45. Place your alarm on the other side of the room. You will be forced to jump out of bed and scramble to turn it off.
The energy is higher before 6:00 am, making it easier to arise. Don’t believe me? Give it a try for sixteen days.
You will reset your internal clock by waking up early at the same time each morning. Don’t fight the feelings of sleepiness at night. Try to go to bed at the same time each night and get 7-8 hours of sleep- no less, and also, no more. Too much sleep or too little is harmful to those suffering from depression.
Drink half a liter of water.
Go immediately into the kitchen and drink your water. The night dehydrates you and can create a feeling of fatigue even after a great night’s sleep. Hydrating first thing after waking will energize your body and clear your mind.
Make a cup of coffee or tea and carry it outside with you for five minutes.
Yes, even if it is snowing. I hope the twilight is brightening as the sun starts its ascent into the heavens. Birds are singing. You breathe in fresh air and the scent of grass covered in dew. Or the world may be covered in ice and snow, your breath coming out in puffs, the cup in your hands steaming.
Either way, the fresh air will stimulate your senses and wake you up.
Watch your thoughts for five minutes.
Locate the awareness behind your thoughts. Watch your thoughts. Observe the way your mind wanders. Are you having trouble detaching from your thoughts?
Ask yourself, ‘Am I breathing?’
If only for a second, your attention will turn from your thoughts to the present moment, to the breath. The thoughts circling through your head will release their hold on your focus. Instead of ruminating forwards or backward in time your attention will be pulled to the present moment. It might be just a few seconds. Don’t despair.
Next, ask yourself, ‘What do I hear?’
Your attention will turn to the hum of traffic, the chirping of the birds in your garden, perhaps the whir of a bike going by. Once again you will ground yourself I the present moment by turning your attention to the sounds around you.
Last ask yourself, ‘how does my body feel?’
Sense the feel and caress of the clothes against your skin. Scan your entire body, from your toes to the crown of your head. Where is the tightness, where is their lightness?
When you succeed in getting up early celebrate your victory. Depression can make taking the first step out of bed like jumping into a sub-zero lake in the middle of winter.
Read a book for five to ten minutes.
No, do not scan the latest news, or take up a magazine for a few minutes. Select a book you find interesting, either fiction or non-fiction. Read it for ten minutes. Mark your place with a bookmark to take up where you left off tomorrow.
Take 2 minutes to project mentally.
Take 2 minutes to mentally project how you want to show up in the world today. It doesn’t matter if you will be spending the day alone or in a crowd. Imagine someone will be filming you all day long from overhead.
What sort of person do you want to be? What emotion do you want to leave each person with who crosses your path today? There is no right answer. Keep in mind though, that projecting a personality not authentic to you is counterproductive.
Do 10 minutes of something you have been procrastinating.
The ten minutes are critical. Do no less, and no MORE than the ten minutes. Starting something you have been avoiding can feel like standing on one side of a lake and someone telling you to swim across. Exhausting. Impossible. It isn’t warm enough. You will probably drown.
Just do ten minutes. Not in a week, not in a month, not at New Years. Right now. You shouldn’t wait until tomorrow morning when you arise early. Do it now. Yes, right now.
You’re waiting for tomorrow morning, aren’t you?
So what are you procrastinating? Is it a pile of laundry? The first outline of the novel you want to write? Starting exercising? Beginning a whole foods diet? Building a better relationship with your partner/child/ parent? Learning a new skill? Spring cleaning your home?
One person’s hill is another’s Mount Everest. Stop judging yourself. Don’t stop to plan, not yet. Just start. Do ten minutes.
If you do ten minutes, every day, then by the end of the week you will complete seventy minutes. In four weeks you will have worked half a day on your goal.
Just ten minutes a day will net you over sixty hours of work by the end of the year. It will be as if you took an entire week of work and devoted six ten-hour days to working on your project.
Go for a ten-minute walk outside, or do my ten-minute yoga flow near a window.
You need a boost in the feel-good chemicals in your brain. The best way is to get your blood moving and get exposure to natural light.