There are many facets of happiness and a million and one paths to take to get there, each individually catering to one another.
There are however, some incredibly important fundamental steps for enhancing your mental state, naturally and giving your mind, body and soul what it needs.
- Exercise is imperative. Whatever it is, it should be taxing, difficult, tiring and most importantly enjoyable. Weight training will always give me the best mood-enhancement and improve my mindset over any other form of exercise (whether thats plyometrics, gymnastics, cardiovascular training, HIIT etc)
- Avoiding sugar, excess fats and processed junk with the nutrients sapped from it is extremely important. I can't begin to describe just how much of a difference it makes for me if I decide to eat junk for a day or two - the next day I struggle to get up, wake up in a bit of a shitty mood, have a listless demure and am generally rather lowly. Your body needs nutrients, vitamins and minerals - give it what it wants and it will repay you immeasurably.
Nuts, seeds, vegetables (leafy greens and very colourful ones particularly), fruit, oily fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel, eggs, chicken/turkey and wholegrains should be the basis of your diet.
- I say this alot, but for good reason - Cold Showers have stabilised my mood and reduced fatigue, depression and anxiety so much so that I recommend it nearly every damn day on this forum but I do it because I can testify to just how effective it can be. I'm like a different person after my cold shower in the morning. Get in there, make it cold, make it challenging, FIGHT IT, BE STRONG FUCK YEAH! I always come out with a smile on my face, loads of energy and the ability to take on the day.
- Don't sleep any longer than 8 hours. My sweet spot is about 6-7 hours or so. Any more than that and I wake up feeling shit. Wake up nice and early, maintain a steady sleep schedule (get up at the same time each day and try to aim for bed at the same time too)
- Meditate. Begin by practising relaxing breathing meditation for 10 minutes once a day, each day. After a week, try it twice a day for 10 minutes. After another week, attempt to increase one of those sessions to 20 minutes. After another week, try and do two 20 min sessions a day, and so on and so forth. Meditation has so many benefits for one's mental state - it really stabilises your thought processes, reduces depression and helps increase a level of clarity and contentment which is impossible to find with any other method. A truly unique, fantastic aid is the ol' meditation.
- Keep busy! Sitting in front of a computer or television all day does absolutely nothing but make me feel depressed, lethargic and basically shitty. In my downtime I find I will often worry and stress, but keeping busy doesn't allow any unnecessary thoughts like this to arise in the first place.
On my busy days, I am so happy it's unreal. Keeping busy is imperative. That's not to say that lounging time is wrong, not at all, just balance it out healthily. You should look into a hobby or class of some sort, perhaps a meditation class or football or any sport or arts or anything, y'know?
If you follow all of these rules, I promise you will see some impressive results in altering your mental state for the better. I would also
highly recommend you curb Alcohol and drugs.
I use Cannabis but find it makes very little impact on my mental health, in fact, it helps me for the better. Do what feels right, but do NOT over-do drugs and drink at all. Even just the odd session can set you back massively.
Often we don't realise just how much of an impact some of our bad habits have on us because we aren't so 'in tune' with ourselves and not as internally consciously aware - it is only when we practice good habits and take better care of ourselves, recognising how our minds are working and what affects it that we notice just how much of an impact some things can have.
I used to drink a lot and eat crap, and I always said "Ah it doesn't make a difference to my mental state at all really" and you hear
so, so many people with similar habits who say the same thing - go down the pub and you'll meet so many people who say "ah eating vegetables, meditating and all that shite make no difference" but that's because they are so horrendously ignorant of their own inner turmoil from a constant barrage of poor practices and no internal conscious awareness.
But yeah, I have suffered depression on/off for years, at points it was so bad I was driven to suicide attempts. What helped me get over it was cutting out the drugs, stopping alcohol, eating very cleanly, sleeping properly, cold showers, frequent weight-lifting/exercise, meditation and psychedelic therapy of my own accord - utilising Mushrooms (and other psychedelics) for inner reflection and getting through, past and over my problems of the past.
A really important thing to keep in mind that I realised was to look back at what we are designed to do. Did we evolve to digest processed food with no nutritional value? Did we evolve to have cars transport us everywhere and machines do our laborious tasks? Did we evolve to lounge around all day? Did we evolve with heated showering systems? Did we evolve sweat glands only to block them with anti-perspirants? No.
We are supposed to be active, we need nuts, fruits, seeds, vegetables, we have legs for a reason, we have sebum and sweat for a reason. I would surmise that modern civilisation brings as many problems for one's mental state as it supposedly solves. We live in such an unnatural environment that's so far removed from the reality of life and how we evolved that it only serves to actuate all sorts of mental illnesses and health problems. Some of the global health issues today were unheard of 200 years ago.
Try and live more true to yourself, allow your happiness to come forth, it's down there somewhere, you just need to coax it out these days, but trust me, you will find it and you will keep it
Good luck my friend.
