Tag: positive

10 All Natural Ways to Stop Feeling Depressed

Posted on by

Does this describe your life?

  • 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. If you think you might have a serious mental health problem, don’t hesitate to see a medical professional.

1. Understand the emotional cycle – Life is an emotional roller coaster. Some days you feel like nothing can stop you. Other days you feel utterly hopeless. Most of the time you’re somewhere in between. Understanding the pattern of positive and negative emotions will help you put your feelings in perspective. Next time you feel down, just remember that it’s a natural emotion that will inevitably pass. Knowing that a feeling of depression is only temporary makes it less dreadful.

2. Spend time with positive people – Nothing affects the way you think and feel more than the people you interact with. Thoughts (both positive and negative) are contagious. If you are surrounded by negative people, it’s only natural that you’ll start to think and feel the same way. To improve your outlook on life, spend time with positive people. Search them out and try to understand the way they see the world. Chances are their happiness will rub off.

3. Reflect on past success – In the wake of a colossal failure, it’s easy to forget everything you’ve ever done right. Take a few minutes to remember your past accomplishments and build yourself up. What made you successful before? What are your strengths? Frequently, this exercise will build self confidence, help you figure out what went wrong, and generate ideas for success in the future.

4. Focus on gratitude – It’s human nature to measure ourselves against those ahead of us on the social ladder. Studies have shown that people care more about being richer than their friends than actually making more money. When you consider everything good in your life and compare it to the problems of less fortunate people, the issue that’s making you depressed won’t seem as serious.

5. Change of scenery – One of the best ways to change the way you feel is to change your environment. When you get in a slump, you start to associate your problems with everything around you. It can get to the point where your environment is a constant reminder of your problems. This can be a dangerous cycle. The solution is to change things. Change doesn’t have to be radical. Cleaning up, adding more lights, or including pleasant decorations can completely change the mood of a room.

6. Break your routine – Going through the same routine, day after day, can be monotonous and depressing. It often leads to getting caught in a rut. To get out of it you need to temporarily change your routine. If you can, take a day off from work. Do something you don’t normally have time for or something you’ve never tried. In the long run, taking a day off every now and then to get out of slump will make you happier and more productive.

7. Interact with animals and nature – It’s funny when you consider how humans put so much importance on their own tiny problems. Animals don’t think this way. A little bird doesn’t mope around because it isn’t an eagle or because another bird beat it to a tasty seed. Animals live in the present moment and they show love unconditionally. Observing and interacting with them will help you get over your problems.

8. Get moving – As Johnny Cash famously suggested, “Get a rhythm, when you get the blues.” Moving to a beat makes everyone feel better. The same is true for movement in general. Hitting the gym or going for a walk will help you shed the lethargy that comes with feeling depressed. The more enthusiastic your moments, the better you will start to feel.

9. Think about the big picture – As Carl Sagan made evident with the Pale Blue Dot, we’re insignificant creatures living in a vast universe on a tiny planet. In the long run, everything we do will probably be forgotten. Some might find this depressing, but it shouldn’t be. It means that all our problems are illusory. In a million years no one will remember what you did or didn’t do. What matters is the present moment and enjoying every second of life that we’re blessed with.

10. Do something to help yourself – Above all, the best way to stop feeling depressed is to take action. What is your biggest problem? How can you alleviate it? Once you decide to stop moping and start moving forward you won’t have time to feel depressed. Action will occupy your mind and give you something to look forward to. Once you get some results, you’ll build momentum and positive thinking will keep getting easier.

Related posts

Links to Think #011 – Fibromyalgia Edition

Posted on by

 

Five Weird Signs of Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a condition that affects nearly 5 million women and men-but mostly women-in the United States alone. Anyone who has fibromyalgia can tell of the constant chronic pain and relentless fatigue that are two of the syndrome’s signature symptoms. But the condition reaches beyond bodily…
9 Healing Benefits We Get From A Hug And 5 Ways To Get One Every Day
Touch is an important part in a person’s mental, emotional, and physical health. It’s a primary language that communicates compassion and promotes bonding and health. A touch is needed for psychological regulation. Children deprived of touch suffer a delay in their cognitive and developmental…
3 Ways To Enhance Your Mental Resilience And Use Your Subconscious Mind
Mental health is necessary in a person’s survival, wellbeing, and most especially, in achieving one’s full potential. Happiness is deemed unachievable for the person who fails to cultivate their own mental health. Having a positive mental health is having a mental resilience. In psychology,…
8 Fun Ways to Improve Your Brain
There are many natural ways to give your brain a boost and have fun while you’re doing it.
How to Deal With Depression: 22 Things You Need to Try Today
Depression is hard to get over with but there are things you can do to stay on top of the condition. Here are 22 things you need to start doing today.
Can you Qualify for Fibromyalgia Disability?
If you have a medically documented disability, you are entitled under the law to receive support from the government.
What Kind of Tests for Fibromyalgia are There?
Fibromyalgia is a tough disease to diagnose, because it leaves few obvious markers that doctors can use to determine if a patient has fibromyalgia.
Adzuki beans nutrition facts and health benefits
There’s no easy fix to chronic pain, but here’s a few techniques that can help pain management.
Nanosystem delivers precise amounts of drugs directly to a tiny spot in the brain
Nanosystem delivers precise amounts of drugs directly to a tiny spot in the brain

 

MIT’s miniaturized system can deliver multiple drugs to precise locations in the brain, also monitor and control neural activity (credit: MIT) MIT
Grok Didn`t Take Supplements, So Why Should I? | Mark`s Daily Apple
Grok Didn’t Take Supplements, So Why Should I? | Mark’s Daily Apple

 

The main objective of following the Primal Blueprint is to extract the healthiest, happiest, longest and most productive life possible from our bodies – an
Adzuki beans nutrition facts and health benefits
CBD medical hemp oil is all the craze thanks to the benefits it offers, but do you know what to look for when choosing a brand?
Adzuki beans nutrition facts and health benefits
Learn what intermittent fasting is, why it works, and how you can use it to lose weight and gain muscle immediately.
Getting over the Anxiety of Meeting a New Psychiatrist
I was recently hospitalized and during that stay,  my psychiatrist and I reached a mutual agreement that it would be better if I started seeing someone else as he wasn’t sure how to help me a…
Do Fibromyalgia Tender Points Guarantee a Diagnosis?
If you’ve been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, it probably felt like you had to move mountains just to figure out what was wrong with you.
5 Fibromyalgia Home Remedies to Consider
Fibromyalgia home remedies are available to try for those who have been diagnosed with this debilitating condition.
Urinary Incontinence and Fibromyalgia
Urinary incontinence is an unfortunately common problem for people with fibromyalgia. So, what causes it, and what can you do to manage it?
3 Symptoms of Severe Fibromyalgia Nobody Talks About 
3 Symptoms of Severe Fibromyalgia Nobody Talks About

 

Lorna Effy talks about some of the symptoms she’s experienced with fibromyalgia that aren’t often associated with the disease.
Is Naltrexone Effective for Treating Fibromyalgia?
Naltrexone is a drug used to treat opiate addiction. But it turns out that naltrexone might be one of the best drugs for treating fibromyalgia.
Footer.jpg
created in Publicate

Related posts

Behavior Is Contagious – Especially With Fibromyalgia

Posted on by

People with fibromyalgia face many obstacles.

We live with fatigue, brain fog, chronic pain and other symptoms. We work to find ways to manage this syndrome. We seek coping mechanisms. Many fibro patients have overlook the importance of who and what we surround ourselves with.

  • This can have a dramatic affect on how we cope.

Conserving energy is an important part to coping with “Fibro Fatigue”. It takes far more energy to deal with negative people. Energy when you don’t have any left to expend.

Let’s look at who we surround ourselves with and the effects on our lives.

People You Should Remove from Your Life

  1. You have to cut the “downers” the negative people
  2. You have to cut out the “distractors”
  3. You have to get rid of “people who play the victim”
  4. You have to stay away from “know-it-alls”
  5. You have to dump the “drama queens/kings”

Neuroscience 101
Good and Bad Behavior Is Contagious

One study found that emotions circulate through interpersonal relationships just like the flu virus.

These patterns can actually be tracked statistically just like the flu virus.

  • Each positive person you surround yourself with increases your chances of being positive by eleven percent.
  • Each negative person you let into your life more than doubles your chances of being negative.

Understanding Why This Happens

A mirror neuron is a cell in your brain that fires both when you act and when you observe another person acting.  Interacting with other people engages your mirror neuron system. 

This brain mechanism causes you to copy other people whether you want to or not. If you spend enough time with anyone, no matter who it is, you will start to mimic their behavior.

This means you need to start cutting negative people out of your life right now.

Here is a short 2 minute video
explaining mirror neurons

Here are five types of people
to start avoiding now!

# 1 The “Downer”

Some people can walk into a room and light it up. Other people walk into a room and kill it.

  • Downers Are Those That Kill Positive Energy

They are those people who seem to have a dark cloud following them wherever they go. These people are unlucky, negative and always depressed.

Don’t feel bad for these people. Odds are:

They like being miserable
WHY?
They like the attention it gives them

You must drop unhappy people from your life. Why?

Because your happiness and your physical health depends on it. Research shows that being exposed to negative people pulls away neurons in your hippocampus. This is the part of your brain that is responsible for problem solving. This means that negative people literally rot your brain

Stop hanging out with people who suck away your energy

#2 Avoid Distracting People

Distractors come in a variety of flavors

  • There are those annoying people who drive you nuts.
  • People who make you focus on them instead of focusing on yourself and your mission.

Distractors are also those people that are truly amazing or really hot or incredibly brilliant.]

  • Those people who catch your eye for one reason or another.
  • Distractors make you forget about your goals and everything that you’ve set out to do in life.

A lot of promising futures
have been sacrificed to these distractors.

Some people drop out of school or quit a job they love, just to be closer to a distracting person. This allows them stay in that distracting relationship.

Others get hooked on celebrity gossip or get rich quick schemes

  • Everything that glitters is not always gold.
  • Most shiny things are just distractions and this can include people.

Don’t let any person make you forget that you are amazing – and that you have something amazing to offer the world.

#3 Stay Away from People Who Play the Victim

Don’t know how to identify a victim?

Here’s what you look for:

  • Look for people who preach self-sacrifice
  • Look for people who try to make you feel guilty for your strengths
  • Look for people who try to make you feel guilty for your accomplishments
  • Look for people who try to make you feel bad just because they are feeling bad

Victims are:

  • Masters of positioning themselves on the moral high ground
  • Using obligation to manipulate you into doing what they want you to do.
  • People who like to make you feel responsible for their happiness.

No one is responsible for someone else’s happiness

#4 Stay away from know-it-alls

Know-it-alls are those people who will never let you live down past mistakes. They bring you down by using  the psychological phenomenons of “Imposter Syndrome” and “Negativity Bias.”

Imposter Syndrome is describe as the inability to internalize your own accomplishments. It’s that voice in your head that creeps up every now and then telling you that you’re a phony and it’s only a matter of time until people find out.

Negativity Bias on the other hand refers to your brains preference for negative information over positive information.

  • Never allow anyone to make you feel bad about yourself.
  • Don’t let some” Know-it-All” use these techniques against you.
  • Focus on where you are now. Not on your past mistakes.

#5 Refuse to be around drama queens.

Drama queens/kings are those people who love conflict. They are addicted to drama and to winning arguments no matter the cost. Even if there’s nothing to be won. Drama queens love drama for the sake of drama.

  • They don’t want to win or find a solution they just want the drama.
  • Their minds are simple and their lives are boring.
  • The only way they can fill a sense of purpose in life is by creating drama.
  • Don’t let these people suck you into their drama.

Any time you spend trying to correct or even understand a drama queen is a waste of time. You are better off ignoring these people period.

Related posts

What Can I Do To Change My Life?  EP:000

Posted on by

What Can I Do To Change My Life?  

This question is simple, the answer is quite complexed. Especially, to those in the chronic illness community.

Let’s establish a foundation to the development of a healthy mindset. Living with the many ways chronic illness changes your life, places stress on your life, making you feel damaged, weakened, and even broken. As people go through life they develop active or passive attitudes depending on comfort and/or feeling in control of that situation. Often, chronic illness forces us into a self-protective, subconscious reaction by taking control of our emotional and physical surroundings.

To achieve this, we develop a Fixed Mindset.

FIXED MINDSET

A Fixed Mindset is when you need to look smart and in control while internally feeling weak and out of control. In order to achieve this, you develop a Fixed Mindset and you:

  • Avoid Challenges
  • Give Up Easily
  • See Effort As Fruitless Or Worse
  • Ignore Useful Negative Feedback
  • Feel Threatened By The Success Of Others

This Fixed Mindset obviously leads to stagnation and the feeling of being physically and emotionally stuck.

You want to change your life and so you have to do the opposite. Our starting point is Changing YOUR Mindset.

The key to any successful life change is a Positive Growth Mindset.

POSITIVE MINDSET

The very first and most important step is, change your thought patterns. If you are thinking negatively about life and all the things around, then you should change your thoughts.

To really change your life, you need a Positive Growth Mindset.

GROWTH MINDSET

Having a Growth Mindset you can change anything in your life. The view you adopt in your life changes the way you lead your life.

Having a growth mindset means:

  • Seeing Effort As Path To Mastery
  • Learning From Criticism
  • Finding Lessons Of Inspiration In The Success Of Others
  • Embracing Challenges
  • Persisting In The Face Of Setbacks

The result is a better sense of free will. You create a life that YOU desire.

POSITIVE GROWTH MINDSET

Keep a Positive Growth Mindset.

Dive deep into it and urge yourself to ask even more questions.

  • Every person is unique,
  • Every person is connected with everyone
  • Each person needs to develop his/her personal reality.

That should be based on what is real, valid, no matter the time, place, circumstances. Then, you can develop methods, explanations, perception suitable to your uniqueness, and compatible with the rest of the universe.

If you really want to change your life, watch for my next post “The 2 Minute Rule”

Related posts

Being Brave

5 Ways How To Develop Courage

Posted on by

  • The guy who jumps onto subway tracks to save a stranger with a train approach
  • The clerk who chases down a robber,
  • A passerby stops at an accident site to save victims:

When you hear stories of incredible acts of courage,

Do you wonder, would I do the same?

Some scientists say those risk takers are wired differently, Studies show genetics play a significant role in the willingness to take risks. Recent research finds environmental factors and emotions greatly influence risk-taking behavior too. Other scientists look to brain mechanisms for answers:

“The best things in life are on the other side of fear!”  – Will Smith

Being Brave
Free-Photos / Pixabay

A great example of this situation is explained by Will Smith when he went skydiving. He explained this “The concept of fear” is only present up until the point where he took action. Immediately afterward he was in the moment – after he left the airplane it was pure bliss.

Courage and muscle have a lot in common.

The more they are used them the stronger they become. Neglected they slowly become frail, weak, and atrophied.

 Make a list, a long list of everything thing that scares you and slowly tackle each one by one. Start small and build up. Just like exercising a muscle – exercise your courage. The more often you do so the stronger it will get and the more confidence you will build to tackle bigger and bigger challenges.

Let’s look at some easy ones you can try.

  • The Coffee Shop Challenge – Go to your area coffee shop, place your coffee order, and when you’re ready to pay – Ask them for a 10% discount.
  • The Eye Contact Challenge – While walking in public, make eye contact with the people you pass. Keep eye contact until one of you break it. It’s important that you keep an open/warm/positive expression on your face (you don’t want to look scary or crazy).
  • The Laying Down Challenge – Walk into a crowded place and lay down for 15 – 20 seconds. Do not select a place where you will be a nuisance. If someone asks what you’re doing, just tell them you’re taking a break and collecting your thoughts.
  • The Cold Shower Challenge – This is one of my best discoveries:  The last 2 minutes of my shower I turn off all the hot water and blast the cold. It’s something that I do because I feel great afterward. I do it instinctively now, without hesitation or thinking of it, but when I got started I would get really nervous before doing it. On a lesser scale, it’s like that skydiving example – it’s scary before you do it, it’s intense while the cold water is flowing, it’s amazing afterward.

    “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the capacity to act despite our fears.”  –  John McCain

  • Public Speaking Challenge – There the old saying that people are more afraid of public speaking than they are of dying. There are many sources of information across the internet. Why? Because almost everyone has a fear of public speaking. Toast Masters is a great way to practice! 

 

You should definitely find things that make you so nervous that you feel it in the pit of your stomach. The more you practice, the stronger you will become!

Remember:

Being Afraid fear alone
Gallila-Photo / Pixabay

There are many different kinds of courage required in life, and you will hardly find one person who has them all.

Some people are fearless when approaching girls/guys or standing up to bullies. Going to the gym as an overweight person, the safety of a steady salary to become an entrepreneur, quitting an addiction, ending toxic relationships, chasing your dreams etc.l

 Courage isn’t a habit you can form, but a choice you must make that doesn’t get easier each time.               

Now that your path becomes more organized and clear

You will begin to like you.When you begin to like you, you will do what you like.

[Tweet “When you begin to like you, you will do what you like.”]

If you believe in being brave, you will be brave. Just believe and become. But first have a clear mind to focus, remove the things pulling you back.

Scientists don’t know for sure if being courageous is something you’re born with; they also don’t know whether we can target the parts of the brain active in overcoming certain fears. What experts do know is that many different behaviors and traits define a courageous act, some of which can be learned.

[Tweet “Big challenges produce big courage!”]

Practice courage often. Display it by doing and trying different things.  Things Like being unique, or facing a fear. Big challenges produce big courage but small ones every so often maintain its strength.

Do what scares you. Quieting your fear of is putting yourself in the thick of it. Plus, by choosing to face your fear, it gives you a feeling of control.  Believe in your own ability to achieve a goal and a component of courageous acts.

Plan to be brave. Being prepared may help you draw on that reservoir of courage; the moment of indecisiveness is when your emotions come in.”

Remember the why. Courage is more than just facing fear; it involves taking risks for a noble or good cause. Focus on the reason you wanted to take an action to help boost confidence. When that reason is important or morally right, it may be the most encouraging of all.

Related posts