by Merri Sharp

Created on: November 15, 2006   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

Proven Techniques for Beating the Blues:
1. Do small tasks that are hard, but manageable. This will build your confidence, lift your mood, and feed your spirit.
2. Get outside for at least 10 minutes every day, to get your dose of natural daylight - rain or shine.
3. Seek good physical health - eating right and getting exercise are activities that release endorphins, which increase "happy" feelings.

Explanation:
When the blues hit, the key to success is to step outside the cycle. What I mean by this is that when we get depressed, we generally want to stay inside, hide from the world, and participate in some self-destructive behaviour (over-sleeping, binge eating or the opposite - stop eating, drinking, chain smoking, and so on). Giving in to these temptations begins a vicious cycle: we feel depressed, so, we do self-destructive behaviour, and then we feel ashamed about it and beat ourselves up, which makes us even more depressed, so we do more self-destructive behaviour, feel even more ashamed, and get even more depressed, and so on and so on. Therefore, the trick to beating the blues, is to step outside of this destructive cycle. When we step outside the destructive cycle, we enter the productive cycle: we do something we don't want to do - something that feels hard to do (go for a walk outside, do a work-out, finish a task, etc.), which makes us proud of ourselves, which lifts our mood and builds our confidence, which makes us want to go out and accomplish more, which makes us even prouder of ourselves, which lifts our mood and builds our confidence even more, and so on.

This solution sounds simple, and it is - but that doesn't mean it's easy. I find that the trick to making this task manageable is to make reasonable goals. Getting natural sunlight is the most powerful antidepressant on the planet; even if its rainy or cloudy out, you still get a ton of mood benefits from being outside in daylight. But, when you feel sad, getting out of bed and getting dressed is hard enough - going for a walk can feel like a taunting task. So, instead of trying to go for a 30 (or 20, 15, 10, or even 5) minute walk, try walking around the block. When you do one block, and you feel proud of yourself for doing it, it may make you want to do another block, and another. If you do a walk around the block, and don't feel inspired to do more, you can still feel fantastic about meeting your goal. It may seem a small task, but it was a hard task, and that makes it something to be proud of.

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