When you are feeling sad, depressed, exhausted, stressed, etc., what do you that helps you feel better?
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I will always remember the words and example of a wonderful mother-in-law who taught me that the way to shake off loneliness was to get out and help someone else. At the age of 80 and having been a widow for 30 years, she was still checking on the “little old ladies” in her neighborhood. She was a delightful person to be around.
I really want my answer to this question to be something like, get a manicure or get a massage, because then I would feel justified in doing those things. But the fact is that I’ve never had either a manicure or a massage and (apparently) I’ve never found it necessary. What really does it for me is something, anything that jars me into looking outside of myself.
At least for me, what really gets me down is not necessarily the laundry or the dishes or the whatever else, it’s the feeling bad for myself that I have to do the laundry or the dishes or the whatever else. So if something can happen to make me look outside of my selfishness and realize that I’m doing this for people I love then suddenly the whole world is different.
Too bad that’s a lot harder than it sounds.
Some of the things I like to do are:
Read
Write
Take a walk (esp. at sunset)
Talk to a good friend
Curl up with my kids to watch a movie
Play the piano
Listen to good music
Listen to an inspirational talk
The simple pleasures of life help me put things in perspective–taking a few minutes to myself to meditate, think about the things and people I love, and then get on with whatever I have to do.
I probably am a strange breed but what gets me up out of the doldrums is work. If I’m mad, sad, apprehensive, or any other negative emotion is occupying my mind, I take on a project that needs doing but normally I’d never get to. And I work fast. When I’ve worked so hard that I’m physically tired, my negative emotion has greatly subsided and I’ve accomplished a task that otherwise wouldn’t have been done.
I take an extra long hot shower and let the tears come out there. Or I dive into a book and escape for a little while. Working on a project helps too.
There are many things I do to rejuvenate; some are a part of my every day life to keep the doldrums away, and some are more impulsive to chase it away.
Exercise – my body works hard and feels good afterwards, while my mind rolls over problems in a meditative way.
Reading – Opening my mind up to other’s ideas and lifestyles makes me live my own life with more intention. It also gives me the opportunity to consider ideas that may not occur to me in the natural course of my daily life.
Social contact – I know for my personality that I need people, I need to talk and to listen, it feeds my soul. But being a stay at home mom I don’t always get alot of that kind of interaction with adults. So I have to seek it out and make it a priority.
A few others are : yoga, gardening, playing like a child, napping, studying, blogging, prayer.