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Be Grateful, Be Happy & Beat Depression
Continuing along the same theme as my last blog posting, I’ve continued to think a lot about how to ensure I remain appreciative and don’t slip back on to the easy to adopt bad habit of continually wanting more and always desiring what ever the “Joneses” have.
Some live their whole lives believing the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. I argue, that if you think the grass is greener over the other side of the fence then spend more time tending to your own garden!
This is, however, easier said than done and it’s easy to forget how lucky we are. So here’re a few tips to make “counting your blessings” a regular part of your life.
1. Keep a diary beside your bed and every night, last thing before you turn out the lights, write down 5 things for which you’re grateful.
2. When you do this exercise, be specific (it’s not good enough to say “I’m grateful for my health (or the health of my loved ones)”. Elaborate - exactly why do you appreciate your good health?
3. Use reminders (stickers or notes) to help you regularly recall all the good things in your life.
4. Find a regular time during which you can reflect on all the good things in your life (e.g., on the bus or train in to work every morning, after you’ve organised the kids off to school etc.). Remember, you’ll only need about 5 minutes so “not having enough time” is not enough of an excuse.
These are just a few ideas. Tell us what you find helpful by responding to this post!
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on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 4:50 pm and is filed under Happy Tips.
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August 26th, 2005 at 12:40 pm
doc happy - do you do the things above you’ve recommended?
I used to do the *grateful journal* but i stopped because it would be very repetitive and looking back at it wasn’t really interesting or good at all.
In the past I’ve gotten advantage by either sponsoring a child in a poorer country, and now I’m a member of a lot of online medical support groups, and in these groups there are some people who are “worse off” in some areas than me, and by seeing this it really sends home the message that I’ve still got some things to be grateful for.
These are examples of things that work better for me, rather than the journal which really wasn’t good at all.
August 26th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
I agree with Ioland’s comments about finding the journal became repetitive.
One big way for me to keep happy is having framed collages of photos all down the hallway at my house. Photos of happy times, great holidays, all my friends and family that make me smile, decorated christmas trees, birthday cakes, great meals I’ve cooked, people being silly etc continually remind me of the good things in life and the wonderful times I’ve had to feel grateful for. There’s just too many good times sitting in an album in a cupboard that you never see and therefore dont always remember. Frames up to A3 size can be picked up from the Reject Shops for about $6 each so it’s a really cheap exercise to remind you about the amazing life that you live.
I also find the photo boards give me a sense of achievement because I can see I’ve saved for holidays or I finally finished knitting a scarf or I put in the effort to organise a party or I graduated from college. When the years fly by so fast you dont end up thinking ‘I didnt do anything this year’ because you’ve got the photos there to prove what you were doing.
August 30th, 2005 at 3:39 pm
wendy - great suggestion about the photo wall……..
a comment in reply to what doc happy said in his recent Marking Changes newsletter as a reply to my comment above…….ie. he said to try to find unique little bits in the day for which you can be happy.
this wouldn’t work with a lot of the population. None of the men I know, of all different ages, would like to do a gratitude journal. it’s just “not their thing”. a lot of the older people probably would have trouble remembering many of the little bits in their day so the task would be really difficult. Me - I’d have trouble remembering the little things too. When it’s so difficult it takes the fun away.
I’m probably not like a lot of others on this forum in some of the ways i think because of the psychological changes brought on with my cancer journey. I mean, if we’ve got an insect in the house I’ll go out of my way to catch it so i can take it outside back into the garden….. and it makes me happy to have saved a life (albeit the life of an insect). I look at an invention, or a piece of art, and rather than just see it for what it is, I’m also thinking of the person behind it. Just how did they come to invent it? Did they have to go through a lot til they found it? Was it their life dream and had they worked for decades to finally solve the invention puzzle? What parts of their lives are behind each brushstroke? Was there anything happening in their life at that time that led them to paint the woman looking so unhappy? Was it someone they knew? Was the painting a gift for the person? And for what reason? Maybe the money that they got from the painting was going to feed their starving family who hadn’t eaten in 3 days…….
I’ve gotten off the topic, but what I’m saying is that there’s a lot around us that we should be grateful for …….. but we’re in the habit of not really noticing them. If the walls around you could speak then what would they say? Hopefully a lot that we should be grateful for. I’ve also learnt that you can’t assume that everyone else leads a perfectly happy life with no problems because it probably isn’t true - you just don’t know their problems because they haven’t told you.
September 14th, 2005 at 4:29 pm
Another good idea is place an object on the table, and think of things that are positive about the object. Like you place a tea cup on the table.
“Hmmm… It is finely decorated, … it is inexpensive because it is mass produced, ….”