How to be happy!

[satans_soulmate]

A couple of days ago, my friend Ludo sent me this email. I am going to print it out and stick it on my wall. I hope at least some of you read it and appreciate it!

Some of these won’t apply to everyone BUT, I give you 25 things to do when you’re depressed:

1. SING along to your favourite HAPPY music. My suggestion is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq28qCklEHc.
2. Get some fresh air - whether it be people watching on a bench, or walking to your nearest park or lake, go sample nature. Enjoy being outside. Enjoy the fresh air on your face. Feel it. Feel every little bit of it. Don’t go to any hills, mountains or cliffs. Or deep lakes…
3. Have a shower. Seriously therapeutic.
4. Talk to a good friend. Okay, so often this isn’t possible all the time/for everyone, but it’s a possibility.
5. Watch a funny film or video - one which you’ve watched before and know you enjoy.
6. Cut your nails.
7. Do productive things around the house - like tidy your room, do your washing. It’s not too strenuous and you feel like you’ve achieved something big. Yay.
8. A drink in moderation. This is probably a bad idea, but rewarding yourself with a drink every week or two is nice. Something to look forward to. But probably a bad idea, as I said.
9. Buy something nice for yourself, if possible. I like hand cream -> I buy nice hand cream. My hands are soft. Yay.
10. Do some exercise, cardiovascular preferably. Running, cycling or swimming.
11. Eat WELL. REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT. If you don’t eat, your body becomes UNHAPPY. When the body is UNHAPPY, the mind and soul will become UNHAPPY. And we all know that we don’t like things and people which are UNHAPPY. So keep your body HAPPY. Feed it well. Make sure you have plenty of fruit and veg.
12. A healthy body is one step on the way to having a healthy mind. Never forget that.
13. SING a bit more. Singing never did anyone harm. Sing really loud to the Sound of Music at 4am in the morning. Who gives a shit if you wake people up, or can’t sing at all? (I’m definitely guilty of that one!) Singing is great. I recently discovered it.
14. READ. Get yourself into one of your childhood books and enjoy it again.
15. Rewatch those films which you used to watch as a kid. I used to watch Matilda 5 times every day when I was 5. Or something like that. I swear I know every line to it still that was quite a while ago. Matilda is a great film. If you were a late 80s/early 90s kid then you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t watched it then make sure you do. It’ll make your life infinitely better.
16. Talk about your problems. Write it down on paper. Write a story. Write a song. Improvise on those thoughts on the piano. Do something to EXPRESS yourself. Everyone is capable of that. Draw something. Paint something. Expression is central to the path to wellbeing.
17. Enjoy the fact that George Bush Jnr. is no longer in the White House. This one deserves at least 30 minutes of your time each day.
18. Have a banana. Mmm, yellow goodness.
19. Write a letter. Sending post is relaxing and fun to receive replies. Make sure you send it to someone who will write back. I hate people who don’t write back. HATE. If anyone reading this wants to write to me then I promise I’ll write back.
20. Get up before 9am everyday and make sure you’re in bed by midnight. A regular pattern will help you get your life back into shape.
21. Carrots make you see in the dark. Meaning that if you eat enough of them you’ll be able to go to sleep at 9am and get up at midnight instead of the other way round and everything’ll be dandy. DO IT.
22. Set yourself little tasks to do each day. Write them down on a post-it note/sticky and make sure you do it. Once it’s done, tick it off. Keep a record of all of the things you’ve done in a diary or journal so after a week is over you can look back upon what you’ve done and feel a sense of achievement. Start small - just one small task perhaps, and build on it. You can do it!!
23. Hygiene. Okay I like being clean. Make sure you maintain personal hygiene. This sounds silly, but when you’re down you can ignore things like brushing your teeth before bed, or shaving. Although there’s nothing /really/ wrong with this (it’s mainly social issues rather than health issues tbh), it’s good to keep it up because when you finally find yourself being happy you don’t want to SMELL. That’ll then make you UNHAPPY, undoing all the hard work you’ve done. So shower, brush teeth, wash, shave, etc. Important shit. Literally.
24. Spend some time at the end of each day thinking about how you’ve been mentally that day. Write it down. Make a record. Understand what your mind is going through. Try and assimilate what’s going on - which days were good and WHY they were good. Conversely understand which days were bad and WHY that was the case. Try an undertand WHY exactly your miserableness is persisting (half the time I don’t /really/ know, so this was helpful for me).
25. See the sunrise and sunset somewhere either a) beautiful b) you have a strong memory association with or c) with someone you love. OR combine all three and it’ll be amazing. It’ll create a positive memory. Hopefully. Basically it’s nice to appreciate nature - and we will always have nature (hopefully! this global warming stuff is catching on…). 

No matter how you feel, understand that people don’t want to see you gone from this world. These people maybe from the past, present or future - you may not have met them yet. They may be a person round the corner, someone to fall in love with. Who knows. There will be someone. I promise you that. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this, I wrote it whilst on a very low evening when some happy music came on. I sung a bit. Singing makes the world go round. Sing it. Love it. Live it. Believe it. 
Ludo x